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BBC World this evening headlined the story regarding a friendly fire incident during the opening the operation to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003. Two weeks into the war, two A-10 pilots attacked a British convoy killing Lance Corporal Matty Hull. The story reported that a video of the attack had been leaked.

The video had been classified by the U.S. Department of Defense but a copy had been given to the U.K. Ministry of Defense. A coroner for Mr. Hull’s death lashed out against the MoD for withholding this video. The Ministry of Defense claims that they received the tape from the Americans under the condition that they would also keep it secret because of possible security issues.

From what I’ve seen on the BBC, there was nothing on that video that I can imagine as being classified information. It is plainly evident, however, that this whole situation is embarrassing for the United States. I’m inclined to believe that the only reason why the DoD chose to keep this under wraps was to serve as a sort of damage control to their reputations. After all, no one likes to admit to a screw-up and then have it plastered for the entire world to see.

There are legitimate reasons for the military classifying information. There are U.S. interests that have to be weighed against what inquiring minds want to know. This incident, I believe is not one of them. Personally, I think that it can be useful to serve as an example to future pilots how and why something can go wrong. After consideration, the public may come to understand that incidents such as this one often have a complexity about them which keeps it from being a cut and dry issue.

An inquiry by the U.S. Air Force has cleared the two unidentified pilots of any wrongful deaths. One of the pilots identifying a coalition marker on the convoy and then ignoring it makes me hesitant to fully accept the conclusions of the inquiry. And while I would agree with the military in not sending those two pilots to Britain, I do think that the DoD does need to come clean with the British about the dirty details of this whole affair.