Hager irritating but winning PR battle
One thing becomes clear from reading Nicky Hager’s book Hit and Run. Most of those pontificating about it haven’t.
Hager and co-author Jon Stephenson paint themselves into a very tight corner. The SAS raid happened in two villages. People who lived there were killed. Some in their homes. There no wiggle room.
The towns, Khak Khuday Dad and its companion Naik, are central to the allegations.
When Defence Chief TIm Keating claimed the SAS never went to the towns, Hager fudged, saying a few kilometres in the Hindu Kush is neither here nor there. Not true. Location matters. Keating’s rebuttal was definitive. Right time, wrong town, and he has the video to prove it. Sadly, I trust generals with something to hide only marginally more than I trust conspiracy wing-nuts with an axe to grind and I have the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to remind me of the perfidious nature of generals.
So. Who to believe? Hager is difficult to like, having written two books based on stolen emails then cried tears of sanctimonious hypocrisy when his own emails were subject to an unlawful search by the police. He is one of the more irritating characters in the public square and despite my aversion to men in uniform, Keating has the air of integrity. Except. I read the book. It references a New York Times story, still online, dated two days after the raid that reports a botched mission with civilian deaths on the same night as Operation Burnham. It names the town. Naik. Not Tirgiran as the Defence Force claims.
Awkward. Compounding this, the book draws its 13 actual readers to a UN report dated March 2011 that also references the August 2010 raids and the claims of civilian casualties. The allied forces’ investigation on the raid wasn’t released to the UN and even Keating hasn’t read it.
Score one and two for Hager. Remember, the Army hasn’t produced its evidence. It’s just saying, ‘‘trust me’’.
Well, Keating, I want to trust you, I do not want an inquiry. What I want is what I set out to do, which is to write a column confidently saying that Hit and Run is more Hager conspiracy nonsense.
I can’t do that. Not yet.