Winograd Commision

Israel's Winograd Commission, like most committee assignments, is yet another Monday-morning-quarterback report on Israel's thrashing and trashing of Lebanon in 2006. Here's another link. And another. (Remember how at the time the notion was tossed aboout that the Israel-Lebanon conflict might be the start of World War Three?)
As the dust settles, the Israeli Prime Minister feels exonerated for his tawdry part in the affair. After all, how was he to know that shooting people, dropping bombs and setting fires might hurt anyone?

Not to put too fine a point on it, Tony Karon sees the whole exercise as a proxy war directed from Washington. His take on what happened makes sense to me.

Whatever I say is of no importance, but the real reason for this post is to capture for future reference a perfectly delightful snip by Helena Cobban, whose comments on the commission are worth noting. Here is the quote...

In US military and political circles, people like to talk about the importance of doing "lessons learned" exercises. In Britain, more realistically, they tend to call them "lessons identified"-- since learning is yet another stage, that requires some active intelligence going in.

Love it! Another stage that requires some active intelligence!
I've always regarded the phrase military intelligence as an oxymoron.