We are hearing primarily from people on the other side of the pond who have dramatically shown that they are ignoring aspects of the story that do not fit their preconceived notions.

A little sweeping, I think, Ron. I am on the UK side of the pond, and here's a few of the places I do agree with you:

It boils down to red tape and a 200 mile trip that the Orchestra could not make.
Yep, that's it in a nutshell. 'Could not' needs to be read variously as 'would not', 'decided not to' and so forth, but that's it in essence.

/As I've said from the beginning, I do agree that our policies are too strict. Change is needed, but this is not the way to bring it about
I agree that getting into a public spat rarely helps bring about any sort of long-term change and it is unlikely to here. In further defence of the US position, the current arguments with Ken Livingstone where he referred to the US ambassador as a chiselling little crook, while not directly connected, do little to help build the harmonious relationship needed to resolve this sort of problem easily.

I also think the Orchestra has made the issue larger than it needed be... yes to that ... and have thrown around costs that are inflated. I'm not so sure here. A lot depends what is included and what is not. Accountancy is not a simple art. They also failed to continue the dialogue with the Embassy. Faults on both sides here, I suspect. I think it extremely likely the orchestra decided to break off talks first, but I don't know for certain.

The embassy claimed that the cost of moving computer equipment to check fingerprints would be prohibitive and disruptive to their operation. I'm not convinced about the cost of moving the equipment, but I can certainly see that it could be disruptive to their operation. And the main people to suffer as a result of that disruption would be other UK citizens, rather than the US.

So, in summary, I don't think we are as far apart as readers of this thread might think! Someone once used the phrase that people were 'violently agreeing with each other' and there is something of that here.