 Get out your notebook, Mark. Welcome to season two, episode 22 of CN Live, War Crimes. I'm Joe Laurier, editor-in-chief of Consortium News. The report of a four-year-long Australian government investigation into alleged war crimes by the country's special forces in Afghanistan was published last Thursday, revealing unspeakable atrocities against civilians. The report details how at least 25 members of Australia's special air services, the SAS, were involved in 39 murders of civilians. The report's description on page 120 of just one incident suffices to describe the nature of these crimes. It says, special forces would cordon off a whole village taking men and boys to guest houses which are typically on the edge of a village. There men would be tied up and tortured by special forces sometimes for days. When the special forces left, the men and boys would be found dead, shot in the head, or blindfolded with throats slit. Members of the SASR were driving along the road and saw two 14-year-old boys whom they decided might be Taliban sympathizers. They stopped, searched the boys, and slit their throats. The rest of the troop then had to clean up the mess, which involved bagging the bodies and throwing them into a nearby river. The report on page 29 describes a practice known as blooding. The inquiry has found it says that there is credible information that junior soldiers were required by their patrol commanders to shoot a prisoner in order to achieve the soldier's first kill in a practice that was known as blooding. It goes on to say that objects, radios, weapons were then planted on the bodies of many of these civilians, unarmed civilians who were killed in cold blood. 19 of these 25 soldiers are facing criminal prosecution. The unit has been disbanded as many as 3,000 soldiers will have their metal stripped and special forces in future all have to wear body cams. Now there's also an attempt according to the Australian press to give immunity to some of these soldiers so that they might be able to implicate more senior officers. These kinds of crimes that the report describes show an unbroken link to colonial barbarity dating back to the 19th century when Western soldiers jacked up to kill their inferiors then as now are unleashed on innocent populations in developing countries. The Australian government was made aware of such allegations by an army lawyer in Afghanistan named Major David McBride who came forward as a whistleblower. After they ignored him, he went to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. They took his story and reported in July 2017 in a report called the Afghan Files. For his efforts, McBride was arrested and is still being prosecuted for divulging classified documents marked Australian eyes only. This even after his stories were vindicated by the government's report last Thursday. McBride faces life imprisonment. For its efforts, the ABC's offices were raided by the Australian federal police and copies of files were taken from newsroom computers. That raid took place less than two months after the April 2019 London arrest of the Australian Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher who had himself revealed war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. An ABC journalist, Dan Oaks, who was co-author of the July 2017 Afghan Files article who was facing prosecution for publishing classified information just like Assange's had his charges suddenly dropped on October 15, just a month before the government report confirmed McBride's story and Oaks reporting. There may be a tight turning. However, just last week, Mark Willissey and the Four Corners team at the ABC received the Gold Walkley Award, the highest honor from Australian journalists, for their investigative report earlier this year revealing similar crimes in Afghanistan as the government's report later detailed. This was a story a lot of Australians did not want to watch or know about. It was a story that uncovered some very disturbing behavior by our most elite soldiers and it showed for the first time a war crime caught on camera. It was one of our essayist soldiers killing an unarmed, frightened Afghan man cowering on the ground. This was footage that later became evidence for the Inspector General of Defence in his groundbreaking report on war crimes. And the other thing this story revealed to the military was that some of these men alleged to have pulled the trigger were still serving in the Special Forces. Rumors and allegations of war crimes committed by Australian Special Forces are now the subject of a wide-ranging inquiry. It's being conducted by the Inspector General of the Australian Defence Force and headed by the New South Wales Supreme Court Judge Paul Brereton. For almost four years, his inquiry has been looking into dozens of alleged incidents, an investigation that's had to penetrate the veil of secrecy around the Special Forces. We have obligations at international law, domestic law and indeed moral obligations to not ignore these sorts of allegations. There is potential for a prosecution under or certainly for charges to be laid under the war crime's murder provisions of the Commonwealth Criminal Code. Meanwhile, the United States during its history has committed many war crimes during its many wars with few investigations, let alone convictions. The Trump administration has refused to join the International Criminal Court and has threatened ICC officials for daring to probe U.S. actions in Afghanistan. The U.S. media does not investigate such allegations, protecting its own. All this adds to a culture of American impunity. Harold Pinter, the playwright, perhaps said it best when receiving the Nobel Prize, noting that the U.S. war crimes, quote, have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognized as crimes at all. It is as if it never happened. The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven. Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they, in all cases, attributable to U.S. foreign policy? The answer is yes. They did take place. And they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of diagnosis. Joining us to discuss these latest developments in Australia and in the United States is ABC journalist Peter Kroneau, who's the author of a new book called Secret Australia, based on Richard Lee's files about Australia, and by Colonel Anne Wright, a former U.S. military officer and diplomat. Peter and Anne, welcome to CN Live. Thanks for coming on. No problem. Good to see you, Joe. All right. Peter, I'm going to start with you to talk about Australia first, and then we'll move over to Anne and talk about the history of impunity and U.S. war crimes. Peter, in your view, is the significance of this IG report in terms of Australians coming to terms with what its soldiers have done? Well, on one level, it's absolutely fantastic that the Inspector General has done the job that they're supposed to do, and reporting great detail, recommend charges, and try to do a clean out of the bad elements within the SAS and the command structure that allowed it to happen. However, on the other hand, these are things that we've known or had details about happening for a decade or more. It's taken a long, long time for it to get to the Inspector General. I remember Four Corners did a report on the capture and kill program in the SAS back in 2011, and even before that, we'd done other stories. The stories we were doing were knocking off people on the say-so of local tribal chiefs and doing raids that had collateral damage based on intelligence gathered by locals who had questioned marks around their veracity. So here we are, 10 years later, and the report comes out. Just yesterday, a current politician in Australia, a Liberal, who was a former troop commander in the SAS, the Special Air Services Unit, Andrew Hastie, has come out and made his comments known about this. He was not involved, he says, in any of those atrocities, and I'm not suggesting he was. But he was involved in one incident where they cut off the hands of dead Taliban to try to identify them later through fingerprints or hand prints. That's different from killing children and slitting throats. But he's come out and raised the issue that the report doesn't point high enough, doesn't thoroughly ask the questions why the stories that Four Corners, the ABC, and others were doing, why the rumours. I mean, I heard named officers in the SAS in 2013, was the first time I heard about the killing of children, and why it's taken this long for this to be churned through the system. It looks like a cover-up. The raids on the ABC feel like a cover-up. What were the raids being done for, other than to stop the publication of ABC stories about Afghanistan and about the atrocities Australians were alleged to be involved in? It had a chilling effect right through the organisation, right through other stories. There was a story being done at the very moment that the raids took place. An interview had been lined up for the next day with a person, not a whistleblower, but an insider who knew some facts about another story. As soon as the raids happened, they pulled out, they cancelled the interview and they've disappeared off the radar now. It's had a chilling effect. It isn't just the intimidation of those journalists working on the Afghan stories. Not just intimidation of David McBride in suggesting that now the authorities will have all the communications between him and the ABC, but it has a much, much broader chilling effect on all sorts of people, public servants, people within the services. Really, all of this boils down to the whistleblowers. The Gold Walkley that was won the other night by Mark Willissey and his team was only possible by the brave decisions of serving and ex-members of the ADF, the Australian Defence Force. Never before have Australians seen the things we saw in that program that Mark put together. There was helmet cam footage shot of an Australian SAS member contemplating, discussing, and then carrying out the alleged murder of a young Afghan. It was there in the lounge rooms, widescreen, full colour. The only redactions were the faces of the SAS people and some of the swear words used as the SAS guy was considering whether to end the life of this young person on the ground. He did it bang, fired a few shots into this guy lying on the ground, holding up his pre-beads. For that to be shown in the lounge rooms across Australia, to the middle-class audience that watches programs like Four Corners had an astounding effect. Any chance that there was for a cover-up through this report being done by the Inspector General, which is then not handed to the public, but handed to defence to then work out how they deal with it, any chance of a cover-up then really evaporated. It was undeniable. Now, we don't know the circumstances that kid lying on the ground could have been a murderous Taliban fighter. But from all we know, he may not have been that. He was killed on suspicion. But then we don't know the full story. It'll have to come out in court. The allegations will have to be tested. Proper evidence will have to be given. Mitigating circumstances will need to be looked at. But it's a rare thing to see an Australian soldier murder someone allegedly murder someone lying on the ground while you're sitting on your sofa after dinner in suburb in Australia. It had a massive effect that now the charges that were being contemplated against ABC journalists have been dropped. They were dropped because it was not seen to be in the public interest to pursue them. Well, my question obviously is how was it in the public interest to pursue them initially? I mean, what changed? Well, I think we know some things changed. The public learned more. So, you know, through this sort of thing, how on earth this has remained buried for so long and not come to the notice of the higher leadership is just beyond belief. Because if me, just a mere journal talking to people around the traps in 2013, heard stories about innocent kids being killed, I was unable to go any further. The source flatly refused, but the source was enormously well connected, but flatly refused to take it further. But if me, just a mug journal, can come up with that, how is it possible? How is it earthly possible that those stories were not heard within the upper echelons of the Australian Defence Department? They must have been heard. I can't believe that these people's ears are so deaf to these sorts of things. If you hear a story of a rumour, people are saying, oh, there were rumours around. Really? If you're the commander of the Australian Defence Force, then you're told there's a rumour going round of civilians being murdered by your men, because they're men. What do you do? You say, oh, it's a rumour. Forget about it. Or do you start an investigation? I know it should happen, but here we are. The report's out. Trials will start in a couple of years. It's taking that long. Eventually, there'll be some form of justice. Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, the people the Australians killed are still as dead as they were at the time. Their families are still as distraught and left without breadwinners and family members. There's talk of compensation. That's great. That's great. Compensation for that. Compensation for war crimes. You've got to start asking yourself, where does that end? Because how many Afghan children have died in drone strikes that Australia's support of those attacks have enabled? It unravels from a report like this. I just know that the efforts to make sure that unravelling doesn't continue are pretty full-on. But it's a window. It's like Chomsky says. Occasionally, stories break out. It's like a wild animal in a zoo. It breaks out of the cage. Suddenly, everyone jumps up and down saying, oh, gosh, there's a wild animal. Let's chase it. For a few weeks, or sometimes only days, that window is open and these sort of stories can be done. It's a very dangerous period at the moment. That's why Defence Department has a PR department. They'll be working out a strategy for the next coming months of brass bands and various things to try to reassure the Australian public that things are okay. It's been a very, very interesting time, Joe. I had a list of questions here and you answered almost all of them already. Okay, go for it. Why did they begin, ultimately, this investigation I suppose in 2016, if it was a four-year report? What do you think were going to do that? Well, it was complaints from servicemen, members of the assayers who made internal complaints. Initially, they were shafted off in another direction, not to the Inspector General, but to a psychologist, a woman who was hired to look at these people's PTSD and their issues and to try to work out what was going on with them. Through that process came out with a lot of detail about terrible things that had happened in Afghanistan and her report then recommended a proper investigation. It bounced through a couple of hands and finally landed in the lap of the Inspector General, the place that it should have gone to. I think it's four years now, it's taken for this to happen. If Four Corners took four years to prepare a report on a investigative story, we'd be a laughing stock. It's just as delayed as denied. As soon as this information was known, within weeks, there should have been a plain load of investigating federal police or whoever, defense security people heading to Afghanistan to locate and interview witnesses. It doesn't need to take a long time. These things will be done very quickly if there's a will. Now, the report Killingfield that won the award for ABC Four Corners, that was broadcast in April, was that correct? Yeah, from memory, that's correct. It's a bit hard in COVID to sort of remember which month is which, I have to admit. So the raid took place, I believe in May, is that right? The raid of the ABC officers in Sydney? Oh, the raid was last year. So the raid was 2019. Well, did they have it, was the raid related to this report? Not to Killingfields. Killingfields was done, it was an act of great courage by the ABC after it had had its journalists intimidated and after it had the raids on the ABC that downloaded tens of thousands of electronic files from the place. It was an act of courage for the ABC to say, well, this is not going to stop our reporting. And obviously, the journalists involved in that case couldn't continue doing that reporting for obvious reasons if they were going to have court cases coming up. If they were going to face jail like Julian Assange, then suddenly they had to pull their horns in. So another journalist team jumped onto it and have done a remarkable job in pursuing this and not letting it go. And this is the finest traditions of journalism to do this sort of reporting. I can be critical of the media and I can be critical of some of the work journalists do, but to say in the light of the federal police storming into our building, I mean, they walked quietly in suits. But to invade the media and not to see it as some kind of breach of the media's role, you know, it was a moment that a lot of people had to make decisions over. And fortunately, we went the right way. The ABC left in the right direction and decided to go for it with these stories and to keep on telling the facts as far as could be ascertained. And Mark and the team who worked with him from the investigative unit as well as from Four Corners, there's combined effort here, did a brilliant job in bringing that out. And I'm going to say the whistleblowers who provided the footage did a pretty brilliant job too because, you know, it's television. And, you know, if you're going to tell a story, you need the pictures. But I had never imagined that I would see killing like I saw on the screen. Were you at the ABC offices the day that that raid took place? Yeah, I was. It was a strange day. And we were, we got an advance notice that they're about to hit the building and because they're very polite here in Australia. It's not like a repressive regime. I won't name countries, but, but, you know, the federal police rings our high, you know, they're going to be popping down there shortly to, to execute a search warrant. We'd like access. I wonder if you could meet us at the door and get passes for us. So it's all done very gentlemanly, gentlemanly like. So, yeah, yeah, we were there. We all got a notice that this was going on at the time. And obviously, people didn't know how far the raid was going to be. And there's a lot of sensitive stories being worked on in the ABC. And for the AFP to have, you know, plug their laptops into the ABC system, which just through a password can access story content of stories being prepared, was a pretty shocking moment to a lot of journalists, I can tell you, including myself. And the idea that that through, well, an interesting thing was the warrant actually talked about removing materials from the ABC, but also placing materials on the ABC electronic servers. So perhaps it wasn't done, we don't know. But the warrant allowed the placing of items, the, you know, the downloading onto the ABC system of items. Now they could be apps or search tools, they could be covert search tools, they could be who knows, we don't know. We don't know. So it was a, it was a big shock to the ABC to see this happen. It was a big shock to young journalists, you know, journalists in their 30s. And so to see this, because in their lifetime, they'd never seen this sort of thing. You know, someone of my great vintage remembers search warrants. And, you know, we've had search warrants at four corners in the past. And the ABC has been intimidated in many ways. But a lot of these younger journalists had never seen this before. So it was a huge wake-up call. It's for our American audience. I mean, it's impossible to conceive, you know, I'm not given a pass because we're going to talk with Ann in a moment about the US and its history with this stuff. But the idea of the FBI going into the New York Times office and doing what they did over at ABC is just not possible, even during the penning on papers, while they try to function to stop them from publishing, which is, well, return, they didn't go into the New York Times offices to seize the material, which was the penning on papers, which they hadn't fully published yet. They were, they published the material. So that didn't even happen. So that's just quite extraordinary. I think that's really... And Joe, let me say also that there were three raids planned at that time. One had occurred the day before on a news limited or sort of news corp journalist who had revealed a document about the military spy agency seeking powers to spy on civilians in Australia. That's enormous change in the role of that spy agency. It's the Australian Signals Directorate, which is the Australian equivalent of the NSA. And a paper had been prepared, preparing for a legislative change that would allow them to turn their spying abilities, which are pretty comprehensive, we know from Snowden, internally. Now, of course, it was under the umbrella of chasing pedophiles or chasing drug networks or whatever the current fear meme is for the public. However, we all know that these things are used and can be used for other purposes, for other... Just for monitoring of journalists, not even specifically spying and targeting, but just doing general monitoring that this thing happens. And for the military grade spy agency to be turned inward in Australia was a huge release. They raided this woman's home in Canberra. They... Well, the line is they searched through her panties drawer. They went through everything. They pulled the oven apart. They totally were clearly looking for a thumb drive or a photograph or a document. And such an intrusive assault on a person's home, a journalist in Canberra, a member of the National Press Gallery, shocked us all. The next thing we had the ABC raid. And we learn that the day after the ABC raid, the federal police had planned on raiding the headquarters of News Corp in Australia, the Australian newspaper here in Sydney. And they called that off because of the public response to the raid on the ABC headquarters. And one of the things with the ABC raid in the headquarters was it was live-tweeted. The head of news and investigations for the ABC is a guy called John Lyons. He's a former journalist. He's been around the traps for a while. He's smart to accompany the AFP people. They've got a room for them. And he live-tweeted the whole event. Took photos, took photos, quoted them and just showed this whole farcical effort of people peering into a laptop trying to find out the secrets of the ABC. It was an astounding thing. And it just showed that they'll do it. It wasn't theoretical anymore. They will hunt down journalists and whistleblowers in Australia. David McBride's the shiny example at the moment. Where does he go? He's been vindicated, but he's still got to go to court. He's still facing jail. The one if Rupert Murdoch was tipped off about that impending raid of News Corp. All of the reporters home. I remember at the time reading about the raid on her home in the Panties, yes. And the telegraphs, the Sunday telegraphs, the paper she worked for, they came out with a Spanish editorial against what had happened. So it's a Murdoch newspaper against the establishment. It was a big moment. And the ABC and News Corp and most of the other major news outlets in Australia united at that time and started a campaign for media freedom. Which was unheard of and published massive full page ads, full cover wraparounds about media freedom. This is a result that the AFP didn't imagine. I mean, when was the last time News Limited and the ABC were united in anything? They tend to, if not competing, sometimes snipe at each other. But here we had them drawn together for a common battle for media freedom. It was an astounding moment in Australian journalism. And to some extent, it's been helpful in some ways. It has put the issue into the public eye like never before. Now you said there had been raids before. So it's a complete coincidence in your view that these two raids that happened consecutive days took place about a month after Julian Assange was dragged out of the embassy and arrested for publishing. Yeah. I can't imagine that these guys would pay much attention to Julian Assange, to be honest. But the coincidence in timing is pretty remarkable. There have been other raids and search warrants in the past. And the most notable to my mind was the raiding of a Canberra journalist who I know a couple of times has had his entire, he's had the carpet pulled up in his house. He's had the entire, everything searched twice over stories to do with national security. And it's the most shocking thing I'd heard of prior to this spate of raids and the ABC raid. So on one hand, yeah, it does intimidate people. On the other hand, we've got Mark Willisey now winning the Gold Walkley for having done a report following the raid. Yes. So it didn't stop the ABC raid. And it may have, why ultimately do you think the Inspector General, I think you mentioned this earlier, decided not to cover it up and had to publish it. What forced their hands? Well, no, the Inspector General hands it over to Defence Minister, who then reads it and considers and takes legal advice on which recommendations to follow and how to deal with it. Linda Reynolds, the Defence Minister, said she was, she actually became physically sick when she read the report. Now, she's former military. She's 20-odd years in Defence Army Reserve. She's been around and she understands how it works. But look, some of the report is actually still redacted, let me tell you. And it's been described as potentially some of the worst crimes ever known to have happened allegedly by the Australian Defence Force. Now, what they are, we don't know because they're redacted and the whistleblowers are not talking about it because now there are court processes in and they don't want to jeopardise that. But can you imagine, there's at least two, there's one whole page that's almost totally black. There's another page where the paragraph talking about the alleged crime is totally black. Can you imagine what they could be? Could they be worse than slitting the throats of two 40-year-old boys and throwing their bodies into a creek in a bag? Look, I'm just aghast at what's in it, but I'm happy for it to be redacted on the basis that it will emerge in court in due time. There'll be witnesses who don't want to be jeopardised. I understand that there's a process that'll be gone through. And I have to say congratulations to the Minister for Defence for quickly, publicly releasing it. Very quickly after she'd obtained a copy. She became ill. That reminds me of when Donna Rumsfeld testified after the Abu Ghraib photos became public. And he said that he was, I don't know if he said physically ill, but he was very disturbed about it. That leads me to my last question before we bring Anne in. You mentioned Chomsky saying that a story can come out like a line out of a cage and, you know, Mila'i happened, Mila'i massacred. That was a big story. Yes. A lot of people. And then the Abu Ghraib story. But for the most part, then we see most of these stories go away. And of Assange revealing the collateral murder, that probably lasted just a few days. Yeah, well, let's... Nothing happened. So what's the lasting impact of these revelations in Australia? Or will there be one? Well, that's a really good question because atrocities. I mean, Australia's had atrocities since Lieutenant Cook from the English Navy shot in Aborigini before he even landed in the place. So I mean, you know, atrocities in Australia. There's been a few. Even close to where I'm sitting in Sydney, there's a place called Bloody Point. It's only just been recognised. We're a small, a small massacre of Aboriginis took place at the hands of British Army. But why doesn't this change things? Because the media has a beautiful way of turning these moments that become public into episodes. And making sure people don't doubt that the system is fine. But bad apples, rogue elements, small episodes occasionally happen. And in fact, I've heard some of the commentary saying, well, this just shows that the military justice system is running perfectly that, you know, when these things come to life, they're dealt with. Well, I'm sorry. I mean, it doesn't... It's not the reality. The reality is, we'll count up the number of dead civilians in Afghanistan and say, where's the accountability for them? Count up the number of just dead civilians. It's children in Afghanistan. I read something about 2000 in drone strikes, children. I mean, if we're killing children, shouldn't we have a bit of a think about this? You know, it's an ongoing thing. Drones kill people pretty indiscriminately. And the US base just outside Alice Springs at Pine Gap is an integrated part of the system that targets people on the ground for killing. Now, there's, you know, more than half the people that work in the base are American, but there's a good half of them, almost Australian. What's our culpability? Where is the inspector general on those deaths? You know, we're aware of this. We know it happens. It's a systemic part of our US relationship. It's how Australia fits into the empire. We have a task to play, and that is to assist the main empire to do whatever the tasks it wants around the world. For a while, it's been pushed the standoff with China, with Biden, perhaps it's going to be bombing the fuck out of Iran. Who knows? Whatever it is, Australia will be there. Australia will fight on because we only have episodes. We don't do bad things. We just have bad apples. And I tell you what, if you get rid of the bad apples, the barrel's fine. So look, I'm sorry, I'm really cynical about this because, you know, the death of one child is regrettable. And to think that 2000 have died without without an eye in Australia, in officialdom, looking across those stories. The SAS one broke out and it had to be told. It was not going to go away. And the media, you know, chased it and made it happen. But you know, there's a lot of other dead bodies in Afghanistan and Iraq and Syria that Australia has had a direct hand in creating. No one's investigating them. And no one will say, I'm going to be honest, you know, we'll we'll pursue the bad apples. We'll get these couple of SAS guys, these 20 or 30 SAS guys, we'll chuck a few of them into jail. We'll pat ourselves on the back. And it'll be problem solved. But it won't be problem solved. It will be Australia will continue the same old role we have in the world. And that is throwing up our military when it's needed and throwing open our arms to foreign companies to exploit our minerals. I mean, it's just a dumb, dumb role we play at the moment. And one would hope that through an incident like this, with us murdering children allegedly, that there would be a consideration of maybe there's something rotten in the system itself. But mainstream media won't let that discussion really happen. So, Joe, it's up to you. Sounds more like a rotten orchard than a rotten apple. I want to come back after we're now going to go to Anne Wright in Hawaii. And we're going to come back at the end of that to talk more about the US-Australian relationship. You just touched on it, but I want to go further with both of you there. So, Anne, tell us about yourself, because you've not been on sand lag before, just a little bit brief background and what happened during the Iraq wars of particular interest. Well, I was in the US military for 29 years, 13 on active duty, 16 in the reserves. I also joined the US State Department and served in embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan. I was on the small team that helped reopen the embassy in Afghanistan of December of 2001. And then after I was there about six months, I went on to what turned out to be my last assignment, which was the Deputy Ambassador in Mongolia. And it was there in March of 2003 that I ended up resigning in opposition to the war on Iraq. I was in Afghanistan in 2001, December of 2001, when we reopened the embassy. The CIA had already been in Afghanistan for three months. Special forces had been there for a month and a half before we reopened the embassy. We found out that during that time, the CIA was already using facilities at Bagram Air Base and the Salt Pit in Kabul and various other facilities where they were holding people and torturing them. And I'll just kind of, let me flip over to Iraq for just a minute, because what Peter was talking about and what the investigation in Australia about the atrocities there, or in Afghanistan, but the atrocities that the US had done also in Iraq, which got public attention, which was the Abu Ghraib prison and the bringing out of the photographs of what the US military was doing to people held in Iraq. And as Jo, as you said, that Rumsfeld was horrified, he said, when he saw the photos. Well, they also hid, and they still are in the vaults of the Pentagon. They say thousands of pictures that are even worse than the ones that the public saw. Well, I go back to Afghanistan because many of the same people that were in Iraq in 2003 and 2004 were in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2003. And in fact, a lot of the torture that we know was done in Afghanistan in Bagram and at the Salt Pit and other places was done by the same people that then went on to Iraq. Some of the things though that we should be thinking about in terms of what happened in Afghanistan and now the international criminal court that may take up some of the cases of torture in Afghanistan. In October and November of 2001, there was a massacre, a massacre of over 2000 Afghans, Taliban, by one of the warlords, General Dostom, who up after the Battle of Kondus, captured Taliban and others and put them in big trucks and took them out to the desert and then shot into the trucks killing over 2000 people with American Special Forces standing right by. They were standing right by as all of that happened. The bodies were put in very shallow graves there and there's a movie about this. It's called Afghan Massacre Convoy of Death. Nobody's ever been held accountable of that. General Dostom went on to become the Deputy Minister of Defense of Afghanistan under the Karzai administration and he's now one of the Vice Presidents of the country under President Ashraf Ghani. So when you talk about all people holding accountable things that have happened in Afghanistan and that's one of the things in the international criminal court. It's not just holding US accountable or Australians accountable. It's also Afghan officials accountable for what they have done to their their own people. There are other movies that have shown a lot of the atrocities of what the US did to people in Afghanistan and the horrific conditions they were kept under. One of them is called Taxi to the Dark Side about four young UK Pakistanis who had gone to Pakistan on a trip from the UK and then for some crazy reason took a taxi across into Afghanistan just as the US was coming into Afghanistan and of course they were alleged to be supporters of the Taliban and they were tortured for years and more some of the first people that actually were sent to Guantanamo and that's another part of what we should be talking about in terms of the torture of the US. What we have done to 779 people that the US sent to Guantanamo the very first one is going in January 11th of 2002. Only 5% of those that were sent to Guantanamo were actually captured by US military. The rest of them were all part of a bounty program where you could get money for turning in your neighbor turning in anybody you didn't like and that's how the US got all of these people that they put into Guantanamo. Now how many people here it is 19 years later how many people are still in Guantanamo? There are 40 that are still there. 26 of them have already been cleared for release. Five of them were under the Obama administration were supposed to be released but they weren't. The Obama administration convinced the Trump administration to release one person one person so there's still 40 of them that are left. Of the 779 one has died of cancer one died of heart attack and seven of them supposedly committed suicide and one of the very interesting parts of all of Guantanamo is that three of them committed suicide on the same night and it was not in the prison in Guantanamo. The three of them been taken to a site off the prison grounds and one of them was was found with hanging from a door with a sock in his mouth. I mean there are so many things that were evidence of US military killing these these three men. Nobody's ever been held accountable for that. Nobody has been being held accountable for the people that are still in in the prison in Guantanamo and that's one of the things that has is a part of this international criminal court case that has been brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights out of New York City and also by reprieve out of the UK that they are bringing the cases of some of the 40 men that are still there and asking why are you the United States still keeping these people. Many of them were taken to the secret sites of the CIA and Bulgaria, Romania, Latvia, Thailand. I mean you name it and the US was torturing people. Syria we were torturing people everywhere. We were getting the agreement of countries to be able to use their torture facilities to torture the people that the United States wanted. So right now the the international criminal court having gone through a process of its own where initially the prosecutors request to have this investigation of the allegations that have been brought by the US human rights people, UK human rights people, French, German, Spanish because some of their because some of their citizens or some of their facilities had been used by these I should say their citizens. All of these cases were at first denied by the international criminal court but just this year in March the appellate division of the international criminal court said there is sufficient evidence and the special prosecutor can bring the cases. Well for the human rights people that was really really great. However for the Trump administration it was like uh-uh the United States has never acceded to the jurisdiction of the international criminal court and that was one of the reasons that I actually resigned from the government in 2003. As a US diplomat I was being told you go to the Mongolian government and you convince them to agree with article 99 which which gives which uh takes the US out of any jurisdiction of the international criminal criminal court and it was like I'm not going to do that I'm not taking that to the ambassador. You get paid more than I do you do that. Well the US says that it's not a part of the international criminal court so don't bother us with all of these allegations but they were allegations of sufficient magnitude that the Trump administration has now put sanctions on members of the court of the international criminal court. The special prosecutor and alternate special prosecutor are now forbidden to enter the United States and anyone in the international criminal court that has does any investigation on the cases against the United States and also against the state of Israel for its actions against Palestinians then they can no longer come to the United States. Well over a hundred uh organizations in many countries have pushed back against that because it's a blatant uh protection of criminal acts that have been committed by uh by US military. So there's a lot that that is going on in terms of the center for constitutional rights reprieve the American civil liberties union a lot of organizations mean we know the history of all of these men that are still remaining in uh Guantanamo that should be released out there have only been eight convictions eight convictions out of the 779 only eight five of the people that were convicted are now back in their home countries two have been acquitted convicted and are still in Guantanamo a second one is awaiting his sentence to be to be sentenced because he agreed with a plea that he was presented with. So there's a there's a lot of information that's around about what the US has done in Afghanistan over the over the years. Peter mentions the whole issue of assassin drones and the thousands thousands of drone strikes that have happened killing innocent civilians. So there's plenty for the US to uh atone for and all I can hope is that there is karma in the world for those who have committed all these terrible terrible things and are truly war criminals thank you. Well thank you and uh to atone for something you have to first acknowledge it happened US history of their many many wars and such a short history the United States has is replete with massacres the Philippine word that no one in the United States talks about no one in school has ever taught about that the incredible amounts of massacres that outraged Mark Twain at the time and then uh in the first world war there was all the first world war using poison gas all the sides did uh the what I think the largest war crime in history was the dropping of the two atomic bombs in Japan when most top US generals including Eisenhower and MacArthur opposed doing that there was absolutely no reason we don't open this debate but there was no reason a lot of historians say now for that to be used as Japan would have surrendered as long as they were allowed to keep the emperor which they eventually were able to do and then of course we have Korea where the Associated Press in 1999 only that was uh almost exact almost 50 years later revealed this massacre by US soldiers of refugees and a no-gun re um that has not been denied this is that's been proven of course in Vietnam there were many many many massacres there we only really learned about the Milai case uh in all of Vietnam there was only 203 US military personnel charged and 57 court marchers only 23 were convicted in Milai only one was convicted at least then though they listened to a whistleblower Ronald Ronald Rittenauer who came to congress and the state department depending on how they listened to him they actually investigated it then there was a journalist Seymour Hersh who broke the story want to pull surprise for that and uh they actually convicted someone look at what happened with Assange the whistleblower was thrown in jail the journalist didn't get a full surprise he was thrown in jail and there's been no not only no convictions no investigation so what i'm asking you about is this culture of impunity this long history there's also the turkey shoot in the first go for they shot all those retreating Iraqi soldiers in the back the highway of death that was called and this was all filmed it's uh Iraqi soldiers being bulldozed in their trenches by American bulldozers is buried alive it's gotten to the point where because they feel like they can get away with it they don't even care that this stuff comes out so talk to me a little bit Ann about this culture of impurity how can it change because let's face it Americans have told the other greatest people in the world and they want they don't want to accept that their government could do this and there might be a little that in Australia too that people can't accept their government and their soldiers could do such things how could this ever change this culture of impunity well i doubt if it ever will because the people that can change it are the ones that are part of the problem the senior military are the ones that are protecting the junior military and protecting themselves against allegations that they did nothing to investigate these things so it's it's a real problem with the professional military where they they are taught the laws of land warfare which say you can't murder innocent civilians and there are actually rules to how you conduct war but those rules are broken all the time and no one is ever ever held accountable so the the way to prevent it is to prevent wars because if you got wars you got military going into them and you're going to have these atrocities and if we want to prevent the atrocities we've got to figure out how to prevent the wars well and that's uh that's a great answer actually and i want to bring you both in here because these these are really not australian wars what what threat the afghanistan or the taliban pose to australia i don't think it pose any threat to the united states either so these are american wars and when the us tells camberg we have to join our war you know i don't know who salutes quicker than there's a knee-jerk reaction of obedience and this also has to do with of course being part of the five eyes and sharing intelligence information i might be a big part of it but why could this incident of the war crimes report now by the inspector could this begin a soul searching in australia where they begin to reassess their relationship with the us their military policy and think we shouldn't get involved in these damn wars because look what it's done look one would hope that there would be a soul searching and and to a limited extent yes there will be a soul searching but um but unfortunately very powerful forces control the narrative and therefore the narrative about this is going to be um rotten apples and therefore a thoroughgoing response which is what's needed um i don't imagine will will happen um um you know i mean the media's role you know i'm not saying anything new that anyone watching this doesn't know and that is that the media is there to to keep the show on the road and um you asked earlier why did uh why did australia invade afghanistan well i have to reveal here for the first time on your program that australia was under massive threat if it didn't invade afghanistan and that wasn't from afghanis that was from the united states if we don't obey what our alliance requires there are consequences those consequences uh in the nth degree resulted and people keep raising it 1975 we had a prime minister removed from power without without the electorate being involved and um and it wasn't a cia coup as such uh but it was a uh coming together of the powerful forces that wanted this guy this this uh prime minister out and those powerful forces including as we now know from the palace letters um involved the queen and uh and the royal family and the and supporters around that so therefore no doubt um uh mi6 and and the british establishment wanted to get rid of goff witlam as you know so-called lefty prime minister so if if those sort of forces are there and we all and and people in the labor party are aware of this then you know who's going to who's going to say no um the first gulf war in the early nineties the very first country to put its hand up to support saving the kuwaitis from uh from the iraq invasion which as we know april glasby had kind of given the nod to occur anyway um that's a longer story the first one was australia bob hawk a labor prime minister the first labor prime minister since the sacking uh well the dismissal the overthrow of witlam so this new brand new shiny labor prime minister was being extremely obsequious and trying to earn favor on many levels including you know uh being the first to offer to send special forces and i think ships and and and other materials so uh um what are we scared of well terrorism has skyrocketed in in number of deaths in the west since uh since we all did the invasions post 9 11 um just look at the graph just look at the graph of terrorist attacks on the west and it just it's bouncing along bouncing along you know very very low levels you know very remote you know one-off little events and then there's the spike for for the attack in new york and washington and then it's low level and low level and then as soon as the the western invasions of the middle east start occurring sure it's just skyrockets because it's revenge isn't it you know two thousand dead two thousand dead children you know what are you going to do if you're a parent it's going to go turn the other cheek one interject instead of a war terrorism it was a war foretor yeah yeah yeah well well all of our techniques of terror creating i mean terror is is you know it's a drone um terror is a knock on the door at 3 a.m by an austrian sas soldier you know there's both sides use terror and um all sides use terror and uh it you know unfortunately the the victims are nameless and and in their thousands um why does australia do this well because it's uh you know it's very historical joe and it's it's got a lot to do with uh the british empire and its role in the world and and the us taking over the mantle of that last century and um as the most powerful military force that the world has ever ever imagined or seen the united states uses that force and australia has to make a decision you know george w bush said it you know you're either on our side or you're against us and um and australia's leaders believe that the best thing for australia is to be on the side of america because they know the damage that can be done to us if we're not and that's sad reality um but it is the case i mean just recently australia agreed to allowing the stationing of b 52 bomb it's not stationing the the the refueling and maintenance of of us long range b 52 bombers in australia no public debate almost no public reporting um no parliamentary debate of whether it's a great idea at this time of escalating uh uh conflict potential conflict with china we just do it we just say yes and we're doing it and um you know why does australia do it well it's it's our historical role uh is what i would say and um and no one's been brave enough to say enough and maybe witlam was was trying to do that maybe witlam is looking for a middle course um out of this um you know he wasn't opposed to us bases in australia just despite what people think he was a moderate he was in the middle he was trying to but even that was too much um so i think australia's kind of stuck and it's going to take more than um uh some massacres alleged by by our soldiers for a major change um i don't know what it'll be um um yep i'm stumped i don't know the answer well the the long shadow of of witlam's overthrow still rules if i could just mention one of the things that we try to to use in the us to to challenge wars are uh the effects that the wars have on on uh us on the people of us and particularly veterans and when you see that over 22 veterans now are committing suicide every day when you see the numbers of families that have been just devastated by uh the the stories the memories and peter you talked about the psychologist that was working with the uh the sas guys and the stories that she heard that they were finally letting out they were telling other people because there was something that was that was in their soul that they were not able now to live with and when you look at the numbers the tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of young men and women uh in our countries that uh are now suffering from the wars uh it's it's over while there are certainly more people from afghanistan and iraq that have been killed tragically by our forces the level of destruction of our youth of our countries by the politicians that put our countries in these wars is enormous and the amount of money that's paid to try to keep them going both mentally and physically is a huge huge amount that is never factored into the calculation of what the war is going to cost when they start talking about well let's go invade and occupy this or that country well i'm an issue and you make of ptsd and the and the response of veterans i remember some classic film from the vietnam years of of fellows throwing their purple hearts over the fence into the grounds of the white house and i always thought well that that's where some decent resistance can come from but unfortunately the the negative effects of what they bring back home with them is so so often internalized um and taken out on their families and themselves by the suicide and and and i know that uh you know the depression suffered by the children of vets is enormous because yeah it's it's internalized well you know our political education is that individuals united can't really do anything we just have to rely on the system to fix everything so therefore you know it doesn't you know there's thousands of vets who are not happy with this and you know unfortunately it's their it's their partners who know the darkest side of this and and their families and unfortunately it it doesn't break out into that movement i know code pink and i know the work of all sorts of groups and i you know very supportive of that sort of um uh voice um but um you know when those negative effects are internalized you really see that somehow a positive outcome is is not going to come from pts sufferers ptsd sufferers they had to say you know that they need all their support and their families need the support but to imagine so where does where does it come from well it's got to come from the you know sad to say again the educated middle classes have to open their eyes and realize that you know the system they're comfortably riding along on is is based on some pretty nasty things and then finally um finally uh you you know talk about unite organize become active and and try try at least to do something i mean you know you've been very active and you've done a lot of um a lot of things and um you know people must be also frustrated that that you know like code pink it's an amazing i mean i see events and things that are done and um but the system just grinds on and um how do you cope with that you know we've got a lot of good organizations that keep pushing pushing and we know that we're pushing uphill um that's still the the psyche of the u.s. public and certainly of the most of the political class is that war is not a problem and war is just a nature and um my kids aren't going to go i don't have to go but these other kids will go if we say so and so working with the other kids to say don't go is yeah is one of the things but it is um um you know it's a real challenge because the history of the united states as joe was talking about is nothing but warmongering and uh with the new biden admin but one thing you can you can hand to the trump administration even even though he's torn up all sorts of treaties arms control treaties all this sort of stuff other than a reassignment of some in in syria he hasn't started anything and that's that's what i said but he's wrecked havoc on everything else but the biden administration i mean we we're already you know pushing back from what we know could happen because of what happened during the obama administration with increases in the numbers of people in afghanistan with um you know just a whole litany of things so um absolutely and you yep you're we we can see it can't we we can see the biden administration ahead it's going to be another sad obama and unfortunately um the people who are going to die at the moment are sitting around in cafes in the middle east or take their kids to school and they have no idea they're soon to die and it'll be drones or bombs or guns however it'll happen the history of the democrats um in in power of the you know the last few administrations isn't a happy one and unfortunately people have stars in their eyes and believe that uh or you know this is nirvana on a stick you know biden is not nirvana on a stick you know biden is going to be um the instrument of very powerful forces that will wind up the war machine and get cracking again because uh trump trump was only interested in business deals you know he wasn't he didn't want he didn't have an empire stars in his eyes he had business deals in his eyes um and now he's out of the way um it's it's back to uh more humanitarian wars saving the world from uh from itself wonderful oh Peter you um we're talking about people in the middle east cafes their lives may be cut short uh and i'm going to link to what you said earlier about this being revenge these wars the terrorism that has increased in the west is revenge and we never allowed to listen to what the terrorists say they're telling you why they're saying in statements that they are taking revenge for you killing our children you're killing families uh but shut that out and they kill us as bush said because they're jealous of us they're not jealous man the only reason refugees become refugees is but yeah there's a small proportion who are after a job in the west yeah okay the 30 million on the move at the moment they're only refugees because we've bought the fuck out of their countries they're not refugees because they they want to go to disneyland you know they're refugees they're compelled to be refugees to survive so yeah look we're you know i don't know it's uh i don't know ask the question sorry i'm not sure where i'm going on this but it is it is tough to to imagine that there are kids at schools parents taking them off to schools holding their sweet little hands waving them by and you know in four years time you know we'll be hearing the numbers who died in ex-country it'll probably be iran but i'm just speculating i don't know where it'll be who knows but those people are destined to die because we didn't change the system those people are destined to die because the drones still take off and pine gap still helps them target people on the ground in the middle east and Australian bombers well they're not either Syria at the moment but they have been Australian fighter bombers so we haven't changed that system so those people are destined to die and it's horrible to predict the future and imagine what's going to happen and you know no one's got a crystal wall but history tells us a few things and and history suggests that uh that the powerful do not use their powers that wisely that they tend to uh to use them to dominate so we're in for an interesting time under biden and i'll be very interested to see the the small l liberals trying to justify the next war i understand that the governments might be afraid what could happen to them given what happened to goth wetland who removed Australian troops from vietnam and maybe made designs on pine gap and all of that but what's the excuse of the Australian population why aren't they demanding sovereignty uh against the united states and i wanted to ask anton what perspective from an american perspective how the empire works how what is the feeling towards vassal states we might say like australia yeah and tell me well i think it's to be used uh the vassal states are to be used by the the mighty empire of the united states and you know when you were talking about uh how australia uh joined up with the coalition of the willing very very quickly well another part of that when i was out in mongolia at the embassy there we were told you go get some on some mongolians to volunteer get the mongolian governor to volunteer you know 10 people 15 people we don't care how many but we add mongolia's name to this list of the coalition of the willing but australian in there pretty uh pretty easily because of long time ties i guess with uh doing uh doing the bidding of the united states for quite a long period of time uh yeah i look it is just a flag waving exercise to some extent and um boy you know um i don't how can it change is you know how can vassal states escape the grip of the mightiest empire the world has ever seen um and escape we must i mean we must escape it because we're going to be involved in eventually nuclear wars in the middle east and we're going to be providing the intelligence to Saudi Arabia or whoever the fuck else to allow these things to happen because Saudi wants to go nuclear so therefore they're our friends so therefore we help them i mean this has got a terrible sort of arc in history you know that we're chasing at the moment you know we we've got to sort of divert it and um as a little vassal state down here in the pacific um we're going to be there you know we're going to be there it's it's it's it's so depressing the people have got the power in their hands of course people across the world in western countries have got the power we have some some level of democracy but unfortunately we're lied to you know we have the murdoch press here that is just you know in some in some locations in Australia there is no other media available murdochs got it all and and therefore the lies they tell the the narrative that the bullshit narrative that they create about whether it's a war or whether it's about a new trade deal that's being done or whether it's a new mining venture that's got to go ahead or whether it's global warming that we need to ignore or whatever the role of propaganda is central to this i you know i believe the people have got people pretty smart and if they're given the facts otherwise wouldn't be a journal i mean if given the facts um that have a chance at least a chance one question from Kathy Wogan our producer how would the Australian public react when they see that 3000 metals are stripped when these elite forces are they don't give a damn about that the metals being stripped from so do you say 3000 yeah that's what i saw reported yeah oh my gosh look they have taken a citation of one of the troops one of the sas troops i mean they'll they'll do these things it'll it'll you know people will say sorry the war memorial is still going to spend half a billion dollars on extending uh it it's dignification of of war it's glamourization of war i mean with a bit of sadness mixed in just just to make it feel genuine look i yes um you know there will be some spectacular stories to come out of these prosecutions that lay ahead of these sas soldiers but uh but the system meanwhile ticks along and the commanders keep on commanding and yep well peter let's leave it there um we've had a very interesting discussion on these issues and it's not going to go away soon so maybe we'll have your back at some point when the next war crimes report comes out that's lord um thank you uh colonel and right down there hawaii and peter over here in sydney it was a great discussion and i appreciate you both coming on see you in live so goodbye everyone thank you thanks thanks get out your notebook