Exactly. I can't tell you how many articles I've read in UK papers over the last few weeks going on and on about how wonderful the UK troops are at relating to the people, giving candy to children, etc. while the Americans are a bunch of trigger-happy cowboys.
This is a horrible story, if true (which I suspect it is), but the one saving grace is it may get some of these Brit journalists off their high horse about their troops in relation to ours. Can you just imagine the outcry in the Guardian, etc if this was US troops?
Our soldiers, as soon as circumstances allowed, regarded the local population with rough sympathy, helping them and generally treating them as fellow members of the human race. They stripped off their body armour and helmets as quickly as they could to make themselves less threatening.
The Americans still bristle with weapons and look like martial Teletubbies, swaddled in layers of kit. They seem frightened of everything and everyone and their overwhelming concern is staying alive. To them, every Iraqi is a potential enemy, an attitude that is reinforced by the endlessly instilled doctrine of the primacy of Force Protection.
This mindset has produced a catalogue of deadly blunders. American troops have shot and killed civilians who failed to understand the confusing signals operated by soldiers at checkpoints, fired recklessly into crowds of demonstrators and used batons to beat back crowds of old people trying to claim their pensions.
If military investigators are keen to comb over the conduct of the Allied forces during the Iraqi war there is no shortage of incidents involving American soldiers that demand examination. The alleged activities of Col Collins come a very long way down the list, and seem a peculiar place to start.