So, not only did the U.S. military's pilots open fire on allies and kill a British soldier, they covered up having a tape of the occurrence. And now that it's come out, they're saying it's the British government's fault they didn't get the tape sooner - they just didn't ask the right people.

The transcript reveals as many as six errors immediately before the attack near Basra in southern Iraq on March 28, 2003. On several occasions the pilots, a Major and a Lieutenant Colonel of the 190th Fighter Squadron, the Idaho Air National Guard, say they can see orange panels used to identify coalition forces, but convince themselves that they are enemy rocket launchers. The pilots were not sure what red smoke released on the ground to show them they had hit friendly forces meant, and had switched off communications with the ground so they did not hear instructions to stop firing.

At least, that's the Yorkshire Post's version. The story you get from the U.S. government is that the soldiers followed procedures and made no errors and it helps the terrorists when you let the dead soldier's family know that he got killed by friendly fire.

The soldier's widow, Susan Hull, said the video was the "one and only chance" to hear how and why her husband was killed. On it, one of the US pilots is heard saying: "We're in jail dude," after realising the mistake. "God dammit," said the other pilot, who opened fire. Mrs Hull said she "felt sick" when she finally watched the video and heard the American pilots apparently joking about hitting the convoy. She said L/Cpl Hull's life had been wiped out by "people who don't seem to know what they were doing or seem to care". After realising they had made a terrible mistake, the pilots were "more concerned for themselves than their victims", she added. Mrs Hull told the Sun: "I always knew there was a cover-up -- and this proves it. All I ever wanted was the truth about what happened to Matty, but no one was prepared to be honest with me. "I've waited four long years to see this footage. Finally here I am seeing my husband die at the hands of two imbeciles."

They were prolly hepped up on amphetamines. The pilots take them because they can be expected to stay up for 48 hours on long flights. In 2002, U.S. pilots bombed Canadian infantry in Afghanistan, once again, thinking they were the enemy. The combination of lack of sleep and drugs caused them to pretty much hallucinate and think what they were seeing really was the enemy instead of allies. So strange that these two incidents are so similar...