"It looks like he is hauling ass. Ha ha"

Thus did one of George Bush's flyboys laugh as he and another pilot had strafed a British military convoy 48 hours into the Iraq war in March 2003, killing one British soldier and injuring several others.

This controversy has been rumbling for weeks but has achieved a critical level today with The Sun's publication of the transcript of the cockpit radio recordings between the two pilots and their ground command. The Sun also has released the video itself which can be seen on their website (expect slow load times). But the affair will further deflate the last few months of Tony Blair's premiership, as the row over whether the classified Pentagon video could be seen in a civilian coroner's court has contrasted with the eagerness of Blair's government to extradite to the US British citizens who are indicted for financial crimes under anti-terrorism legislation.

On this morning's BBC Radio 4 Today show (sound file), a US Embassy official, in trying to defend the witholding of the video (prior to it being leaked) made reference to how the US military follows a "clear body of law." A claim made on behalf of the most lawless president in US history.

UPDATE: Instead of making the cheap call that the bereaved family now be allowed see the tape -- which they already can, via The Sun -- Constitutional Affairs minister Harriet Harman should be demanding that the Pentagon release the results of its own inquiry into the incident, which likely found that the pilots "followed the rules of engagement," the standard cop-out in deaths of civilians or friendly forces.

UPDATE 2: The Pentagon has now confirmed the obvious --

At the Pentagon, spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.S. military's own investigation concluded that the firing was accidental; that the pilots "followed the procedures and processes for engaging targets," and that as a result no disciplinary action was taken against them.

It's small consolation to the family, but one virtue of the British system of civilian inquests into military deaths is that the coroner can speak more bluntly about potential culpability in a death than the Pentagon's system of protecting its own can.