New Zealand is an odd place. When a reporter uncovers evidence that the NZ SAS special forces rules of engagement to not take prisoners in Afghanistan have been broken no one seems to query the rules of engagement or the actual killings they do there. I haven’t read the Metro article because in all the reams of discussion on the subject there have been no king hits. Not that it doesn’t raise interesting questions regards the legality of overseas military operations, and not that it isn’t a timely article on an angle of the Afghanistan war, and not that it isn’t a triumph for a resurgent Metro magazine under a new editor, but there was no outspoken victim or SAS member on TV, no smoking gun (as it were) and consequently no resignation – no scalp (as it were). In that regard – because the threshold was not enough for resignation and it has been batted aside by the select committee – it is not a scandal – more an SAS exposé.
