The inquest into the death of Pvt Jacob Kovco, the only Australian soldier killed on duty in Iraq, has been hearing some rather weird allegations.

First we heard that Kovco had had a dream in which he had a premonition of shooting himself in the head “to see what it would feel like”. Kovco wrote about the dream, which he had exactly one month before his death, in his diary.

Colonel Michael Griffin, said the details were “almost precisely the same” as known events of the private’s death. Family members sobbed as the diary entry was read.

A day later, more details of the accident have been revealed by “Soldier 17″, who was in the room with Kovco when he shot himself. Apparently the two were listening to a Cranberries song and singing along “in a female, homosexual way” when Kovco shot himself in the head.

Private Jake Kovco was skylarking with his two room-mates, singing along to the Cranberries song Dreams just moments before he died.

In a satellite link from Baghdad, the witness, known as Soldier 17, said his iPod was hooked up to speakers and as the three soldiers sang to the loud music, Private Kovco pulled his shorts up high in a joking way. Soldier 17 said: “We were just making fun of the song and singing in the best girl’s voice we could.”

His statement added: “…(singing) in a high voice – female homosexual way.”

Soldier 17 said, “If you’re asking me, ‘Did I see him going for his pistol?’ “No, I didn’t.” But he spoke of the numerous occasions he had seen Australian soldiers in Iraq pointing empty guns at each other and pulling the trigger for a joke.

He said: “The only way he may have (shot himself) was in a joking fashion because of the way we were singing, as if to say ‘this is so gay, I’d rather be dead’”.

We’ve come a long way from the official “died while cleaning his gun” excuse peddled by the military authorities at the time of Kovco’s death. It looks like we have some distance further to go before the truth comes out, if it ever will.

The incompetnce of the military in handling this tragedy has been astounding from the start. First they lied about the circumstances of his death, then they lost his body and flew a stranger’s corpse home with full military honours, then some clown left a disk containing the secret report into the accident in an airport computer terminal.

Meanwhile, the Defense Department of our ally across the Pacific has been criticised for listing homosexuality as a “mental disorder”.

The real mental disorder is the delusion that war is just, that young men’s lives are expendable and that Iraq is any better off today than it was under Saddam.