Un-fucking believable. The NZDF whitewash their war crime whitewash…
Defence Force review: SAS needs to better understand ‘the importance of democratic oversight’
The elite soldiers of the Special Air Service (SAS) need to better understand “the importance of democratic oversight”, a review into the Defence Force has found.
The review, ordered by the Government after the Operation Burnham Inquiry investigated allegations of civilian deaths during an SAS-led raid, was released on Monday and made a series of recommendations on improving the Defence Force’s organisational structure, military planning, and transparency.
The review recommended the Defence Force have better oversight the SAS, the “span of control” of Chief of Defence Force’s office be reduced, and that civilian policy advisers be more involved in long, complex deployments – such as the Operation Burnham raid.
Defence Minister Peeni Henare said he accepted the report’s nine recommendations and expected the defence agencies to make changes by 2025.
Despite the review recommending that “post-deployment reviews” take place, Henare said the Government had no appetite for an overall review of New Zealand’s involvement in the Afghanistan conflict.
“Not now,” he said.
“That’ll have to be a decision Cabinet will make. Right now, it’s not a top priority for us, but it might be in the future.”
The Operation Burnham Inquiry, which inspected the events surrounding a 2010 Special Air Service (SAS) led raid in Afghanistan, issued a report in July 2020 that was scathing about the “surprising level of ineptitude and disorganisation” among the Defence Force’s top brass when it came to investigating allegations of civilian deaths in the years following the raid.
Though the inquiry found the SAS was not responsible for any wrongful civilian deaths during the raid – a child, among others, was likely killed by gunfire from a United States Apache helicopter – the subsequent mishandling of investigations into the civilian casualties and the misleading of Cabinet ministers and the public about the issue were found to have “undermined civilian control of the military”.
…We may not have pulled the trigger to kill those civilians, but we green lit a US attack helicopter into an SAS revenge raid John Key personally signed off on and that makes us responsible.
The second the public found out, the NZDF lied and lied and lied again!
Just consider the ludicrous things we are being asked to believe in the NZDF war crime white wash.
That a report confirming casualties during an SAS revenge attack secretly sits inside an NZDF safe only to magically appear one week before the current inquiry.
That the NZDF had an Officer ‘glance’ at the report, misread the report and falsely claim the report exonerates the NZDF.
This lie is then repeated for years.
BUT IT’S NOT A COVER UP.
Really?
This is the best the NZDF have to explain how 21 Afghan civilians came to be killed and wounded?
This is either grotesque incompetence, despicable corruption or both.
Why does anyone believe what the NZDF has to say? They’ve spent years lying to NZ, they attempted to smear Jon Stephenson and they were outed using the SIS to illegally spy on Nicky Hager.
John Key personally signed off on this fiasco, he must be held accountable for it!
At some point the media needs to start decrying our lying war crime NZDF.
At some point right?
Apparently not.
Labour have decided to allow our warcrimes to remain sleeping.
At least we don’t pretend the war crimes were legitimate…
US military covered up strikes that killed 64 woman, children in Syria: NYT
The United States military covered up two back-to-back airstrikes against supposed Daesh targets that killed up to 64 women and children in Syria in 2019, a report says.
The bombings took place near the town of Baghouz in the eastern Syrian province of Dayr al-Zawr on March 18 that year, The New York Times reported on Saturday.
An Air Force lawyer present in the operations center at the time believed the strikes were possible “war crimes” and later alerted the US Defense Department’s inspector general and the Senate Armed Services Committee, The Times said.
No thorough investigation and no other serious action was, however, launched.
The Department, the paper wrote, sufficed to launching “an inquiry” into the incident, which led to a report that was ultimately “stripped” of any mention of the bombings.
The US Central Command that oversees the American forces in the West Asia region has tried to justify the bloodbath by calling it “legitimate self-defense,” claiming that it ordered the attacks in favor of Washington-backed Kurdish militants.
It also alleges that “appropriate steps were taken to rule out the presence of civilians.”
…oh wait, that’s our bullshit excuse as well.
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What a wast of time rebuilding Afghanistan was.
there is a reason why ‘special forces’ are ‘special’ no reason to expect our ‘special forces’ should be more moral, humane or democratic than those of other countries (we are not uniquely ‘good’)
‘special forces’ are sent to scare the fuck out of the enemy–that’s their brand image
…they recruit tough hard people, politicians need to know accept and understand this when deploying against civilians rather than indulging in the faux pearl clutching shock, when the entirely predictable happens.
to pretend their are rules in warfare is the self delusion that starts wars
As far as I am aware it was military personnel that blew the whistle in the first place, including some participants in the raids who acted independent of the chain of command and should be acknowledged for there bravery.
sure acknowledge the whistleblowers but how did the military establishment react?
I’m not blaming the soldiers but the herod like handwashers that send people trained for the hardest most gruelling military ops to police civilians..and pretend they don’t know what the result will inevitably be.
Gagarin. Think about reading Hager and Stephenson’s “ Hit & Run.” It’s an easy read, compared to Hager’s “ Other People’s Wars.” I read it when it appeared in the local bookshop, on a Thursday, I think. Then I read it right through a second time. I finished on the Saturday night. It shocked me, and it took an emotional toll.
I went online that Saturday night, and I read that PM English had gone up to Auckland to see a pop concert. I was surprised at that. At this time, English seemed to be saying – ‘Nothing to see here’ which was nonsense. As you probably know, all Nicky Hager’s work is meticulously researched, referenced, and, which I personally appreciate, indexed. Hager has never been sued for anything he has written, but in spite of this, he has been much maligned and vilified. Much ado was made at the time about an incorrect geographical reference, and unsuccessful attempts were made to dismiss the whole substance of the book, based on this one technical error.
There was an online group of mainly young people who pushed for an inquiry for a long time, and other journos, – real investigative journalists – and at least two lawyers who worked hard to show what happened on those nights up in the Tirigan Valley, and seek compensation for the terrorised families – mainly old people, and the children in their care, but there’s much more than that. There’s no way I could do justice to the Hager/ Stephenson book, but it’s worth a read. At one stage army brass told a mistruth about Jon Stephenson, alleging that he was a liar, and I believe that he took successful legal action about that.
There are still senior armed forces New Zealanders who believe Hager to be a dreadful man; one is a long-term acquaintance of mine, who has obviously not read the book, and he is too old and frail to do so now, but reading “ Hit&Run”, and marrying it to the inquiry could be a future academic exercise, somewhere.
For reasons I don’t understand, nor try to, when I read the Hager/Stephenson report about those brutal goings on up in the beautiful Hindu Kush, the action transposed itself effortlessly to Dipton, the wee Southland town which spawned English, Todd Barclay, and Hamish Walker, not the most distinguished politicians.
I would have driven through Dipton about a dozen times in times past. Obviously it is not as remote or deprived of the trappings of so-called civilisation as the Tirigan Valley, but I made an unconscious connection which English didn’t, or perhaps he didn’t read the book, or perhaps the aides who did his reading for him came at it from a very different angle. Dunno.
I thought it was Pilate..
(In reply to gagarin writing about Herod handwashers. Reply buttons don’t always work well…)
yer right vino my bad, my theology isn’t that crash hot.
and snow white I wasn’t implying that the whistle blowing went well, quite the opposite it was, denied, lied about and covered up by the MOD and pollies at every turn.
We acknowledge them, and they know this. Any inquiry at all has been a tremendous accomplishment in face of the mud walls erected to block the truth by others rewarded with honours and prestigious employment positions. Most importantly, there are Afghanis who know that there are decent honest New Zealanders who fought long and hard to show that we are compassionate, and sensitive to others, and not primarily bestial.
Mmmm I am inclined to agree. War is abhorrent no matter what governments tell us about the why we should be involved in this.
The defence force is made up of tough guys who lie.
I am waiting for the Australian inquiry which I think will be much more interesting and upfront as this one should have been.
NZ will be asked to join war(s) in this multi polar, destabilised future now the theatre has shifted to the north western Pacific. Hawks on all sides in addition to a nation that wants to be the sheriff of the Southern Hemisphere mean it is on our doorstep like it or not.
Mistakes will be made again in battle unfortunately.
We may enter, but also equally important is when and why we exit.
We are a South Pacific nation with commitments to our territories and protectorates. Our emboldened leadership at home and to our Pacific Island neighbours and Antarctic treaty obligations can offer an alternative viewpoint to complete lapdog status or economically crippling handcuff serfdom
But they are going to improve the data and information sharing, recording and the management of that information with the appropriate Minister and delegated staff! Woo Hoo!
Jesus Christ ! What a fuck up?
I mean, the whole business…
What an awful thing it is.
I have a friend who used to go to Afghanistan more than thirty years ago. She’d come back with fabulous fabrics and clothing and unequaled tall tales and true.
Why did we go there and hurt those people again…?
Can someone tell me? Is this Hell? It certainly seems to be for some.
And can I write? John Key…? What a cunt. What a nasty, boring, dangerous little cunt.
Countryboy – Key wasn’t the initial New Zealand villain here, cherchez la femme.
Afghanistan 40 years ago. Part of the hippie trail. Afghan rugs trendy with trendy Cantabrians. Gorgeous embroidered Afghan coats before cheap puffer crap from China became a fashionista obligatory. My mother-in-law brought me a pretty onyx ashtray from Kabul, at more innocent times.
We weren’t the first country to use tragic Afghanistan, nor the last, but never for altruistic reasons, or even the patriotism or jingoism which lead us into European and Asian arenas. Warfare can also be a handy global career move, did you know ?
missed an adjective there Countryboy, toxic/poisonous c**t
Just one more reason if your serious about curbing global warming, that the militarism needs to be stopped.
Ditto!
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