Barak - passing the buck further (and back)

The hot potato of responsibility is handled by our politicos with the usual deftness. The ink on Bibi's testimony is still drying, and here comes Barak:

I carry overall responsibility for everything that took place in the systems under my command.

Spoken like a real man, isn't it? But...

But while holding himself accountable, the defense minister was quick to take aim at the Israel Defense Forces. "The decision making process at the political level was not the reason for the reality that emerged at the end of the operation," Barak said, calling the move to intercept the ships "a reasoned decision by a group of senior cabinet ministers".

Don't miss that "group of senior cabinet ministers", please, because this melody didn't stop there.

Speaking before the Turkel Commission probing the raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla in May, Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday contradicted statement's made by the prime minister on Monday, who told the committee the seven-minister forum only discussed the media aspects of stopping the flotilla and did not address the operational aspects.

Do you see it coming?

"The decision to stop the flotilla, which was made by the prime minister and the seven-minister forum, was made after examining the entire situation and the dilemmas," Barak said, stressing that "the discussion that was held by the seven-minister forum dealt not only with the media aspects of stopping the flotilla, but also with the military aspects."

Should I put an emphasis on the words "prime minister" in that last quote? I doubt.

Anyhow, Bibi is trying to recover from that previous weak performance:

In his testimony, Netanyahu appeared to shift responsibility to the defense minister, who he said was the man in charge while the PM was abroad. Later, Netanyahu published a clarification saying, "The overall responsibility is always mine – whether I'm in Israel or abroad."

Oh well. In any case, I pity that sergeant who doesn't suspect at the moment that the long arm of responsibility is aiming to get him as a chief culprit in the whole affair...