Winograd Committee member Prof. Yehezkel Dror said on Wednesday that Ehud Olmert needed to be removed from the prime ministership. "I'm sorry to say this, but he must be ousted," Dror told Israel TV Channel One's "New Evening" news show.
Dror said his committee's investigation of the 2006 Second Lebanon War had shown that Olmert had "no strategic capability." Making matters worse since the war, he went on, was that Olmert had failed to implement the committee's recommendations for a potent National Security Council to weigh in on strategic matters.
Finally, said Dror, the latest Olmert corruption scandal, in which the prime minister had not denied "taking lots of money in cash," was untenable in a democracy. Olmert's retention of the post of prime minister was now unacceptable, he said.
The Winograd Committee, in its first report in 2007, issued scathing criticism of Olmert's handling of the war. Its final report, Dror said, was constrained by High Court-imposed limitations, but nonetheless specifically endorsed all the content of the first report while adding new elements and expressing new concerns.
