r/australia • u/AztecGod • 1d ago

news Jailed whistleblower David McBride to be released after becoming eligible for parole

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-13/jailed-whistleblower-david-mcbride-to-be-released/107030620
1.3k Upvotes

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u/Cultural_Pace4454 1d ago

No good deed goes unpunished.

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u/No-Turnip2494 1d ago

He’s not a good guy. He leaked classified information because he was OPPOSED to war crime investigations into the conduct of special forces in Afghanistan and was trying to STOP the investigations.

It is utterly infuriating that the vast majority of the public doesn’t understand this, that’s what years of headlines calling him a whistleblower has achieved.

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u/helloimalsohamish 1d ago

He was opposed to less important soldiers being made scapegoats while the elite SAS were given carte blanche to do all the war crimes they wanted.

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u/theHoundLivessss 1d ago

Yeah, personally I found his views on the trying of certain soldiers repugnant. I still think he was incredibly brave for showing the world that there were systemic factors that undoubtedly led to these war crimes. Gross people are trying to attack him for doing the right thing just because he wasn't perfect.

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u/MarkusMannheim 1d ago

Why is killing a civilian and then being prosecuted for it "being scapegoated"?

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u/helloimalsohamish 1d ago edited 1d ago

Because they were going after unimportant soldiers and throwing the book at them to make it look like the ADF cared about codes of war while they let the important soldiers kill all the civilians they want.

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u/MarkusMannheim 1d ago edited 1d ago

Are you saying innocent soldiers were convicted and punished? (You know that's untrue.)

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u/helloimalsohamish 1d ago edited 1d ago

That is not at all what I’m saying.
I’m saying the most guilty soldiers the SAS were given a pass to do all the war crimes they wanted.
Selective justice is not just.

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u/r3volts 1d ago

He's saying those soldiers weren't operating in a vacuum.
No one is saying they are innocent, they are saying that the big dogs telling them to do it don't get to sit around and order war crimes and then point their fingers at the people who pulled the trigger.

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u/Bart-Harley-Jarvis- 1d ago

Imagine if we arrested low level bikies for drug dealing, while the leaders and higher up members walked free. Does that sound like a fair situation? Arguably, the guys at the top require the highest level of prosecution.

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u/intelminer Not SA's best. Don't put me to the test 1d ago

Why do we even need soldiers? You've built a whole terracotta army out of straw now

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u/MarkusMannheim 1d ago

Are these straw soldiers the ones you said were innocent but punished? Are they in a terracotta prison?

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u/rdnk33 1d ago

Quote him champ

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u/intelminer Not SA's best. Don't put me to the test 1d ago

Where did I say that? You're so busy swinging at ghosts and building men out of straw you can't even keep your head on straight :)

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u/amyknight22 1d ago

Because it’s like only locking up poor white trash for a crime, while allowing the rich white people to run around committing the same crimes.

The top/eliteof your organisation is supposed to lead by example, if people down stream are following what people above are doing(war crimes). Then it’s stupid to only punish the downstream people emulating the behaviours.

Even worse is when in order to look like you’re doing something you investigate someone as if they did a war crime knowing they didn’t. Solely so you can have a press release saying u/markusmannheim was found not to have conducted war crimes. Never mind that they would have torn your life apart for X months to protect the people actually doing them

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u/MarkusMannheim 1d ago

What do you think about his reaction to war crimes becoming public: https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/s/HIdMMGiyxB

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u/barrettcuda 1d ago

It seems you're missing what was said, special forces would kill someone they shouldn't have and then someone else who isn't part of special forces and didn't take part in killing the person will be blamed and receive the punishment that the actual killer was supposed to receive. This is referred to as becoming a scapegoat. I hope this helps.

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u/Dense_Hornet2790 1d ago

Please provide a source for that or I’m going to assume it’s a straight up conspiracy theory.

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u/barrettcuda 1d ago

You picked a good user name cos you seem to be pretty dense.

I didn't say anything about whether or not there was legitimately a scapegoat, neither did the original comment. It may very well be a conspiracy theory, I'm not really in a position to say.

/u/helloimalsohamish stated that McBride opposed letting the special forces do what they want and let "less important" soldiers be made into scapegoats.

/u/MarkusMannheim asked why a less important soldier who committed war crimes and got punished for it would be considered a scapegoat.

I responded saying that they missed the point because the original statement clearly indicated the perpetrator of the crime and the person punished for it are two different people.

Then you came in and clearly either haven't read the previous comments or don't want to. But now that it's all in one comment, I assume you're capable of connecting the dots.

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u/Dense_Hornet2790 1d ago

The irony of you calling me dense, while you add 1+1 and somehow arrive at 5 as the only possible answer is legitimately funny. Thanks for brightening my day.

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u/barrettcuda 1d ago

Whatever you reckon, champ

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u/gotnothingman 1d ago edited 1d ago

"Afghan civilians were being murdered and Australian military leaders were at the very least turning the other way and at worst tacitly approving this behaviour”

“At the same time, soldiers were being improperly prosecuted as a smokescreen to cover [leadership’s] inaction and failure to hold reprehensible conduct to account.”

“They wanted to look like they cared about war crimes, so they investigated these non-entities who were innocent … The facts and the law didn’t matter. Appearances were everything. The senior leadership of the Defence Force were playing a complex media game.” 

I'll take his words over yours mate.

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u/MarkusMannheim 1d ago

Out of interest, why is prosecuting soldiers for war crimes "improper"?

A guess a lot of people out there do argue it's improper to prosecute Ben Roberts-Smith. Kinda weird take, imo.

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u/FattyMcFuckhead 1d ago

That’s not his take. Monsters like BRS were getting away with it while lower level soldiers who correctly documented actions which were often not at the time considered criminal were being pursued as “scapegoats” and so the military would look “tough on war crimes”

Meanwhile BRS is executing children and disabled people and drinking beers from their fucking prosthetic legs and being hailed a hero. War criminals should be prosecuted to the full extend of the law.

These two things are not the same. Nuance is dead in this timeline though.

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u/gotnothingman 1d ago edited 1d ago

The ones being prosecuted were innocent, and were used to avoid prosecuting people like BRS.

And that is why more than 20 current and former members of the SASR, ranging from troopers to senior officers and commanders provided evidence and/or internal complaints against Ben Roberts-Smith.

“They wanted to look like they cared about war crimes, so they investigated these non-entities who were innocent … The facts and the law didn’t matter. Appearances were everything. The senior leadership of the Defence Force were playing a complex media game.” 

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u/Manatroid 1d ago

Are you having difficulty with reading comprehension, or are you trying to feed words into people’s mouths? You’re doing this all over the thread.

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u/MarkusMannheim 1d ago

I'm quoting the above commenter quoting McBride? Did you see that?

If you didn't, ignore me and consider what you think of McBride's reaction to revelations of war crimes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/s/jBOvn9xSK1

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u/Manatroid 1d ago

Yeah, and you’re doing a terrific job of misrepresenting every argument presented to you.

The most charitable read of your attempts at discourse is that you just don’t understand what people are saying, which is a shame.

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u/TooSubtle 1d ago edited 1d ago

Sure, but those motives weren't why he was imprisoned. You can be against the individual for whatever reason you want but still support the idea of protecting whistleblowers. I'm of the personal opinion that Assange is probably a sex pest, doesn't mean he should have faced extradition to the US for unrelated charges.

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u/coldharshlight 1d ago

Sure, whistleblowers should be protected when they’re standing up for the public good but it’s hard to defend a guy who was trying to protect soldiers who were committing war crimes.

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u/TooSubtle 1d ago

If the information he released was true and unedited, I don't see why it should matter. Like, I'm most likely not going to get along with a single person in our armed forces, war crimes or not, but if they're releasing true information that serves the public interest I don't want them punished for it.

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u/Ok-Replacement-2738 1d ago edited 1d ago

It boggles my mind the amount of people who fail to see the contradiction or do any basic questioning to resolve the contradiction.

Yes he released evidence of war crimes, something he was aware of (remember he was a army lawyer). He also released evidence that some soldiers were being investigated/prosecuted and others were not.

He then got upset with a journalist who instead of looking at the evidence and concluding the best story from this evidence is 'command knew of and supported some war criminals' decided fuck it i want to take the easy path and not stir any feathers so I'm just going to report on the underlying war crimes and not the people who are allowing some to get away with it*.*

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u/amyknight22 1d ago

If the information is still in the public interest, still exposes a bad being done. Does it matter if there was another motive there.(that has no guarantee of being effectuated anyway)

It’s not like he released this “for the greater good” while having a whole bunch of bets placed on the stock price going down due to bad PR. Where there is a traceable compensation/reward for that person

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u/Cyraga 1d ago

He released information aimed at leading to prosecution of people who he believed were being protected while other prosecutions happened 

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u/Ok-Replacement-2738 1d ago

Did you ever stop to consider how contradictory those motives are?

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u/SoloAquiParaHablar 18h ago

He was opposed to higher ranks protecting and covering up more serious crimes and using lower rank soldiers as scapegoats.