U.S.A.F. Mad or Bad?

Question

With its long history of killing its allies and indeed its own forces, with ‘friendly fire’ I had always assumed that the American military was just massively incompetent. Now it appears that it may be actually criminal.

A coroner conducting an inquest into a U.S. friendly fire attack that killed a British soldier during the Iraq war said on Friday that it was unlawful and criminal.

“The attack on the convoy amounted to an assault," Walker said. "It was unlawful because there was no lawful reason for it, and in that respect it was criminal”.

Walker has called the lack of U.S. cooperation in the inquest "appalling."

Is it fair to label these brave ‘Top Guns’ as criminals just because they couldn’t tell the difference between their allies and the enemy, even though the trucks were painted day-glo orange, and there were no enemy troops in the area?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259081,00.html

Q. 2.
Do you think using childish abuse in your answer adds weight to your argument? Or does it give the impression that you are course, simple and ill educated?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2886715.st.
Well,jungleboy78, the two situations are hardly comparable are they? One incident occurs during combat 'in pitch darkness' and the other during broad daylight when there is no danger to the pilots. Tosser? I won't abuse you, it does nothing for me.

SA Writer, lot of valid points even if you were a little disingenuous about the attack (there were two runs). As for 'Shame on you', I deliberately gave the link for Fox so that I wouldn't be accused of distortion, after all they're not exactly known as a pinko, tree-hugging corporation.

The reality is that there is a lot of bad feeling in this country. US forces have an appalling record in 'friendly fire', not just against us; ask the Canadians. Look at your casualties in WW2, Korea, Vietnam. In Desert Storm there were only 18 British casualties; 9 were from US 'friendly fire'.

Answer 1

a lot of unfortunate things happen during war -- some avoidable, some unavoidable.

this was an unfortunate event, but labeling it as "criminal" is nothing more than an ill-advised, politically-motivated jab at the US military and the war in Iraq.

Answer 2

Let's get a few more facts. The incident in this story happened in March 2003 in the midst of the war in Iraq. The two A-10 pilots asked the fire control station if there were any friendlies in the area and were told "No." At that point they fired on the convoy. After the first pass, fire control called them back and advised they were firing on a friendly convoy.

Were mistakes made? Obviously. Maybe the British Convoy failed to accurately reveal their position to fire control. Maybe the fire control communicator misread his/her map. Who knows what happened that day? One thing that is sure, the A-10 pilots whose position was not in doubt (radar control) asked if the area had any friendlies and were told only hostiles were in the area.

The fact that some misguided British coroner claims it was criminal does not make it so. Elsewhere in the same report he explains that it was criminal because the convoy didn't shoot at the A-10s first, and the planes could only legally shoot in self defense. This was a war! To claim that in war one has to wait to be fired upon before engaging is absurd.

He claims the US is uncooperative. But the Air Force gave them a transcript of their investigation. It was 1,100 sentences and 11 of those sentences were blacked out as classified. I've been there. I can assure you that the 11 sentences had no substantive content. They may have given command & control frequencies, classified call signs, or even certain signals intelligence data that have no bearing on the incident itself.

Shame on you for giving half the story and passing it off as "fact." Even the somewhat slanted news report you cited gave a more evenhanded report than you. You will have to find a less well-documented incident to get any reasoning person to buy your propaganda.

Answer 3

Don't tell me no other country hasn't had friendly fire. In a plane it is very hard to detect who is the enemy, and who are your allies. Have you seen the movie Hart's War? There is an example in there for you to see. The American POW's found a way to communicate with 2 aircraft, of USA who were bombing a train with them on it. The best solution for friendly fire, is for those on the ground to be able to communicate to those in the air. There are also circumstances where an ally, England for one, didn't respond to a radio call to them from Americans, both having been in tanks, so the American's blew up the tank, thinking they were enemies. We, and our allies MUST learn how to communicate, or we lose.

Answer 4

Read this article...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2886715.stm

Now answer this question. British Army - Mad or Bad?

Is it fair to label these brave "Tankers" as criminals because they couldn't tell the difference between their own army and the enemy, even though the tanks were fitted with an identification system and the technology did not fail?

Tosser.

Answer 5

Accidents happen. People are firing all around - someone pops into view - what do you think you might do when you know the enemy are right there?

Now if it was done criminally - as in on purpose - then they will be dealt with. All of our military is prosecuted by UCMJ when they commit war crimes. The # of them committing those is very low.

Answer 6

Friendly fire.

Happens in every war and much worse in the past.

Whether it was a mistake, negligence, or outright criminal targeting of friendlies, it is not indicative of the entire USAF.

ETA: What's your scuba gear for? To keep you from drowning in your own B.S.?

Answer 7

It's called the fog of war!! ******. In order to be criminal, the pilot must have identified them as British troops, decided he hates fish and chips and determined he was going to kill Limies. That's BS. So F-off you pussilanimous pipsqueek!!

Answer 8

Your a fool, you dont understand the complexity involved in identifying a friendly, it take a lot of training and some times there is a margin of error. Im sure your perfect though.

You are the scum on the bottom of my shoe.

Answer 9

It appears that there were mistakes made by both sides. What should be known is what the Rules of Engagement were at the time of this incident.

Answer 10

This question is so obviously biased and distorted that I'm not going to waste my time and energy in composing an answer.

But I will take the two points for posting this.