Friendly Fire from american planes that killed british troop

Originally Posted by northwind

That's what I thought, but they get changed frequently anyway in case of intercepts so that doesn't seem to hold water

That was just an example there's a lot of audio in that video that I could imagine the American's didn't want to release.

Originally Posted by Gmonsta

What struck me was the time for that official sounding abort communication to come through from the British forces via whatever routing it was doing. It was at least a couple of minutes behind the pilots finding out they were friendlies via another link.

Although I never read the Sun unless I am at the barber I think good for them on making it public and keeping the US/UK government on their toes. We get enough bullsh*t from them all.

I agree, but we get the same amount (if not more) Bullsh*t from the media in this country.
The BBC being just as bad imo.

Originally Posted by Steve H

The BBC being just as bad imo.

The BBC have been absolutely terrible over this story alone.

Funny story. We've just been talking about this issue in the office, and one of the guys turns around to us all:

"You know, I used to work with an ex-Marine. This guy helped to train a lot of American Marines. I remember him telling me years ago that he's never worked with an American who hasn't been shot by his mates!"

Originally Posted by Baph

Following the incident, the pilots (and ground control IMO) should of been thrown in jail, ...............The whole incident, and aftermath, is nothing more than a series of minor mistakes,

So you'd throw them all in jail for minor mistakes? War fighting is a filthy, nasty ****ing business that no good man or woman should ever have to get involved in and people are going to die. It's a ****e state of affairs but it's never going to stop.

If we're going to throw people in jail then there are 2 other candidates who spring to mind pretty quickly.

Originally Posted by Tiger 55

So you'd throw them all in jail for minor mistakes? War fighting is a filthy, nasty f*cking business that no good man or woman should ever have to get involved in and people are going to die. It's a sh*te state of affairs but it's never going to stop.

If we're going to throw people in jail then there are 2 other candidates who spring to mind pretty quickly.

A mistake (due to negligence or otherwise) that results in the death of someone, is manslaughter (causing death without intention/malice). During war, causing enemy casualties would not be considered a mistake under most circumstances.

A jail term, IMO, is suitable for manslaughter, however, that would be a decision for the courts, not me to make. As I'm sure they did with the soldiers responsible for this incident.

And I agree completely about those two people you refer to.

Originally Posted by Tiger 55

So you'd throw them all in jail for minor mistakes? War fighting is a filthy, nasty f*cking business that no good man or woman should ever have to get involved in and people are going to die. It's a sh*te state of affairs but it's never going to stop.

If we're going to throw people in jail then there are 2 other candidates who spring to mind pretty quickly.

What I find objectionable about all this is the extent of the attempted cover up by the British Government. The coroner demanded release of the video but the Ministry of Defence stonewalled and refused it, so the coroner dished out severe criticism of the Government for blocking his investigation.

The coroner's reward? He has been sacked.

Sacked for doing his job, which is to get to the truth of what happened.

So these families were denied a proper investigation, purely because the British Government is so frightened of the truth, and so frightened of offending our American friends. I suspect that the families don't want a witch hunt, they just want to know what happened. But the truth hurts, doesn't it.

Originally Posted by Baph

A mistake (due to negligence or otherwise) that results in the death of someone, is manslaughter (causing death without intention/malice).

Must admit I hadn't thought about it that way. But now that I have, I do think that for a mistake to be manslaughter you have to be committing a criminal act in the first place, otherwise there would be no need for verdicts like accidental death.

That said, I am a Scot (where we don't even have such a crime as manslaughter) pontificating about the death of an Englishman caused by an American in Iraq and as such I'm going to shut the hell up.

Any lawyers out there?

First off, having been in the Signals in the Army for a fair few years, and having done ground to air communications several times, I can tell you that there is nothing in all of the broadcast that could be deemed a security risk. Code names and any other sensitive information would have only been deemed secret at the time. Code names and such have a very short life span for obvious reasons.

As to trying to apportion blame and potential deserved punishments, I have no comment to make about that apart from if I were the pilots and had to live with the fact that I had killed an allied soldier by mistake, having to live the rest of my life with that knowledge, would be a life sentence indeed.

Originally Posted by BigApe

As to trying to apportion blame and potential deserved punishments, I have no comment to make about that apart from if I were the pilots and had to live with the fact that I had killed an allied soldier by mistake, having to live the rest of my life with that knowledge, would be a life sentence indeed.

I totally agree.

I don't like the way the press is demonising them either.

Brother in law is a Royal Marine ... he served in Iraq ... this is a direct quote ...

"We were more concerned about being shot by the Americans than the Iraqi's!!"

His commando group all wore Union Jack (Union Flag if you are into technicalities ) underpants and if Americans were in the area they used to pull them up out of their cammo gear so they were clearly on display ... basically they found it less risky potentially revealing themselves to the enemy than risking blue-on-blue with the Americans!! That is a sad state of affairs in modern warfare!!