Confronting America-hatred

There is a lefty moron in my office who came very close to saying that the US pilots who fired on British soldiers ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6334769.stm) during the initial invasion of Iraq did so on purpose. I generally steer clear of discussing politics at work because most of my colleagues are soft left America-haters (despite working happily for a US company). But this malicious slur was just too far over the line for me to let it slide. According to him, and I quote from memory "They were told three times that their target was Allied and they still went ahead and fired on them. They are just trigger-happy idiot Americans". Here's what the BBC story says-

"Abort your mission. You got a, looks we might have a blue-on-blue situation [a friendly fire incident]" An air controller on the ground says: "We are getting an initial brief that there was one killed and one wounded, over."
One pilot replies: "Copy. RTB [return to base]." A colleague says: "I'm going to be sick."
They then talk about the possibility of being jailed for carrying out the attack.
The first pilot says: "Did you hear?" His colleague replies: "Yeah, this sucks."
"We're in jail, dude," says the first.
The other pilot is audibly upset, saying: "God dammit".

And having listened to the audio, the man mentioned as 'other pilot' sounds like he wants to cry.

Another of my colleagues chimed in defending moron 1, saying that all the units have both identifying marks and electronic devices which flag them up as friendlies. Sort of true, in that some vehicles had the electronic device and some didn't, but not relevant. Moron 1's assertion was that the US pilots intentionally and deliberately killed British troops on the ground. Disgusting and slanderous, it is this kind of comment that now goes unchallenged every day in Britain. I have even heard anti-American comments from supposed conservatives.

To me, this thinking is representative of the irrational, febrile and vicious state of political discussion in Britain, and how far away from common sense, common interests and mundane fact we have moved. All the hippy notions of the sixties and seventies have mutated into these festering hatreds and bitterness, mainly against America. American power is seen as evil and threatening, and British power used to help America becomes evil as a consequence. None of my colleagues have lived in the States and many have not been there. But they are happy in their prejudice.

A plague on all their houses.