On Thursday, three British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Two were injured, one "seriously" and one "very seriously". They were killed when a bomb dropped by a US F15 which was providing close air support.
Their deaths bring the total number of British killed in Afghanistan to 73, of which 50 were in action. The largest single incident was the crash of an aircraft. In December 2006 a British Marine was killed in an incident also involving US personnel.
The Americans are slightly more dangerous to the British in Iraq:
In February, (Defence Secretary Des) Browne told MPs that since 1990, 12 UK service personnel had been killed in friendly fire incidents involving American military personnel in Iraq.
In July, the BBC "decoded" a Commons Defence Committee report on Afghanistan to put the conclusions into plain language. The overall picture has not changed (some quotes from the report stripped out for fair use):
- There are too few troops on the ground to win.
- If we are not exactly losing, we are not winning either.
- Too many Afghan civilians are being killed.
- There are still not enough British helicopters to do the job.
- Some of our Nato allies are leaving us in the lurch.
"The reluctance of some Nato countries to provide troops for the Isaf mission in Afghanistan is undermining Nato's credibility and also Isaf operations."
- You can't fight the Taleban and opium at the same time.
- The Afghan security forces are a disappointment - some useless, some corrupt, some actually working against us.
- So the exit strategy has problems, as in Iraq.
"We recommend that the government clarify its planning assumptions for the UK deployment to Afghanistan and state the likely length of the deployment beyond the summer of 2009."
- The media war isn't going well, either.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/...
You will note that the Afghanistan operation is expected to last well beyond the next US election cycle yet the US operations there are virtually unreported in the US unless it comes to the occasional accidental killing of allies or civilians.
The report also helps inform why the UK is planning its pull-back and out of Iraq.