Oops, sorry about that, Kurds!

We seem to have really dumb people controlling where our smart bombs fall:

BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. helicopters on Friday mistakenly killed at least five Kurdish troops, a group that Washington hopes to enlist as a partner to help secure Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

The Kurdish deaths occurred about midnight in eastern Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad. The U.S. military said the airstrike was targeting al-Qaida fighters, but later issued an apology, saying the five men killed had been identified as Kurdish police.

The U.S. military said the attack was launched after ground forces identified armed men in a bunker near a building they thought was being used to make bombs. The troops called for the men to put down their weapons in Arabic and Kurdish and fired warning shots before helicopters fired at the bunker, the military said.

Mahmoud Othman, a prominent Kurdish lawmaker who is not a PUK member but has strong ties to the community, said that for U.S. troops, the incident amounted to "attacking the people who support them.

Reminds me of the friendly fire incident involving the British where the complaint was the U.S. pilots were acting like 'cowboys':

An official British inquiry into the friendly fire disaster in Iraq which killed Lance Corporal Matty Hull of the Household Cavalry contains scathing criticism of the actions of the American pilots and ground crew involved, it emerged yesterday.

As the US pilot who attacked the convoy shortly after the invasion of Iraq nearly four years ago was named for the first time, it became clear that the conclusions of the British board of inquiry were very different from the official investigation carried out by the US military authorities.

And that incident in Somalia...

And more recently in Najaf...

And an interesting article about allowing our pilots to use speed.

Update: Make that eight Kurds.