{"id":973,"date":"2021-01-19T15:31:16","date_gmt":"2021-01-19T05:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pbw.id.au\/blog\/?p=973"},"modified":"2021-04-22T15:16:04","modified_gmt":"2021-04-22T05:16:04","slug":"no-officers-were-harmed-in-the-making-of-this-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2021\/01\/no-officers-were-harmed-in-the-making-of-this-report\/","title":{"rendered":"No officers were harmed in the making of this report"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s like this, in the gospel according to Brereton<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

All that said, it was at the patrol commander level that the criminal behaviour was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed, and overwhelmingly at that level that responsibility resides\u2026
\nThe Inquiry has found no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of war crimes, on the part of commanders at troop\/platoon, squadron\/company or Task Group Headquarters level, let alone at higher levels such as Commander Joint Task Force 633, Joint Operations Command, or Australian Defence Headquarters. Nor\u2026was [there] any failure at any of those levels to take reasonable and practical steps that would have prevented or detected the commission of war crimes.
\n\u2026responsibility and accountability does not extend to higher headquarters\u2026
\nThe responsibility lies in the Australian Defence Force, not with the government of the day.
\n\u2026that culture was not created or enabled in SOTG, let alone by any individual Special Operations Task Group Commanding Officer. \u2026 It was in their parent units\u2026that the cultures\u2026were bred, and it is with the commanders of the domestic units who enabled that, rather than with the SOTG commanders, that greater responsibility rests.<\/p>\n

And just to reinforce the point\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026the criminal behaviour of a few was commenced, committed, continued and concealed at the patrol commander level, that is, at corporal or sergeant level. But for a small number of patrol commanders, and their prot\u00e9g\u00e9es, it would not have been thought of\u2026<\/p>\n

Who were these \u201cpatrol commanders\u201d? The command structure of the Special Air Service\u00a0 <\/span>Regiment (SASR), as revealed in Brereton, is patrol, troop, squadron, and, in Afghanistan, SOTG headquarters. Andrew Hastie, an officer, went to Afghanistan in 2013 as a troop commander. Patrols, which did the hard yakka, were commanded by NCOs \u2013 sergeants and corporals.<\/p>\n

What about the officers commanding at troop level?<\/p>\n

SASR troop commanders\u2026position was a difficult one.\u00a0 <\/span>Invariably, they were on their first\u2026deployment.\u00a0 <\/span>[T]he non-commissioned officers had achieved ascendancy, just as they had from their role as gatekeepers to Special Air Service Regiment selection, and their extended role when new officers were \u2018under training\u2019 and thus regularly subordinate to them\u2026
\nFor sound tactical reasons, troop commanders were\u2026located remotely from the target compound\u2026<\/p>\n

Invariably<\/i>. If so, no troop commander was ever on his second deployment. No troop commander had the opportunity to gain and apply experience. What about the lower orders? [S]ix or more deployments for an individual was not uncommon.<\/i> Hard yakka. And surely this situation where officers are subordinate to NCOs is unacceptable? Andrew Hastie has been there.<\/p>\n

Corporal Ben Roberts-Smith, fresh back from the Battle of Tizak, towered over us, the 25 officer candidates on the 2010 Special Air Service Regiment selection course\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYou f..king officers. You always take the easy option. Lower. Hold!\u201d \u2026<\/p>\n

Humbling myself before Ben Roberts-Smith was not easy. \u2026 SASR selection is an exacting experience.<\/p>\n

The glossary defines a throwdown<\/i> as a weapon, communication device, or electronic evidence to deliberately place at the scene of an incident to support a narrative that the incident was justified and was within ROE (Rules of Engagement) and the LOAC (Law of Armed Combat). The use of a throwdown implies intent to deceive.<\/i> Apart from the above-mentioned culture, the trouble all arises from throwdowns. What started as a practice to \u201cavoid attracting questions\u201d when an Afghan killed in good faith was found not to have been carrying a weapon, the same subterfuge, according to the report, became a cover for killings violating the LOAC.<\/p>\n

By late 2012 to 2013 there was\u2026possibly up to squadron level, suspicion if not knowledge that throwdowns were carried [for] avoiding questions\u2026when it turned out that the person killed was not armed\u2026 [I]t was understood as a defensive mechanism to avoid questions being asked\u2026 [U]se of throwdowns to conceal deliberate unlawful killings was not known to commanders. \u2026 Commanders indirectly contributed\u2026by sanitising or embellishing reporting to avoid attracting questions\u2026<\/p>\n

Note that use of throwdowns to conceal deliberate killings was not known to commanders who sanitised or embellished reporting to avoid attracting questions.<\/p>\n

Andrew Hastie passed SASR officer selection in 2010, and went as a troop commander to Afghanistan in 2013. In an broadcast interview with the ABC\u2019s Andrew Probyn, Hastie said\u2026<\/p>\n

When I went over there, I made it very clear what my expectations were, my junior leaders knew that. And despite that, we had some incidents that were made public in the Australian media. \u2026 There had been rumours for some time\u2026<\/p>\n

But, as former Lieutenant Hastie assured us, \u201cI\u2019m confident I am not under investigation myself.\u201d What were those rumours? They concerned the sort of incidents that \u201cmade it into the media.\u201d That contradicts Brereton\u2019s assertion, above, about what may have been suspected. If Lieutenant Hastie was so concerned about \u201crumours,\u201d what rumours had other, more senior, officers heard? By his political instinct of going straight to the media, and the ABC at that, Hastie has landed his fellow officers in the mire, and he hasn\u2019t done Brereton any good either.<\/p>\n

The Whetham Report, Annex A to Part 3 of the report, is condemnatory enough in its own right, but is essential reading for assessing Brereton\u2019s claims. I recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s like this, in the gospel according to Brereton\u2026 All that said, it was at the patrol commander level that the criminal behaviour was conceived, committed, continued, and concealed, and overwhelmingly at that level that responsibility resides\u2026 The Inquiry has found no evidence that there was knowledge of, or reckless indifference to, the commission of … Continue reading “No officers were harmed in the making of this report”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[21,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-fH","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":982,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2021\/02\/learning-from-bin-laden\/","url_meta":{"origin":973,"position":0},"title":"Learning from Bin Laden","author":"admin","date":"Sat 6th Feb '21","format":false,"excerpt":"Bin Laden knew a thing or two about the media; especially the Western media. 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