Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Monday urged Israel Defense Forces and police commanders, as well as political leaders, to step down if they feel that the findings of the government-appointed inquiry committee into the Lebanon War will hurt them.Dichter was speaking at the 6th International Conference of the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, attended by nearly 1,000 security and counter terrorism officials, experts and researchers from some 30 countries.
"A moment before the committee's doors are opened, I would like to address you as a fighter to fighters, as a commander to commanders, as a leader to leaders," he said. "To anyone who feels that if he calls out 'follow me,' no one will join him in the assault, anyone who thinks that his call to 'advance' will not be heeded, this is what I have to say: Do not be afraid. Put those better than you in your place. It is a matter that affects our children's future."
.... Referring to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Dichter said that he should be viewed as a new Adolf Hitler with nuclear weapons.
"My recommendation to various countries is to ask themselves: 'How would Europe and the entire world look if, God forbid, Hitler had also had nuclear capability?' Ahmadinejad must be evaluated on the basis of these parameters. This is how the threat that this country [Iran] and this leader poses should be seen," he said.
Brigadier General (reserves) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of Military Intelligence's research division, also addressed the conference, saying: "There was quality intelligence during the war against Hezbollah, but the tactics used were improper."
Bibi Netanyahu spoke along the same lines:
He described the 9/11 attacks on New York, using "two fully fuelled passenger 150 ton aircrafts to smash into the Twin towers" as the "equivalent of a tactical small nuclear bomb. But no one questions that if they had nuclear weapons, al-Qaeda would have wiped out Manhattan, and wiped out a good portion of Washington.""International terrorism is a mistaken term, not because it doesn't exist, but because the problem is international militant Islam. That is the movement… that operates terror on the international level, and that is the movement that is preparing the ultimate terror, nuclear terrorism," Netanyahu said.
The opposition chairman warned that if international terrorism goes nuclear, it could turn "the terror we know today to something marginal."
Next year we'll have to get some bloggers to this conference, as the MSM seems to have no interest. Speakers this year came from Switzerland, UK, US, Germany, Serbia, Scotland, Russia, Canada and of course, Israel.
UPDATE/ WHOOPS, we did have a blogger there: Dry Bones!
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