IDF Brass Claim Army Is Ready For War

Israel -- Senior Israel Defense Forces officers have rejected criticism that the army is not ready for future challenges, asserting that training programs are vigorously preparing the IDF for the possibility of another war in the North. "Tremendous work has been done to repair shortcomings revealed during the last war. The preparedness, fitness of the units, equipment, relation to reservists - an radical improvement has been made in all of this," sources in the general staff said.

The officers were responding to comments by Major General (res.) Moshe Ivri-Sukenik, who resigned as commander of the IDF Northern Corps earlier this year, who blasted the way the army is training as flawed. Sukenik's criticism was legitimate but the real condition of the army was much better than he had described it, the sources said. "We are not training enough," Sukenik, who led an IDF in-house probe after the Second Lebanon War, said Thursday