There's a video link from the inquiry room to that which the journalists watch from.  Vision from the Kovco inquiry is supposed to go to no other place even within the amry barracks at which the hearing is being held.  Howvever the Daily Telegraph reported that the inquiry has been halted, all of the journalists evicted from their room and their belongings searched, due to a believed wire-tap by Sky News.   Sky and the Tele have since reported that this was not the case.   The fact, however, that the inquiry believed that an infiltration occurred and acted accordingly belies the level of paranoia at which the inquiry is being conducted.  Perhaps the Austtralian public should consider a similar methodology.

The videos of Australian soldiers behaving badly have been inextricably linked in the minds of the Australian public with the death of Private Jake Kovco.  In the same manner that the "new footage" of Osama "plotting the twin towers" attack, the first of its kind have tied Osama to the current rounds of the "War On Terror", the new tapes from Baghdad, which appeared on the net just as Kovco's detachment returned home, imply by association that Kovco was involved in the politically incorrect horseplay.

On of the earlier stories doing the rounds was that Kovco was miming to the Cranberries song Zombie (you know the one.." in your heeead, in your heeaad..) when the gun went off.  Even though the new video proves that similar activities did occur, it does not, according to any reports so far, show Jake Kovco doing any such thing.  However, guilt by association has already begun.  There are already reports that the inquiry  will at least partially blame Kovco for his demise.

I didn't buy the "fooling around:" story the first time around, and I still don't.  The new Osama footage was "discovered" just in time to be inserted into the S11 5th anniversary docos on Sunday night, and it appears to me that the "discovery" of the Army tapes may have been carried out with a similar intent in mind.

Whether directly related or not, the swapping of the two bodies is still of great concern.  A Halliburton contractor with a moustache, wristband, correct body bag tag (even with the correct passport number) was substituted for a clean shaven man with an orange neck brace and dental equipment around his mouth.. Personally I can't understand that the wives of US truckers working for the company in Iraq aren't up in arms that their loved one's employers have sent the corpse of a co-worker to the wrong country.  Probably they don't know about it.   At any rate, at least one of the dead Australian soldier's relatives worked in the undertaking profession and was able to care for the body Juso Sunanovich until he was repatriated.

Who knows, given the crazy world of Iraq, the two deaths may be related in other ways.   To ensure that Kovco's reputation is finally treated with respect, this avenue of inquiry needs to be pursued as avidly as the others.

If the "Kovco Tapes" turn out to be, like the Defence Minister's statement and the Military Police's "interviews" with the other soldiers, to be prefabricated and at least partially false, I hope Brendan Nelson loses his job.

Back to the Inquiry today, and Shelley Kovco has voiced similar concerns about the mistakes in Kovco's repatration.  She say that Defence thought it would "look good" if Kovco came home on Anzac day.  I wonder how good it would look if television pictures of Haliburton's body going to the wrong place were broadcast in Texas?  It would be almost as bad as what went wrong in the Wag The Dog plot.