Major General Brereton said none of the incidents being referred to the AFP could be discounted as "disputable decisions made under pressure in the heat of battle".
"The cases in which it has been found that there is credible information of a war crime are ones where it was, or should have been, plain that the person killed was a non-combatant," he said.
It is important to remember that in Afghanistan the enemy is the Taliban, a terrorist group, and not an army under the command of a state. Australian Army experience in other conflicts against terrorists, for example the Malayan Communist Party during the Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960, would have instilled in any leader of the Australian Armed Forces the importance of intelligence about enemy movements and supplies, in particular supplies from local communities.
That intelligence is relied on by army commanders who then direct their troops, including their special forces, to weaken and destroy the enemy's resources, including its supply lines. It would then be naive in the extreme to assume that soldiers acting under such orders would not be acting "under pressure in the heat of battle".
Chief Of Defence Forces Angus Campbell has spent a lot of time over the past 24 hours apologising for as yet unproven allegations. He ought to now explain what intelligence his men were provided, which would have informed their actions, and informed their assessment of who was or was not an enemy combatant.
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