The current administration would _absolutely_ deny any such mistake.

As much as the current administration turns my stomach, previous ones are not absolved from weaseling their way out of catastrophic mistakes, either.

It's sort of funny that this thread turned into a USA vs Russia debate when they both play the same games. One of them is just slightly better at pretending like they're playing fair and friendly. My take-away from that is once an organized body, be it a country, corporation or religion, gets very large and holds a lot of power, they will inevitably start doing bad things.