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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