Aussie SAS report
 

Ugly.
Very ugly.
39 murders - none in the heat of battle.
Blooding.
Citations and decorations to be revoked.
This will be devastating for the guys who do the right thing.
Just being released now:
https://www.smh.com.au/national/aust...10-p56dek.html

Will Gen Campbell be handing back his DSC awarded as commander JTF633, or does **** just roll downhill?

Paraphrasing - Campbell stated that there is no evidence to implicate anyone between the rank of lieutenant to lieutenant general.
Really!!? Pip pip and another pink gin.
E86

https://www.theguardian.com/australi...report-alleges

...The Brereton report, to a large degree, absolves senior command of having any knowledge that war crimes were being committed.Instead, it says the criminality was committed and covered up by patrol commanders, usually lower-ranking sergeants or corporals, and involved a “small number of patrol commanders and their protegees”.

“While it would have been much easier to report that it was poor command and leadership that was primarily to blame for the events disclosed in this report, that would be a gross distortion,” the report said.

Patrol commanders, the report found, were viewed by troopers as “demigods”, which made it impossible to speak out about their actions. “They are hero-worshipped and unstoppable,” one anonymous soldier explained.

The Brereton report canvasses failures in oversight, the problems of a “warrior culture”, and the use of a small pool of SAS soldiers in repeated deployments over a prolonged period.

The SAS were above question, particularly by outsiders, and a culture of secrecy within each patrol kept their actions from others.

A separate review conducted by the inspector general of the Australian Defence Force (IGADF) describes a kind of “organisational blindness” to the special forces’ actions.

The collective sacrifices of the special forces in some way “justified certain excesses”, the review said, and more minor deviances from expected behaviour, like drinking heavily on base, were tolerated.

Complaints from locals and human rights groups were dismissed as “Taliban propaganda” or attempts to obtain compensation, the report said.

“It is clear that there were warning signs out there, but nothing happened,” David Wetham, the assistant IGADF wrote.

Such an allegation would also make it difficult for the shiny bums in Canberra to trod the well worn post uniform path into politics or onto boards of publicly listed companies.

The fact that they have already announced that SOTG will have their MUC withdrawn makes a mockery of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. If it’s proven that members of the Regiment are guilty of war crimes, punish them to the fullest extent. But the report even states (paraphrasing) that there was no evidence or misconduct amongst the Commando element, yet as they were as much a part of SOTG as the SASR were, they are also being unfairly punished by the withdrawal of the MUC. The reaction so far from the senior brass seems like nothing more than hanging out the troops to dry without the legal side taking its due course to appease the public and their political masters.

It must be terrible to have in your armed forces.

The culture they’re referring to is to do with an obsession with ego, chasing kill counts, disobeying orders and rules, allowing a culture of illegal actions and cover ups to occur.

The alleged became obsessed with movies like “300”, and tried to mimic to Spartans from that movie. In one particular incident a VC recipient is alleged to have kicked a civilian off a cliff, just like Gerard Butler’s character in that movie.

Another obsession was with the “Punisher” comic book character and movies. SAS were mimicking US Navy SEALs and their obsession with the Punisher who kills indiscriminately with regard for rules.

The whole “Warrior Culture” thing was thumbing their noses at command, at rules and killing whoever they wanted. They weren’t warriors, they were murderers.

I must say it's always the way, those that sit and judge do so from the comfort of a nice warm office and have never actually been out at the sharp end.... and I mean the sharp end, foot patrols and in contact in the theaters involved, not inspecting mess halls and issuing dress regs.
War is never going to be an all action hero film set, its real and just as somethings went on that shouldn't have on all sides. that will have been happening since man or women picked up a Tyrannosaurus Rex bone and belted his or her neighbour with it.

IMHO

Oh, so it's all fine, nothing to see here, move along folks......

I think we can all appreciate how chaotic and violent frontline combat can be/is, and that unpleasant acts can occur in "the fog of war" that were not pre-meditated or would be condoned - but are accepted as unavoidable. These allegations are explicitly not in this category.

It is these guys who are doing "the right thing" - the allegations are coming from within the SASR by individuals who have had enough of what they have seen going on. Both the acts themselves and the culture that has developed that has enabled the acts and which is at variance to the values the regiment holds itself to.

IMHO

No of course its not acceptable, what i was trying to get across is it happens, it will continue to happen as long as we go to war against each other, and unfortunately those judging these things are doing it from the perspective of not being able to understand why it happens, and until they have been in that situation, then their ability to understand the problem and deal with it will never resolve it..

I just think .. if you were not there., you can’t judge .

It is alleged there were 36 killings of unarmed civilians or restrained prisoners by 25 then Australian service personnel - of the more than 26,000 who served in Afghanistan.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-...eased/12896234

Some quotes from the above news report:

"Major General Brereton said none of the incidents being referred to the AFP [Australian Federal Police] could be discounted as "disputable decisions made under pressure in the heat of battle"."

""The cases in which it has been found that there is credible information of a war crime are ones where it was, or should have been, plain that the person killed was a non-combatant,"

"The inquiry also found evidence some Australian troops in Afghanistan carried "throwdowns" — such as weapons, radios and grenades not issued by the ADF — which would be planted next to the bodies of Afghan civilians to suggest they were a "legitimate target" in any post-incident investigations." [

"The inquiry interviewed 423 witnesses, and investigators pored over more than 20,000 documents and more than 25,000 images as part of the probe, investigating conduct between 2005 and 2016."

The redacted 465 page report is available here:
https://afghanistaninquiry.defence.g...se-Version.pdf

Casualties of War 1989.
Nothing is new. History judges people.

And this is the biggest fallacy being promoted about these crimes. That the pencil pushers sitting safely in office buildings back home are unfairly judging our heroes who had to make life or death decisions on the frontlines.

Utter and Absolute nonsense.

All of these allegation and the entire impetus for the inquiry came from serving Special Forces soldiers who had deployed to frontlines alongside those who had done the killings and who had the moral courage to report them. Not pencil pushers, not armchair generals, not politicians, not the media, on the frontline special forces operators.

SAS members who witnessed a VC recipient kick a civilian off a cliff and then order him to be shot

An SAS medic reporting the murder of a civilian patient he had just treated

An SAS Signals Intelligence Officer reporting unjustified killings and planting of evidence to justify them

Former Commando confessing his own involvement in covering up a war crime

I am sympathetic to the view that senior officers shouldn't always be held accountable for failures in their areas of command. Such an approach can foster risk aversion, micromanagement, lack of empowerment, threats of collective punishment, and other undesirable leadership and management practices. In this case, however, it seems fair to comment on an apparent lack of curiosity in regard to unit culture at the sharp end. I thought that the issues encountered in elite units were well understood these days in terms of cultural drift and self-perception as exceptions from the norm, and this might have prompted commanders to take a more active interest.

DR Dre u missed the follow up

Funny thing is, is that they've been "judged" by their own, present and former SAS and commandos who have verified most of the allegations and who have stated that the investigations were warranted.

We can all guess the pressure these people were under, but they are supposed to be highly trained professionals who should take responsibility for their actions: if they f*ck up, they should 'fess up not cover up. And if they deliberately target civilians for kicks or ego or whatever, they've no place in the armed forces and should feel the full force of the law. The point is (or was), our forces were in country supposedly trying to pacify elements of the population and try to show we are the good guys - if we simply act like our adversaries, then what's the point in being there?