[Drew]

Originally Posted by HaVoc

Drew, first off you are doing a very good job of proving me wrong, something which doesn’t happen very often, so I would like you commend you that. And secondly I would like to apologize for stereotyping conservatives, more often than not I run across people who simply deny the facts and the support right wing agendas without fully understanding what they are supporting. You are an exception. Anyway maybe it’s not the policies then, but there is no denying the fact that the friendly fire rate of the US forces is disturbing high. I hate to blame it on the soldiers, but is it possible that the squad leaders are trigger happy? After all it is known that the US pilots that bomb the Canadians in the training zone in Afghanistan were given methamphetamine….

I won't even deny that most people who think they share my views tend to be on the less educated side of things. You are beyond 100% correct on that point biggrin:

Anyway, it's hard to really pick out one particular situation in combat and say, "This is why there is friendly fire," or "This is why there are civilian casualties." Combat is a very fluid and unpredictable thing. When you're making decisions with the knowledge that a hesitation or a mistake could potentially cost you not only your life, but cost the lives of your squad mates, it's going to affect your decision-making process. It is probably also a good idea to remember that the United States deploys an exponentially larger number of soldiers into combat situations around the world than does Canada or the UK. This could very easily be the reason for higher numbers of friendly fire incidents.

As for the incident with the US/Canadian friendly-fire.. there were a whole, whole bunch of problems with that. The commander who ordered the training exercise in the first place never reported it to CENTCOM in the area so that all entities in the area were aware. Not even the Canadian AWACS crew, who was providing the radar and imaging data to the pilots, knew that the soldiers on the ground were Canadian. They soldiers on the ground were also firing their weapons as it was a live-fire exercise.

That being said, the US pilots actually violated the ROE by not attempting to evade the fire (they were at 20,000+ feet I believe, which basically already evades any small-arms fire) prior to dropping the bomb. That's a problem with the specific officer and his commander.

As for the stimulants, they were on dexamphetamine as I recall. Very different from methamphetamine. It is still an extremely powerful stimulant, however it doesn't have a majority of the negative effects of methamphetamines.