The blade did not fall, Olmert was bruised, but still standing.

After the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, the "official" commission of inquiry chaired by Judge Kahan published an exemplary report which exposed all the facts. But these could have led it to much harsher conclusions than it did actually reach. Instead of finding that Ariel Sharon and his minions were guilty of "indirect responsibility" for the massacre, it could have decided that they bore direct responsibility. The facts supported such a conclusion. Why did they not do so, and only dismissed Sharon and some officers? I assume that they shrunk back for fear of causing severe damage to the State of Israel.

Now I could write much the same about the Winograd commission. The facts exposed by it justify more extreme conclusions. What held them back? One can guess: the five commission members, all pillars of the establishment - 2 generals, 2 leading academics, 1 judge - did not want to topple Olmert, the No. 1 establishment person. Perhaps they feared that his place would be taken by somebody much worse - a worry shared by many others in the country.

As prominent establishment figures, the commission members also shrunk back from touching on two basic questions concerning Lebanon War II: (a) Why it was started at all, and (b) What had caused the shocking deterioration of the army.

In its two reports, the commission asserted that the decision to start the war was taken in a hasty and irresponsible manner. The stated war aims were quite unattainable. But the commission did not say what had caused Olmert & Co. - the government of Israel - to make such a decision.

We now know for sure that plans for the war had been prepared a long time before. These were rehearsed only a month before the war and changes were made according to the results. In the end, these plans were not implemented at all. But it is clear that the government and the army had long been thinking about attacking Hizbullah.

For six years, the Northern border had been completely quiet. Hizbullah did deploy rockets (as it is doing now) but showed then (as now) no inclination to attack Israel.

The cross-border incursion in which two Israeli soldiers were captured was an exception. The action was intended to provide negotiating chips for the release of Hizbullah prisoners held in Israel (and perhaps to demonstrate solidarity with Hamas, which had just captured another Israeli soldier in a similar incursion.) Hassan Nasrallah later admitted that this was a grave mistake and would not have been done if he had imagined that it would cause a war. (Olmert, on his part, has not admitted to any mistake.)

As I said right at the beginning, this incident was a pretext for the war, not the reason for it. If so, what was the real reason? The desire of the civilian Olmert for military glory? The dream of the Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, to prove that the Air Force could win a war alone, by a massive bombardment of the civilian population? The illusion that Hizbullah could be eliminated by one big strike?

When Judge Winograd tried to explain why a part of the report must be kept secret, the words he used attracted no attention: "The security of the state and its foreign relations". Foreign relations? What foreign relations? Relations with whom? There is only one reasonable answer: relations with the United States.

That could be the crux of the matter: Olmert fulfilled an American wish. President Bush wanted to install his protégé, Fouad Siniora, as ruler in Beirut. For that end, Hizbullah, the main Lebanese opposition force, had to be eliminated. Also, Bush wanted to effect a regime change in Syria, one of the main obstacles to American ambitions in the region.

I believe that this is the missing link in Winograd's chain. Olmert could have argued: "I was only obeying orders". But that, of course, is unspeakable.

The other black hole in the report concerns the Israeli army. The report criticizes it murderously. Never before has the army leadership been described in such a way - as a bunch of people without character, talent or competence; generals who are ready to send soldiers to their death in an operation they believe to be condemned to failure, just because they do not dare to stand up to their superiors; generals who do not demand a clear definition of the objectives before going into battle; Generals who do not recognize the fateful faults of their army, and who are themselves responsible - they and their predecessors - for these very faults.

All this is being said now. What has not been said is: how did we get such a leadership? What has caused these faults?

The answers can be summed up in two words: the occupation.

In the last few years I have written dozens of articles about the disastrous effects of the occupation on the army. One cannot employ a whole army for decades as a colonial police force for crushing the resistance of an occupied population, without changing its character. Soldiers who run after stone-throwing children in the alleys of the Qasbah, who hammer at night on the doors of civilians, who use bulldozers to destroy people's homes, and all this for year after year - such soldiers are not competent to fight a modern war.

Worse: such a colonial army does not attract the best and the brightest. These now go into high-tech and science. The brutal work of the army against civilians and guerrilla fighters disgusts people of conscience and sensitivity, the very ones who are the backbone of a good officers' corps. It blunts the senses of those who remain, or sends them home from the occupied territories traumatized.

In the 40 years of occupation, the Israeli army has lost the kind of officers that led it in the 1948 and 1967 wars, people like Yitzhak Sadeh, Yigal Allon, Yitzhak Rabin, Ezer Weitzman, Matti Peled, Haim Bar-Lev and David Elazar, to mention just a few. Their place has been taken by a mediocre, faceless group, gray but arrogant technicians, people of shallow thinking, colonialist and extreme right-wing attitudes, with an ever increasing percentage of knitted kippa-wearers.

That is the group the report speaks of - but without saying so. It is an occupation army in which a negative natural selection process operates - everyone who does not feel comfortable in this milieu just leaves. As in any army, the atmosphere prevailing at the top - good or bad - trickles down the ranks to the meanest soldier.

This is not an army of Stalingrad fighters defending their country - this is an army of Winograd fighters. An army which no genius can "repair", as demanded by the commission. Because all the faults stem from the original sin: the occupation.

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