[TteFAboB]

Apparently this is a classic case of Jean-Francois Revel's "Blame America First" phenomenon.

Look how interesting is the difference of the media's attitude from the past and present. Blowing with the wind?

Brits, before throwing accusation overseas how about keeping your MoD in check? Look what I found from wikipedia, you can't say you haven't been warned. You knew of the risks:

Lt-Col Larpent argues that defence chiefs should make the fitting of an effective Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system to front-line army vehicles "a pre-condition of the commitment of British troops to close combat operations involving the US air force".

The ministry's failure to introduce a technical protection system that would guard against a repetition of friendly fire incidents was "difficult to excuse", he says.

"There has been plenty of time over the past 12 years for a solution to this problem to be found. The MoD answer that 'we are working on it' is unacceptable."

"That the same soldiers are now preparing to undertake operations in the same theatre with nothing more to protect them from their allies than the same fluorescent marker panels we carried on top of our vehicles smacks of serious negligence on the part of the MoD," Lt-Col Larpent says.

"Our chiefs of staff and politicians should consider very carefully the risk that they could be imposing on our troops and how they will answer to the nation if yet more British soldiers become casualties in similar circumstances."

I know how they will answer! Scapegoatism! The **** hits the fan? Blame America First and forget that YOU WERE WARNED! Knew of the risks and did nothing to remedy in over 12 years.

Despite highly critical reports in 1992 and 1994 by the committees, it was not until the 1998 strategic defence review that the ministry admitted it could not produce an effective system because the three services had different equipment procurement procedures.

Different procedures!!!

Although the procurement system has been reorganised and work is going on to incorporate combat identification into the tactics and procedures of the three services, there is still no firm date for its completion. The audit office warned the ministry last March that modern weapons had left "few safe sanctuaries within the battle space", making friendly fire incidents much more likely.

Last August the public affairs committee said that, a decade after its first report, the MoD had just approved a policy paper on combat identification. Implementing that policy could be years away.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...q06.xml&page=3

I cannot confirm the veracity of this information. Perhaps with a Google research I could find the committees, the reports and the public statements but that would take too much time.

You seem to have problems with friendly fire at home aswell:

The Ministry of Defence is failing to protect military personnel from friendly fire accidents, MPs said yesterday.

The Commons public accounts committee said it had not implemented a full "combat identification" capability more than 10 years after nine British soldiers died in a Gulf war air strike by the Americans.

The committee criticised the ministry for only recently producing a policy paper and said that there was a "dearth" of relevant data.


The MPs said the delays were impeding the effectiveness of weapons systems. The £2 billion Rapier air defence missile system operated at 25 per cent of capability to minimise the risk of friendly fire casualties.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...21/nfire21.xml

I cannot confirm the veracity of this information either. Could be true or it could be just the opposition's political game.

By no means do I intend to remove or lessen the pilot's guilt with this (or the FACs, or whoever set up the comm system, etc.). I've already said that they pressed the trigger so they're guilty. It's just that if any of this is true then the context changes a little bit. As the Brit report said, these things help "shape the enviroment" which allows for the blue-on-blue casualties to happen and in this regard Brits and Americans share responsibility on equal grounds as neither has yet devised a reliable IFF system.

Patriotism: the last refuge of the scoundrel. The cultural arguments I found on the newspapers are simply the most scapegoated, disgusting and lame excuses to a real problem that needs addressing and has nothing to do with culture, but with technology and equipment. Communication would've been better had the Coalition forces trained longer and had more time to properly integrate. Unsatisfactory training and rushed integration is not exactly the Pilot's fault, is it?