But why was it EVER kept secret?

A row has erupted between the United States and Britain over the release of a tape which records the so called 'friendly fire' incident in Iraq where Lance Corporal Matty Hull was killed in 2003 when two US planes opened fire on a British convoy.



At the inquest into Lance Corporal Hull's death, the coroner had requested access to the tape as material evidence. The request was refused by the Ministry of Defence acting on instructions from the Pentagon and the coroner expressed his anger at the decision.

Now today that tape is secret no more. It has been leaked, by person or persons unknown, to the 'Sun' newspaper who in turn have made copies for the TV news services - so its out in the open.

OK, the leak is illegal and the Americans are rightly furious over that, doubting the integrity of Britain's Defence Ministry, for the tape had to be leaked by someone there, surely.

The question is, why was the Pentagon so adamant that the tape should not be released? Oddly enough, what it shows is a sense of responsibility by the American pilots that goes a long way to changing an image which is rife in Britain, fair or unfair, that many of the US air force pilots are 'cowboys'. This impression, maybe first obtained via images from Vietnam, has become embedded in the UK.

The pilots are heard describing the potential target to their command post and if any degree of nonchalance could be levelled it is to the ground command who persistently tell the pilots that there are no 'friendlies' in the area. The pilots ask twice, three times if this is correct and are told 'Go for it, take 'em out'



Again they query their instructions and again they are reassured. The strike is made and then command comes back, with no apparent emotion, and says 'looks like we have a blue on blue situation, guys.'. It is clear that the two US pilots, far from being 'cowboys', have done their level best to ascertain whether they have a legitimate target and when they discover the error, both are totally distraught and one is clearly weeping.

I suppose, from the point of military protectionism, one might suggest that the Pentagon is not over keen to have revealed how misinformed the pilots were by ground control about British forces operating in the area but I feel they would have been better served to allow the coroner's court to have the tape and to use it discreetly.

Now it is all over the national news and friction has developed between the two nations over the leak.

There is an uncomfortable concern though about the number of 'friendly fire' incidents which involve the American military in the role of perpetrators. I accept that they represent the largest number of combatants and thus are likely, numerically, to make more mistakes but there seems little evidence of 'friendly fire' on anything like the same scale from other participants in this, and other, allied conflicts - and this point was made by a defence strategist today, so its not just my lay musing. Maybe the training of the US military is not quite as perfect as the Pentagon would like everyone to believe.

07/02

A late night news update on this story is that the Pentagon has now agreed that an edited version of the tape can go to the coroners court but they are now insisting that the coroners court is closed to the public - which has started another argument. What has further been conceded that the two young US pilots were National Guardsmen with no combat experience and that their basic training did NOT include any friendly forces markings recognition. Thus despite the fact that British convoys have used orange surface markings since the time of the first Iraq war, these two pilots were unaware of the fact. Surely something needs to be done and fast about that!