[nonrandomstring]

My take is this is Abu Ghraib again.

David McBride is a military lawyer and is standing up for justice for the soldiers accused of war crimes because there is evidence they were acting under orders and did not simply lose discipline and go rogue. In other words this was coordinated terror campaign, not a few soldiers getting trigger happy.

[XorNot]

They executed civilians.[1,2,3] You don't execute civilians. Any officer who gives you an order to execute civilians is giving you an unlawful order. This is so fundamental it is covered in basic training.

The reporting around this has indicated that basically there was a culture within the SAS that you needed to be "blooded" and serving SAS personnel were isolated, harassed or threatened by other personnel if they didn't participate by those who were in it.

The people being investigated may or may not have been acting under orders from higher officers...but the accusations are that they also directly threatened other soldiers if they objected to, or directly facilitated, those unlawful orders.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-20/former-sas-soldier-ar...

[3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-65773942

[nonrandomstring]

Agrree it's inexcusable. But I still find it hard to belive that 22, one of the most disciplined regiments, have totally gone to shit andlost the plot (notwithstanding some seriously criminal instruction from higher up). And thankyou for the elightening links.