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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2913 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 20, 2023

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Australia has a minor scandal involving some SAS troopers, who are accused of 'war crimes' over shooting some 'civilians' during the Afghanistan war.

The media is all over it, and one of the bigger figures in it - a former SAS corporal Ben Roberts-Smith turned media exec, one of the real life closest approximations of gigachad meme I've seen - has seen fit to file a defamation suit against a bunch of journalists over the 'war crimes' allegations in media. (see attached picture to get a sense of dude's sheer size)

Now, Ben Roberts-Smith is a fairly impressive guy with some notable flaws. From what I gather, he's a brave and competent warrior, a demanding boss, perhaps a bit of a glory hound and about as rough as you'd expect from reputation of SAS.

Some dark triad traits, but that's nothing unexpected in special forces. Probably 'guilty' of what he's accused of - he's going to be on trial for that any year now. The big deal is that his patrol is alleged to have shot a captive during clearing of a compound, and also extrajudicially executed some other captives (up to 30 allegedly) during its deployment.

Now, special forces are .. special kinds of people. Aggressive guys who just won't quit despite punishing training, expected to go into the hairiest situations in small groups, typically against far more numerous opposition, without much support.

Anyway, during the defamation suit, the attorney for the journalists saw fit to read a social media post liked by the plaintiff in court. [audio unsafe for work, small children and delicate old ladies]

I can't decide whether Roberts-Smith 'liking' a post written by one of his army buddies to provoke the attorney for the opposition was a genius or bad move , but the whole bit of situational comedy nevertheless made me day when it crossed my twitter timeline.

I'm quite sure it was some army guy - when I was reading various allegations about Roberts-Smith the eloquence, profanity and threatening nature of SAS communicationg among each other was of exactly the same tone and style as the post in question.

/images/16742842263645465.webp

I'm sort of thinking he wrote that post himself using an alt, because I've read some of the other statements attributed to him and they sound very much alike. Or maybe all the SAS talk that way, as I understand this or the trial has a third of of the unit testifying in his favor and a third against.. plus various ex-wives, mistresses, once threatened officers and whatnot.

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