EDITORIAL: It’s not only Australians who are appalled by accounts of war crimes committed by that country’s soldiers in Afghanistan. When the inquiry started looking into rumours from Afghanistan, the focus was on one SAS patrol of around six operators and two incidents. The same report concluded that New Zealand SAS soldiers were not directly responsible for wrongful civilian deaths, and had acted professionally. The most shocking detail from the Brereton report might be the descriptions of “blooding”, in which patrol commanders encouraged junior soldiers to shoot prisoners to make their first kill. As Hit & Run co-author Stephenson said this week, the allegations of misconduct and war crimes revealed in Australia are in an entirely different league to the issues that arose from the SAS raid he and Hager investigated.

Source: Stuff November 20, 2020 15:56 UTC