By Stan Goodenough
Jul 12, 2007
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Thursday Israel had to go to war against Hizb'allah last summer.
He was speaking on the anniversary of the start of what Israel has officially called the Second Lebanon War.
"There had been a need to eradicate once and for all the threat that hung over hundreds of thousands of people and create a new reality," Olmert said, according to Ha'aretz.
The Prime Minister, who has refused to acknowledge that the buck for Israel's failure to do just that stops with him, did admit that Israel "had not a few weaknesses and failures" in the prosecution of that war.
But instead of resigning and giving a new prime minister the opportunity to do better, Olmert said he and his government were "trying to deal with... to fix, to deploy, to renovate and to strengthen."
Touring the north of the country, he insisted that the situation there was better today because of the war.
But according to numerous Israeli and foreign intelligence sources, Hizb'allah has rearmed and today has more missiles and other weapons that it did before the war.
Military analysts believe the terror group is being prepared to strike hard at Israel if Israel or the United States tries to destroy Iran's nuclear program.