Jet II: I do not find it offensive, rather it is quite accurate. It was first posted on an army forum and accurately reflects the feelings of a lot of UK servicemen, the army especially who have suffered disproportionately from "friendly fire".
I will compromise with you and take the pic down if you can give me a single instance of an American serviceman being killed through British "friendly fire" in recent conflict post WW2 operations where there was clear and demonstrable negligence on the part of the perpitrators?
I am not anti-American, rather I have an issue with the gung-ho cadre of shoot first, ask the relevant questions later US servicemen. That picture may be shocking in some senses, but it makes a valid point, namely that this is not a game and people die when rash, ill-considred decisions are made or ROE ignored.
Let us for argument sake presume that the RAF Tornado shot down by a patriot was off-course and not transmitting IFF. The ROE, if stringently applied by someone with good a/c recognistion skills should have prevented, or at least dramatically lessened the chances of that incident from happening. I am all in favour of waiting to see the outcome of an investigation. Let us hope that it is not a cover-up such as the one involving the A10 pilots who hit a British Warrior AFV in GW1 who were shipped home on the same day and lost in the system long enough to bog British requests for a court-martial down in diplomatic red tape.
My feelings run very high on this issue and I decline to water them down to make anyone here feel comfortable.