Gone …. and forgotten already

I could hardly believe it when I heard on the news this morning about the complete screwup of the return of Pte Jake Kovco’s body from Iraq (where he was killed last week) to Australia. I mean, just how incompetent can the Australian Defence Force/Department of Defence be? Not to mention careless and insensitive.

Clearly, Kovco’s already been forgotten by Defence, and they treated the return of his body as just a freight shipment, like moving equipment. Given he was the first Australian soldier to be killed in Iraq, I would have expected absolute maximum care and sensitivity to have been exercised, but obviously my expectations far exceed the capacity of Defence to perform.

There’s plenty of blame-shifting going on today, largely aimed at the civilian contractor employed to return his body to Australia. Sure, it appears some blame rests there, but regardless of that, Defence employed the contractor and is ultimately responsible for managing its performance and its actions. All the stuff being said about how body transport should be performed by the military and not contracted out is a furphy - whether done by military personnel on military aircraft, or contractors using commercial flights, Defence remains responsible.

Hard to disagree with what Pte Kovco’s stepbrother said about the situation:

“It’s absolutely ripped my family apart that Jake’s memory would be disrespected in that way and that is what it is to us - he has just been zeroed down to a number,” Ben said.

“It is insulting. It is hugely insulting by everyone involved, not just to the family but to Jake’s memory.”

“The people who have been involved in completely mishandling this will get my message in another forum - not right now,”

What astounds me is that Kovco’s casket was supposedly escorted all the way home by a “senior member” of his unit. Now, given that presumably caskets are clearly labelled, and apparently procedures call for positive identification of the body at transfer points (and that he left Baghdad in a metal casket, and got to Australia in a wooden one), I’d have to ask what the hell he was doing? Enjoying the free piss on the flight?

Imagine how Mrs Kovco and the family felt upon hearing the news. Grieving over his death, this must just be a complete kick in the guts. (No doubt she’ll be in for another soon … the inevitable drawn out fight for compensation.)

Just to rub it in a bit more, also today we have Defence Minister Brendan Nelson shooting his mouth off about the circumstances of Pte Kovco’s death. No longer did it happen while he was cleaning his weapon, but:

“It was near him in his vicinity and he made some kind of movement which suggests that it discharged.

“There was obviously a live round in it which there should not have been and that’s as much as I should probably say at the moment.”

There’s something that doesn’t smell right about it. Cover-up, anyone?

His mother is obviously not impressed by what she’s being told by Defence:

“He didn’t shoot himself. The gun went off. It was near him, it was nearby. What did Jake do - put his head down near the table so it could shoot him in the head, did he?”

I think its critical that we get to the whole truth about what happened. Defence has appointed a senior officer to investigate (although this seems only to be about the body transport screwup, not the death itself). I’d suggest that any investigation should be completely independent of Defence - after all we’ve seen demonstrated time and again how Defence is incapable of investigating its own stuffups. Whats the odds the findings will be that no-one’s at fault, its a process failure? Wrong answer, even process failures are overcome with proper care and responsibility taken by individuals, and in this case, utmost care is nothing less than I would have expected. In my books, fuckups like this get people fired, not just slapped over the wrist, or (as is more likely with Defence) no real consequences.

Update (29/4/2006): The story of how Kovco died keeps changing all the time. His laptop is being accused in the press today. Apparently he was using it, and dropped it on his pistol which went off and shot him in the head. Now I can accept he dropped his laptop, I can even accept it might have landed on his pistol. But its stretching things to imagine (a) his pistol was loaded in the barracks (b) the laptop struck it in a way that caused it to fire, (c) that at the same time as this happening the gun, presumably lying on a flat surface, got tilted to an angle that resulted in him being shot in the head. Another version of events has him alone in his room and under “enormous emotional pressure” - ie he shot himself. Another suggestion is that he was “hooched” - presumably by someone in his unit. At least his body has made it back to Australia now.

Technorati Tags: Kovco, Iraq, Defence, incompetence, death, coverup