Big_Bird
Joined: 31 Jan 2003
Location: Sometimes here sometimes there...
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 Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 6:34 pm Post subject: What are our governments doing about FRIENDLY FIRE? |
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Apparantly nothing: Why Won't the US Tell Us How Matty Died?
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The inquest into the death of Lance Corporal Matthew 'Matty' Hull is more than the tale of a man killed by people who were supposed to be on the same side. His death at the hands of American pilots who ignored British army pleas to stop shooting has led to strained relations between both sets of soldiers and frayed diplomatic ties amid fresh fears of an increasingly lopsided relationship between Britain and its closest ally in the 'war on terror'.
The refusal of American authorities to discipline US servicemen who have killed British troops bolsters a perception among UK soldiers that the Pentagon has little regard for the sacrifices made by the British army in its support of the US-led coalition. But the inquest into Hull's death has also raised questions over the Ministry of Defence's attempts to ensure that soldiers' families are told how and why their sons died. Particularly damaging are claims that MoD officials ignored calls to install a system that could have saved Hull's life and that, despite the frequency of 'friendly-fire' incidents, also known as 'blue on blue', the government still has no central database of the killings.
Most serious, though, are suggestions that the British government misled Hull's wife and family amid claims that it kept secret knowledge of vital evidence into the failures of the US pilots who mistakenly fired upon Hull's convoy.
Hull's widow, Susan, was 'categorically' informed that no recorded footage from the cockpit of the two A-10 aircraft from which the shots killing her husband were fired was available. Then, unexpectedly, the tape arrived at the coroner's court last Thursday. Only then did it emerge that the MoD might have known about the vital evidence for years. It was the moment that relations between the US and UK over the treatment of British soldiers mistakenly killed by US servicemen began to unravel. Senior British defence officials asked the US authorities to declassify the cockpit recordings so its allegedly 'incriminating' footage could be screened at the inquest. The Pentagon refused, a reaction that surprised no one who has monitored its attitude towards Britain's inquest system.
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Compounding her grief is the nagging suspicion that her son might still be alive had the MoD heeded calls to introduce new systems to reduce friendly-fire incidents before the 2003 invasion.
In 1992 defence officials were warned they needed a more effective IFF (identify friend or foe) signal on frontline army vehicles. It took 10 years for the MoD just to approve a policy paper on combat identification. A year before Hull was killed, the National Audit Office, which assesses the effectiveness of public spending, concluded that modern weapons had left 'few safe sanctuaries within the battle space' and that more friendly-fire incidents were likely. Months later, a Commons public accounts committee report urged the introduction of a new system to prevent more UK troops being killed by friendly fire. |
The boys we send off as cannon fodder for our dubious wars are not worth the bother or expense of devising a better system for avoiding friendly fire. |
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