What the hell is wrong with this picture? What is wrong is that the guys in the picture are being sent home as a punishment for being in this picture.
The girly men in the Defense Department who clearly have been emasculated after nine years of Helen Clark have taken a dim view of this photograph.
Irrespective of the investigation into whether the acts contravened military law, the NZDF sets and expects very high levels of professionalism and behaviour from its people - this is especially the case in an operational theatre where the protection of information is vital to the overall security of New Zealand interests and activities. On this occasion those standards have not been met and as a consequence these three soldiers will be returned to New Zealand at the earliest opportunity."What's that all mean? Its just double talk to hide that fact that they are being punished for being in this picture.
"Let me be very clear that this is not about a group of young soldiers just taking a photograph of themselves; soldiers have been doing this since the availability of cameras. These three are returning to New Zealand because of a series of actions and errors of judgment on their part that did not meet the standards we expect of our people."
These guys are in a War Zone for ....s sake, I know that there are some in parliament, far too many IMHO, who think they shouldn't be there and if we are to send anybody at all it should be kindy teachers to teach little Afghanistani kids that playing with guns it not nice and we should talk through our differences and so forth.
Like talking through our differences with the Taliban has ever worked.
This has to be a joke, though strangely enough I'm not laughing.
Related Post: Monday Evening Trivia
Un. Be. Lieve. Able.
ReplyDeleteI think I know what's happening. We're living in some sort of crazy parallel universe where everything is upside down and, and, and ... oh, forget it.
Um, it might be that the error of judgement is not that they did what the did, but that now the Taliban might draw attention to NZers trying to peacekeep?
ReplyDeleteI suspect this has nothing to do with possible offence caused to the Taleban. The relevant bit is that this happened ...in an operational theatre where the protection of information is vital to the overall security of New Zealand interests and activities. It's a given that you don't go making public photos of people and equipment in operational areas without official sanction - that certainly applied when I was working for the US Army, and we civilian contractors faced disciplinary action or dismissal even for taking photos of military personnel and equipment in the rear areas, let alone publicising them.
ReplyDeleteLike the Taliban don't know perfectly well what's going in their area, Mr. Tips?
ReplyDeleteAnd since when did they ever respect the distinction between 'peacekeepers' and anybody else?
In my view this has more to do with the fact that Defence heirarchy is little more than just another collection of pc bureaucrats nowadays.
And as an aside, wtf are we paying an Air Vice Marshal for? Supervising the latex covering on the Skyhawks?
Oh come PM I you mean vital to the overall security of New Zealand interests and activities means pretending we are not even there?
ReplyDeleteOt has it been accidentally revealed that we a re flying bombing missions with our PAC CT/4 airtrainers
Dang! You were told not to reveal the sekrit CT/4 mission Andrei.
ReplyDeleteAll I'm saying is that armies very sensibly make the publishing of photos of operational activities, personnel and equipment by soldiers on active duty a disciplinary matter, as a force protection measure. Given that, no "girly-boys" in the MoD are required to account for the disciplinary action in this case.
ReplyDeletewhat you are saying would make sense PM, if the person who took and presumably sent the picture was in the firing line but not for those photographed - or so it seems to me.
ReplyDelete