Various from Norightturn

First on the recent news story that the NZ soldiers were involved in a raid where civilians were killed

"So, can the NZ SAS soldiers apparently responsible for killing two civilians in a botched raid in Kabul on Friday be prosecuted? Not by the Afghans, they can't. The SAS in Afghanistan are working as part of the "International Security Assistance Force", and their presence there is covered by a one-sided Military Technical Agreement [DOC] imposed on the provisional government of Afghanistan by their occupiers. "

1) If the suggestion is that NZ should abide by standard local laws that would probably rule out any intervention like peace keeping in East Timor.

Well... I am opposed to that sort ofthing (as well as our presence in afganistain... but simply military should only be involved in very special cases and when it is that sort of special case they will obviously require special laws to act.

2) From what I have heard (and i could be wrong) the case in question is one of poor intelligence (which is of course sometimes wrong) resulting in the soldiers entering a building where some civilians with machine guns failed to hear them identifying themselves (or figured it was just a standard trick) and opened fire, then the NZders returned fire.

It sounds like more of the fault likes with the intelligence and possibly the civilians who opened fire (even if the latters reaction was to some degree understandable). Of course an investigation can look into that (and that should happen) but prima face I think we are looking in the wrong direction here.