Ben Roberts-Smith

[alexjones]

Prisoner's must be fed, guarded and sheltered. They take up a lot of resources.

Do what you gotta do is all I am gonna say. If you can manage it then good, if you can't then that is good too.

[Tinker]

Prisoner's must be fed, guarded and sheltered. They take up a lot of resources.

Do what you gotta do is all I am gonna say. If you can manage it then good, if you can't then that is good too.

Possibly the most fu##ed up comment I've ever seen on this forum. And from a bloke who's never served.

[alexjones]

Prisoner's must be fed, guarded and sheltered. They take up a lot of resources.

Do what you gotta do is all I am gonna say. If you can manage it then good, if you can't then that is good too.

Possibly the most fu##ed up comment I've ever seen on this forum. And from a bloke who's never served.

What does, or doesn't being a public servant have to do with having an opinion? Nothing.

I don't judge the actions of others from the comfort of my home.

[straightshooter]

This affair is starting to have a whiff of Breaker Morant.
He will be the scapegoat, not his superiors nor those that actually pulled the trigger.
Other than one media network trying to prevent another media network from getting a leg up with a highly decorated war hero star performer on the payroll, I can't see who might benefit from this level of fiasco other than the ambulance chasers.

[cadet]

I want to stay agnostic on this one.

And I'm really struggling to articulate my discomfort around it.

Some of it is around the fact that a prominent media proprietor has a deeply personal, vested interest in shaping public opinion on this. He also happens to be a serious medal collector. That deserves more scrutiny than it's had.

Some of it is the blind, unquestioning, headlong rush to defend BRS and any other soldier who's ever served. Trouble is, while some of the finest people I've ever met were soldiers I served with, some of the worst humans I ever met - violent thugs, pedophiles, rapists and murderers - I also served with. At the same time as BRS was capable of the highest valour, it's completely possible that he was and is an awful human. Both things, many things, can be true at the same time, and be difficult to resolve or reconcile. Service doesn't automatically confer a halo or deserve a free pass.

I remember being party to a conversation about war crimes rumours years before any of this publicly broke. Even in my obscure corner of the ADF we were hearing this stuff. The upshot of that conversation was "they'd be war crimes. If there's even a hint of truth to it, if it ever goes public, there'll be trials."

It's galling, because I and everyone I ever served with knew the RoEs on our colourful little cards inside out and back to front for whichever ex or op we were on, and we knew that if we stepped outside them we could go a row of ******. We knew that as early as Padres' day at Kapooka, reinforced during PW/PUC training in IETs, and rehearsed extensively prior to going live operationally. Some of my training in that was even delivered by these mythical sandy bereted characters. They, too, were and are bound by the Laws of Armed Conflict. We all knew, and the vast majority tried to serve honourably and lawfully.

So to hear that there were people stepping outside of RoEs, not heat-of-the-moment stuff, but premeditated, cold-blooded, psychopathic and sadistic stuff perpetrated against people who didn't deserve it, or who at least hadn't been afforded due process, was and is deeply discomforting to me, and to people who had been there, who had seen it. And it took integrity and courage to blow the whistle on it.

But when all is said and done, BRS was a mere CPL. Multiple layers higher up - much higher up - to the highest levels - by their command failures let this unfold and mishandled it such that it became the ongoing ****** it now is.

And it besmirches us all.

[No1_49er]

cadet, I applaud your stance.
To paraphrase what Bolt said in a Skynews commentary, I'll repeat what I said earlier; Don't let patriotism cloud your vision.

[Damo300]

Who would bother fighting these wars for these mongrels who then treat you like this?

Our war veterans get s**t on more than the Isis members they're letting back into this country.

Everyone needs to hear this.

https://youtu.be/QZOnwvBei7Q?si=9lhcdd7SPAHZ52Rq

[Yoda]

Perhaps some of the posters on this forum, who are feigning incredulity that somebody from Australia's military service, a VC recipient no less, should reflect on the fact that the good citizens of Germany once thought that Josef Mengele and his ilk were also thought to have done no wrong.
Ben Roberts-Smith tried, and failed, to sue for defamation.
He failed. And an attempt to pursue the matter in a higher appellate court also failed
It seems that despite some here decrying the evidence of Afghan citizens with the suggestion that their country of origin somehow makes them unworthy of being heard, some of his own military compatriots have given evidence against him.
Perhaps it's time to chill, and let the courts of justice preside?
Kangaroo Court? Well, it is Australian.

Yeah, I heard other soldiers gave evidence against him. I do feel bad for him (Ben) though. It sounds like Aussie soldiers were in a very, very frustrating and emotional position. Their friends were being killed in shifty ways. They'd capture people who they were pretty damn sure were involved but couldn't prove anything in most cases. I suspect that the conversation needs to be more about not whether or not he did said crimes, but exactly where does Australia draw the line. If it is on being unarmed, we need to accept that it will make soldiers extremely frustrated, and not all of them have the best emotional control. A factor multiplied by the most frustrating situations.

[markg]

My mentioning of Soldier A as they called him was to simply point out that these events did actually occur, despite what many people think going on comments I have read. Like I said it's an ugly business made worse by the fact your enemy didn't wear a uniform.

[fussy]

1. I don't know all the facts.
2. Nor do 28 mil other Aussies.
3. The Queensbury rules and Geneva convention are nice ideas outside of Afghanistan or any other actual war zone.
4. If you want to fight, regardless of rule 3, expect breaking of rules by your own side or a loss of the conflict (or both).
5. Scared or vengeful soldiers get trigger happy.
6. If you want Queensbury/Geneva type rules here, don't import people who actively and openly oppose our beliefs (regardless of skin/hair/eye colour, religion or ethnic origin).
7. If you break the rules for a good reason (a big step), it becomes a small step to break them for a bad reason.
8. good/bad reasons are highly subjective in the heat of the moment.

[Willie]

The Geneva Convention is now just old hat. In real war zones, they are simply ignored by the enemy, that includes just about every conflict that has occurred since WW2, and really no country etc has been called to account for their crimes against humanity either in war or peace time, apart from a handful of prosecutions. IMO, if your there to do a job and the enemy are just that, the enemy, use and do whatever it takes because they will obviously do the same to you.

[perentie]

Yes. Just because they are not in a Uniform and chuck their gun away does not mean they are not the Enemy any more.

[Wapiti]

So why are certain soldiers held accountable by the soft bellied, quick-to-judge amongst us when they were sent on "kill" missions for certain insurgents that had blown lives and limbs from our blokes there, and killed our guys in their bases? When they were acting on, and executing orders given to them by the hierarchy?

Why, even if this isn't a witchhunt by those who squat-to-p*ss, that the men taught to do the dirty work are being persued to hide what real insurgency actually is?

I shake my head when I see judgement from the comfort of a leather lounge chair, but that's the kind of people I should expect this from I guess.

"Big Boys Games, Big Boys Rules"

[mchughcb]

20 years, 6.6 trillion dollars and the Taliban rins the place with billions of hardware left behind. What have had got to show for it?

4 years and over $1B sent to Ukraine ditto.

We have a PM standing with the PLO flag and sending the ADF to Gulf. What a poop show.

[Wapiti]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0wWQ0g ... WL&index=2

[markg]

I didn't mean it to be BRS in the video just proof of events that occurred. There are never innocents in War and anything that happens there should stay there, it's always too murky to sift through, particularly in the case of insurgency.