Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka,

I truly respect your views and wish more people shared them. I have no doubt whatsoever that you are a very brave and honorable man. It is a shame that many don’t share your ideals.

You wrote:

“He knew that I was a sharpshooter and would have taken him out. However, that was in those circumstances because there was no alternative to avoid him killing fellow soldiers ... there was then no real alternative but to do as I did”.

Isn’t this, as you state, a “preventative action” - an action condemed in your last few lines.

In such a position, I personally, would have thought of disabling him, rather than “taken him out”. Decisions are matters of one’s perception.

I stated:

“When faced with an either/or situation (without alternatives) I would not hesitate. When subsequent innocent killings resulted from my not acting, I would feel morally responsible, indeed, that I had colluded (albeit unwillingly) with the terrorist.”

I no way would justify this by a “g-d’s will” defence. It would be my own decision taking full responsibility for my actions. It would be extremely difficult to do; I would only do it if, as you say “there was no alternative”, and I believed it essential.

I must doubt if was public knowledge that this particular Palestinian, and member of Hamas, opposed violence. I’m sure that if the Israeli’s had known, they would have enlisted him for some service he could provide.

Hamas terrorists avow Israel’s destruction. They as readily kill their own people, as they do their perceived enemy. We have witnessed such terrorists have no regard for the lives of the innocent; they violate international law, specifically Article 51 of the 1977 amendment to the Geneva Convention prohibiting the use of civilians to “shield, favour, or impede military operations.”

Walid Shoebat, ex-member PLO, shows what happens to dissidents who oppose terrorist groups.
http://www.shoebat.com/palestinian_justice.php

If Hamas had known this Palestinian’s views, they would have slaughtered him.

I suspect that his stance emerged after his death.

Danielle,

I do not consider it to be a “pre-emptive strike” when it is a mere part of seconds that you have as to try to avoid being killed. That is more like “self-defence” that there is no alternative. A .50 automatic weapon (generally mounted on a tank) is not the kind of weapon that you can ignore to easily! They are rapid firing machine-guns!

I do not consider it to be self defence if a person argues being about attacked and then do a stroll around the block and then return to react.

With the Kovco death, I never held it for real that they argued he shot himself, when it was made known he was a sharpshooter. So to say, the weapons are your “babies”, and you aren’t going to fool around with them as some ordinary soldier might do.

I did write to the Governor-General (as the Chief of the Armed forces) to pass on my correspondence to the Board of Inquiry as to what I viewed may more likely have occurred, knowing from my own army time, but I understood the Governor-General concealed my correspondence from the Board of Inquiry. Yet, later evidence given by others before the Board of Inquiry was precisely of the nature I had set out in my correspondence. As such, where they are covering up matters by concealing material submitted then I view to be justified to consider this was a frame up to blame Kovco for somehow having killed himself. After all he is death and cannot defend himself.
But, for my part, I would like to see his widow to continue to fight for the truth to come out.

In general I oppose killings but accept that at time of being invaded a soldier may need to kill invaders, if no alternative are left available. However, I do not accept for an invading force to kill! That is not having double standards, merely that defence forces are precisely for that “defence” and not to invade

Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka

Thank you for your comments and I respect your viewpoints, albeit I do not share it. I entirely understand the situation in which you were placed, and recognise that you had no alternative. We do agree on so much else that I hope it will not became a matter of contention between us.

My feelings about terrorists - who are willing to kill and threaten their own in order gain compliance - came about after witnessing an attack on packed cinema of their people.

They used the carrot and the stick, but found the stick more successful in bending people to their will. The cinema had been full of families enjoying themselves - two thirds or more of those there, were children, some babes in arms - and no threat whatsoever. Not only the injuries, but also the grief of the survivors must have been terrible. As I have written about this before, I need not go into it.

Regarding the Kovco affair, I was very surprised that any weapon, let alone a loaded weapon was permitted in barracks. The British insist that weapons have to be unloaded in front of a witness and not kept in quarters with the men. So it would seem that there were
breaches of protocol at many levels; or perhaps the Australian Services are more lax than elsewhere. Under the British, a full enquiry would have been made, and the senior officer in charge would have been court-martialled. It does appear that some cover-up was made.

Danielle,

I deplore any so called “freedom fighters” to go out and kill innocent people. To me, killing innocent people is TERRORISM and cannot be accepted as being freedom fighters against invading armed forces.

Government sponsored terrorism, such as Australian troops unconstitutionally invading a sovereign country is no less TERRORISM then someone else doing the same killings and destruction.

I would regard a person to be a “freedom fighter”, if the person takes on invaders and other armed collaborators, to protect their homeland or those who assist them in it.
Government propaganda is to able anyone a TERRORIST other then themselves being the TERRORIST.

Howard and his cronies deceived the people in going to war and unconstitutional, as I have set out on my blog http://au.360.yahoo.com/profile-ijpxwMQ4dbXm0BMADq1lv8AYHknTV_QH

While Howard is quick to argue about constitutional powers, when he wants to use it, he ignores the Constitution when it goes against him. His TERORISM should be the first issue to address. For that matter of anyone regardless to which political party they belong.

My wife cried because they had killed the late President Saddam Hussein. As she makes clear, whatever he did wrong, we were lied to and had no right to judge him. We had no right to invade Iraq and no right to hand him over to be hanged.
It is not that she supports Muslims or is against the death penalty but that there was no need to kill him.
Under the Iraqi constitution he had immunity, and passing a new constitution to change this retrospective is unacceptable.
If we accept what happened to be acceptable, then no one is safe as whenever retrospective legislation is passed we can all be made into being criminals.
In my view, at the very least, we should hold Howard and his cronies accountable before the Courts.

Mr Gerrit H Schorel-Hlavka

I concur with the difference between freedom fighters and terrorists - my comments above relate to targeting terrorists.

I agree 100% about the war in Iraq. We should not be there; our leaders who implicated us should be made accountable and gaoled. But how is this done?
This also requires that people must be well-informed. Unfortunately, we have those on one side who are not informed, and don't want to be; and those on the other side that say we should only go to war if the enemy is in our country - by that time we are in dire trouble.

How extraordinary that Howard and Blair and others didn’t demand to see definitive evidence of then necessity of taking part. There was no justification for our invasion of Iraq.

The CIA warned Bush before invading Iraq about the consequences, and the NIE were coerced into providing evidence of WMD. One of my sons told me this well over two years ago; he will not inform me of his sources.

I just found this, here abstracted. The entire report is online pdf.

“White House Ignored CIA Warnings on Iraq”

“Postwar Projections "had little or no impact on policy deliberations"

The White House disregarded intelligence projections on post-Saddam Iraq according to a newly-declassified CIA report

The currently released Kerr report published by the CIA (Studies in Intelligence, a CIA quarterly - primarily for intelligence professionals) condemns the Bush administration for ignoring prewar intelligence that predicted the factional rivalries now threatening to split Iraq.

"intelligence produced prior to the war on a wide range of other issues accurately addressed such topics as how the war would develop and how Iraqi forces would or would not fight." ...

"also provided perceptive analysis on Iraq's links to al-Qaeda; calculated the impact of the war on oil markets; and accurately forecast the reactions of ethnic and tribal factions in Iraq."

Analysts, including Saud al-Faisal, foreign minister, Saudi Arabia, warned that Iraq could spit into three divisions as a result of conflict between Sunni Arabs against Shiite and Kurdish factions.

cont ...

The Kerr report found weaknesses Intelligence Community's analytical report , particularly the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraqi weapons programs, which the report says was prepared "under an unusually tight time constraint" and was "the product of three separate drafters, drawing from a mixed bag of analytic product."

There is no doubt that the NIE were coerced to supply the information that the Whitehouse wanted to hear.

Declassified Kerr Report Available on National Security Archive Website (October 13, 2005)
National Security Archive
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20051013/index.htm

Our refugees:

The meanest intelligence would know that a person of security risk doesn’t enter Australia this way. They enter with squeaky clean papers and get the red carpet treatment. People who risk their and their families lives to enter are courageous and informed - people this country desparately needs. Last year nine Afghanis were returned home and executed on arrival - a mere byline in the press. No-one was held accountable, no investigation took place.

Early this year, after being held five years in Baxter, a noteable writer and dissident in his own country, was released. The Australian government should have been aware of his identity on his arrival. One wonders how many others like him a holed up in detention. These are the very people from whom we can gain accurate intelligence about what is happening in their own countries; not by some Australian diplomat swanning around at Embassorial functions. Australians must be aware that many writers and dissidents speaking out about human rights abuses under their regimes are being killed, tortured and gaoled in their own countries.

I was appalled when our two leaders held “hole in the wall” meetings with the Dalai Lama in case it offended China. Since when do we have other countries dictating whom we can recognise and whom we can’t. “Trading partners” is not an acceptable excuse. Trade is always trade. During WWII, some British had investments in German steel.

I will read your blog with interest; I suspect we have gone "off topic" here.