A Complete Balls-up
I saw a heading in the paper this morning - "Losing Private Kovco". It made me laugh but I'm sure that others are crying about it.
If you missed the story - An Aussie soldier in Iraq was shot in the head with his own pistol and died. The Defence Minister, Brendan Nelson, initially claimed that Pte Kovco had been cleaning his gun and it discharged accidentally. His body would be flown home.
The body arrived in Melbourne on Thursday with the family waiting at the airport. It was about that time that the realisation dawned that the wrong body had been flown back from the morgue in Kuwait. WTF? How on earth can you bring the wrong body back? It's the one draped in the Australian flag, you idiots?
Now the story is that Pte Kovco read a letter from his wife shortly before the pistol, which was sitting on the table, accidentally discharged. The fact that there are three safety mechanisms on the gun and his wife is calling for the letters return means that something is up. Either he shot himself or was doing something stupid with his mates.
More will be revealed and it could take some time. But what a balls-up.
7 comments:
I feel there is a cover up story behind this and somebody is trying to hide the body (and evidence). Nobody was supposed to realise that this was the wrong body.
Could the soldier have been shot in action and the Gov doesn't want that news out?
Well the body has been certainly hidden but the facts will come out sooner or later.
I don't think that he was killed in action - why would the Government have anything to fear about that? It would seem much more like the life and death of a soldier if he died in actual combat.
That's all they can tell us at this time.
:)
Too much is being made of this, sure it's the 1st Australian, but on the same vein I sure can't remember the 1st US soldier, or NZ soldier (ANZUS treaty and all)...
It's just a reminder of how messy and fucked up war really is..
We had one editorial in Sunday's paper saying that Pte Kovco's name was to be added to the honour board somewhere. She could not see the point, as he did not die in action, and is not a hero, as such. Over to you.
The guy died whilst serving his country so I agree with his name being placed on an honour board. I don't believe any questions were asked about those that died during WWI or WWII.
The Aust Govt is finding out that the media can be a poisoned chalice.
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