The pilot did not follow procedure. He entered a training area with only visual confirmation of muzzle flashes, and dropped his bombs without waiting for the go-ahead to engage. The result was 4 dead Canadian soldiers and 7 seriously wounded. He should have been court marshalled and sent to prison, just like the pilot cited in the aforementioned article who fired on British tanks in Iraq, which could not possibly have been mistaken for Iraqi armor.

In the Canadian case the charges against the pilot were dropped as soon as it was clear that Canada would not join US and British in Iraq -- it's not our fight. Justice is not a political decision, it is even-handed and objective. This was a blatent act of corruption by the American military, and it is just the beginning, followed up with massive disinformation (lying). I am eagerly awaiting the outcome of this latest incident, even though I expect it to be swept under the carpet, like every other slight suggestion of poor results in the war.

By the way, why is the US in Iraq? After all my research, I still haven't found anything justifying it. Iraq was already producing oil at near-maximum capacity, so no extra oil will be dumped on the market after the war, ie. oil prices will not change. So the oil trade will not pay for the enormous expenditure of this war. Iraq was paying life insurance to the families of suicide bombers in Israel, but that isn't America's fight, and Israel is capable of striking Iraq all by itself anyway (they have before).

Russia looks like the major nefarious player here, with their spies in collusion with Iraqi secret service, making a deal to transport their national intelligence archives to Russia for safekeeping until after the war. This would include information on any shady deals that went on in the past.

North Korea is sure as hell working up a storm, but no one seems to be paying attention.

Iran has been very "neutral" through all this, and yet they were included in the "Axis of Evil", which I agree with, but don't see any action taken against them. Any country that stones people to death should be included, and there are plenty.

These countries are dictatorships, but there are many dictatorships around the world. Almost 200 if I recall correctly.

But all this justification bullshit aside, you can't deny justice to an ally and expect our support in the future, except of course if you need your bullet holes bandaged. We have a hospital ship parked in the Persian Gulf equipped to handle any number of bloody stumps.