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So He Kicked a Corpse

Don't know about you guys, but when the finely tuned mind between these ancient ears heard an Australian soldier was going to be charged with kicking an enemy corpse my initial reaction was "yeah, so what?"

Actually, the more the feral bleeding-heart media ran the story about the Special Air Service and a bit of post-firefight celebrating in East Timor, the more I thought "yeah, so what?"

Now I know the Australian media is choc-a-bloc full of hard-hitting cynical journos - it's just that I haven't seen, read or heard any for quite some time.

Nope, it's the wide-eyed innocent abroad that haunts our newsrooms and I just wish their bosses would use a few older hacks who are not quite so shockable - or gullible for that matter.

Now back to the matter at our feet, so to speak.

Following a 1999 ambush on his patrol in East Timor - in which two comrades were wounded by some scumbag pro-Indonesian militia (read murdering, raping, thugs) - the offending soldier and fellow Aussies fired back and two of the animals got tagged. Others were wounded or captured ... but more on them later.

Our lad went forward and gave one of the dead murdering, raping, thugs a slight kick, probably no harder than needed to propel a footy 70 or 80 metres, and he was brought before a hearing facing a misconduct charge.

The dead man had probably killed innocent civilians wanting freedom from the yoke of Indonesian tyranny. He had shot at Australian troops and paid the price. Big deal. Good riddance. Should happen more often.

And then the investigation looked the SAS's handling of the prisoners they took after the firefight.

Apparently the naughty Australians tied (shock!) and .... wait for it ... deprived of sleep (horrors!) these armed perpetrators of violence during interrogations.

Now, I may be old and silly and my kerosine bath may be going cold, but these guys were killers. How many thousands of East Timorese were murdered by scum like them. Did the killers feel anything for their victims?

And yet we - who went in to protect the East Timorese and put a size 11 army boot up Djakarta's backside - have to watch that the same people who hacked and shot and stabbed and burned are able to get some shut-eye.

It is no wonder we are travelling down the toilet faster than a dodgy prawn cocktail.

NB: I should point out that the official investigation did clear the SAS of human rights abuses, brutality and murder.

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