TBH I really wouldn't have put it past the Iraqis to cotton onto that and paint their rockets orange to try and deter being bombed. I hope that wherever the finger points about this incident, it doesn't point at those pilots, their intel was bad, way bad.
As a Brit, I don't hold the US responsible for this, accidents do happen in war, and intel is well known for being screwed up at times, unfortunately in this case, it lead to a blue on blue and lives were lost. Unfortunately, I dare say most of the Brit rags will make it out to be "another incident of outrageous American aggression" and create comments from "They can't bomb the enemy but they can bomb their own." etc, etc.
Hell, no-one's perfect, we've sunk our own subs in WW2...and...it looks like the RM commando unit my grandfather was in got bombed by carrier based UK aircraft with heavy casualties in Suez in '56...heck, as recently as 2003, a Challenger II opened fire on another Challenger II and blew the turret off it, killing two.
So, it's not just the US doing it, unfortunately, that fact is lost in the rapidly growing anti-US stance in Western Europe, (A stance that, despite some disagreements with US policy in recent years, I'm NOT a part of.) which the media seems to love. Particularly ****-stirrers like The Sun.
