Having no further knowledge than what has been reported, it is difficult to judge. Generally, unless your under fire, you want to have cooberating sources to ensure your shooting at the right guys. If the on scene commander had intel that a group of AQ were gathering and the predator was sent to watch for them and attack, then they should have fired. If the predator was out scouting and came across a formation of unidentified "people", you would probably not expect them to shoot unless you could discern from the picture who they were. It may have only been confirmed later that they were bad guys. Or maybe it was a communication failure that the OSC did not know they were bad guys. Not enough public info, and I dont believe the MSM waits to get it right.
Bingo. Yet on this thread we have Freepers accusing Bush of being an idiot, a fool, the same as Clinton, calling the war on terror a farce, claiming we have already been defeated and and our efforts in Afghanistan are phony. All that over MSM speculation over a single video still from a UAV camera. That defines "knee jerk hysteria." And you are exactly right in your concluding comment except I'd add one thing. The MSM has proven time and again that they aren't actually interested in getting things "right" no matter how long it takes. In fact, they often purposely get things wrong...even if they have to manufacture the evidence to accomplish that.