kbf1,
First of all, have you ever served in the military - do you have any sense of the "fog of war"? There have always been instances of friendly fire - and there always will be. You are not dealing with airliners on final approach but an ever changing and fluid environment.
Second, imagine the flip side. Iraqi aircraft studying and then copying our flight profiles - just so one aircraft can get in and drop anthrax or vx.
We have seen friendly fire too much - our Air Force took out a couple of Blackhawks a few years ago, the Marines biggest loss in the last Gulf War was some LAV's destroyed by A-10's.
Friendly fire, always regretable, happens.