Key asks NZ to look the other way over SAS in Afghanistan
Prime Minister John Key has dismissed holding an inquiry into the SAS's role in Afghanistan following the troops' return home.
I'm sorry. What?
Mr Key today once again rejected the torture claims and that further investigation was needed.
"I don't think we need to have an inquiry," Mr Key told TVNZ's Breakfast.
...ummmm. What?
"New Zealand has acted fully and professionally, and in line with the ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] and Nato [North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] requirements. I think there was one incident where a person was detained, and they went through the proper process."
...are you kidding me?
Okay, two questions.
1: What the hell is TVNZ Breakfast doing leading this story? With all due respect to Petra and Corin, they aren't exactly the crack political interviewers in NZ are they? Increasingly Key uses appearances on lite weight media to discuss issues well beyond the entertainer/presenters ability to question. How on earth can Key just swipe an issue like investigating our SAS for war crimes under the carpet with an answer as vacant as the one above?
The second question is where the hell Key get's off claiming that there is no reason for an inquiry into exactly what it is our SAS were asked to do?
He's asking us to forget the NZ military's attempts to lie outright to politicians about what our armed forces were actually doing.
He's asking us to forget the work of Nicky Hargar in exposing the complacency and manipulation of the mainstream media.
He's asking us to forget the work of award winning foreign journalist Jon Stevenson and his articles detailing how the SAS handed civilians over to known torture units not once but as Keith Locke pointed out - 35 times!
NZSAS Present 35 Times When Prisoners Taken
SAS present 35 times when prisoners taken, but minister dodges any responsibility for their welfare.
Denials that our SAS troops could be handing Afghan prisoners over to torture are getting less and less credible.
The government claims that on joint operations with the Afghan Crisis Response Unit our boys don’t take any prisoners. Last year, when I asked the NZ Defence Force about this – during a Select Committee hearings – I was told the SAS had been “in the vicinity” on 22 joint operations when prisoners were taken. On May 3 Defence Minister Wayne Mapp told me in the House that there were now 24 occasions where our SAS had been “in support” when prisoners were taken. Four days later, in response to my Written Question (03022), he upped that figure to 35.
Key's attempt to sweep it all under the carpet is as contemptuous as the mainstream media's self censoring compliance with the NZ military and their outright willingness to don a flak jacket and helmet and play the intrepid journalist shtick. It's not as if our reconstruction teams actually built anything of any use with independent reports citing the spin work we did for the locals to hide what we are really doing as "poorly planned" and "wildly exaggerated".
But beyond the Kiwi Camp front for the CIA and our self censoring mainstream media puppets, is the shock that our military have lied and decieved our own politicians about what we are really doing in this war for America.
How have we managed to appoint someone as Governor General who may in fact have been party to breaching the Geneva convention and who was running a military who were making up their own foreign policy minus any criticism from our mainstream media pundits is a question yet to be answered.
It's the willfully ignorant media leading the ignorantly willful public and a Prime Minister thankful for the lack of scrutiny of his or Labour's real reasons for involving us in an un-winnable occupation that propped up a corrupt narco state.
Turns out g ive war a chance was an acceptable foreign policy after all.
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posted by Bomber @ 2:18 pm
6 comments
6 Comments:
Why would such an ignorant, jingoist, amerikan ass-kissing remark shut anyone up?
The Afghani people have never deliberately set about creating the set of circumstances by which both NZ & Australia became pawns in a war that they could not control. The US did exactly that when Franklin Roosevelt put a naval blockade around Japan denying the Japanese access to resources and/or markets; to deliberately push the Japanese into a war that the US felt confident of winning, just to establish dominance over the entire Pacific.
When Churchill & FDR discussed the position that would leave NZ & Oz, they agreed. "If they get invaded we'll win them back later" in the meantime NZ & Oz forces were needed in the Northern Hemisphere to help protect england and the US.
Then as per usual amerika couldn't beat the unwhites so they slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians with nuclear weapons to get their own way.
Afghanis didn't march into NZ's Antarctic Protectorate after ww2, & seize more than half of it as tribute for winning a war they started. The US did. How else do you think the US got a base in Antarctic? One which they will use to exploit Antarctic resources; polluting the last pristine place on the planet.
We have no business in Afghanistan. The average kiwi has much more in common with Afghanistan they do USuk imperialists. We are both small nations whose strategic value vastly exceeds our economic value. Afghanistan is nestled next to oil rich Iran & NZ is close up to resource rich Oz. We should be working together to defeat our common enemy. Bully boy imperialists who turn everything they touch to shit.
Idiots get blinded by their self deceptions. Empires have no 'little friends'. Any relationship between NZ & US will remain servant/master, until we recognise this and behave accordingly, by working with other non-aligned nations to help each other out on the basis of equal standing & mutual respect.
Very soon China will decide to quit underwriting amerika's imperial advantures.
When that happens amerika won't be able to help itself much less number 57 down the queue of mendicants, NZ.
There will be a square up then one which likely see many war criminals among the amerikan, english and other 'coalition of the asskissing' murderers, rapists & torturers.
NZ's continued presence in the 'Ghan - aiding & abetting war crimes, won't be seen as 'defending freedom' then. It will be seen for what it is; an amoral participation in an illegal & inhumane war, the primary purpose of which was to further economic ends. AKA Mercenary.
As a child on the Army since 1950, and, and having seen the way you civilians of all stripes allow our Soldiers to be treated (don't keep trying to distance yoursleves from the political decision makers; have you Sleep Hobbitts no role?) I remain bewildered at the loyalty our military (generally below the rank of Colonel anyway) continue to give you; loyalty, unquestioning loyalty, even to laying down their lives. They are continually surprised when after questioning and challeging orders, and then being bullied and threatned they come home to find you lot going on at them as torturers. Was it not you Sleepy Hobbits that voted in the government which issued those orders? You starve our defence force of any equipment which may save their lives - we go begging on the warfield to pick up local throw-aways because they at least work. We borrow cell 'phones because our radios don't work in Bosnia. Our small arms are 40 years old. We have no armour; we have no helicopter support; and of coure we have no airforce. No, what we have is a gang of complacent Hobbits, both from the right and the left who maintain the End of History - no more invasions, no more conflict because capitalism won, and anyway Kiwis are such nice people that the Indonesians, the Americans, the Chinese, the yet to be thought of's in search of farm land and water, all these people will turn away dazzled by our niceness. In the meantime we will, when our American masters demand, send out our military youth like a Greek sacrifice - throw their lives away, let them stand unprotected and naked in the battle so we can swell with pride on Anzac day and talk of their scarifice. I remeber still that day when our Regiment returned from a long combat service overseas; we were met by the oddly named (territorial) officer, the Regimental Welfare Officer. We were all shivering, kids, mothers breastfeeding, soldiers in shock from battle in the night, all to attention as we are told that ALL of our lifes savings, out furmiture, our paintings, our music records, our books, our crockery and cutlery - all had been ,lost by the Government - and it would of course be mutinous to complain or ask for compensation - oh, and by the way, there is a cock up in housing, so find yourselves somewhere to lie down for a few weeks. And there is no change in the way you all treat us; each petty little civilian with a wish to hold a stick as if it was a sword is allowed to make decisions on the military; lady prime ministers who got their military training in university committtess decide on small arms; bankers who make a fortune betraying this country decide we don't need helicopters. What exactly is it that you all want? No defence force? Then be a wee bit brave and state that you want to have the first nation in the history of the world to do away with one. If that is what you want; if you trust those jolly moral Americans to look after your White Way; or that the Indonesian Army will provide all regional peacekeeping. What do you want? Do you even know? Seriously, aren't you the same bunch of boof heads who ordered our your service men and women into real and present danger? Why aren't you doing something to protect and serve THEM instead of indulging your latte brainpans?
Yeah, na, there's no need for an inquiry, we'd just ignore it anyway, better to save the money.
Shock horror! What a suprise! Teh 1st response of the military when called to task on anything is to move straight into victim mode. "Nobody understands us" blah blah yawn.
This pissweak attempt to divert the discussion away from the point; NZ military involvement in the torture of Afghans, doesn't wash.
It's cliched, trite and irrelevant.
The society which fails to hold all its servants to task, including those who try and suppress any criticism by waving their arms about with a flag in one paw and a gun in the other, is teh society most often referred to as 'a tyranny'.
I thought the ;-) was enough, not to mention the ridiculously over-the-top language. I guess I should have used /sarc.
If the SAS weren't in Afghanistan, Paula Bennett and Judith Collins would be wearing full burkhas by now and a Cessna 152 would have been flown into the Sky City casino. As a respectable journalist defending our freedoms, Whaleoil would have been decapitated on Al Jazeera.
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