Airborne Aircrew,
I admire your defence of your trade in order to suggest that the media are using a lack of understanding of what you do in war conditions to justify claims they cannot support.
However, when such claims suggest such gross abuses of public confidence in the armed forces and all that can be offered by those who should know what really happened is a string of wishy washy non-specific counter-claims or excuses it makes one think one of the following is happening:
someone knows what really happens, its bad, so they want to deny or mislead as much as possible in the hope the public never find out
someone knows something happened but have now realised they should have investigated more at the time, so they want to deny or mislead as much as possible in the hope the public never find out
someone knows what, if anything, happened and that it was innocent and justifiable, yet for some reason they have decided not to defend the reputation of the armed forces by sharing sufficient to make the journalist write the story off as boring and un-interesting
Until positive action is taken by those who represent you to the nation you serve then the media have every right to question the wishy washy details they get. It will also steadily increase the view that "our military aren't quite as innocent as they make out" which I've developed over the last 10 years.
Additionally, the general but non-specific views of "we were at war so don't question us" from members of the armed forces which sites like this it could be suggested promote could well be connected with the decrease in respect the nation has for its armed force.