Jacob Kovco: after the shot, a sickening silence

So now we privatise our war dead, do we? Even some poor bugger who died in circumstances they insist they're not exactly sure about, except that it was a "tragic accident". What other sort is there when someone ends up dead?

And was this why John Howard stayed silent about Jacob Kovco's death until three days after he died? Because the circumstances of Australia's first military death in Iraq look a bit smelly? A young soldier only a month in Baghdad dies with a bullet in the head in the same room as two army comrades, yet nobody "knows" what happened? Come off it.

Then the army repeats the unbelievable. It loses his body.

A friend emailed yesterday: "We talk about a values debate in Australia? F--- me dead! A billionaire media mogul like Kerry Packer, who celebrated his tax minimisation, gets a publicly funded state memorial service, and a Private Kovco, who offered his life for his country and paid the ultimate price, gets treated like a piece of meat." His bitterness only reflects national outrage. How can this be?

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