Devices go off in London again

Remove all ads!

But I don't condemn the police officers, I condemn the terrorists whose recent actions forced the police into acting with such (understandable) fear and paranoia.

 

Completely different scenario, Aldeth. In nearly every concievable way.
A guy suspected of terrorist activity bolts when approached by police. Of course the police had to shoot him and had to make sure he was dead. While ever his lungs had breath in them he could possibly detonate a bomb killing God knows how many more INNOCENT Britains.
I feel sorry for the man, because he was innocent, but I fully support the police.

 

I really don't see how it's any different. The guy the soldiers shot was to them a potential insurgent or in other words a suicide bomber terrorist. Additionally I would think that considering what's goint on in Iraq the soldiers there have a bigger reason of being paranoid than the London police.

My problem with the whole thing is not so much that the man was shot but the fact that this policy is completely acceptable. That is the government is basically saying that the police did the right thing in shooting the guy and asking questions later. Shooting an innocent man is a screw up, allways. There is no going around it.

 

I also feel sorry for the police, because they know they have killed someone they should not have. No matter how much you try to sugar coat such an action, they will have to live with the fact for the rest of their lives that they are murderers, even though I'm sure they never meant to be such things.

 

@Chandos, so true, this will never go away for them though we may forget this within a matter of months

@Morgoroth, I think you are still putting some facts aside to the events leading up to "shooting the guy and asking questions later", which I have to say is making our police force sound like cowboys (and that is no stab at the americans). The man was under watch, he was dressed with a large coat on a hot summers day which was dodgy enough, then he went straight to a tube station packed with people, they asked him to stop and he didnt, he ran onto a tube and was put to the floor and shot dead. You must think of what the officers had to decide at that very moment.

@Aldeth, You say that they held him down but that is incorrect they pushed him to the floor and jumped on top of him in hope they could contain most of the blast (if there ever was one) and no its not OK to do this cause the man was inoccent, but what would you think if they found 10lbs of homemade plastic round his waist? As for the whole comparison thing, you cant compare a soldier in forign territory killing a suspected insurgent, to an armed police officer in London tracking a suspected suicide bomber...

...right Im done now...

 

If I remember correctly, the man shot in Baghdad was already injured and was among other dead men, the area having already been cleared out and passed by an earlier group of marines. Indeed the camera man with the bunch that did the shooting even told them this. I admit I may be wrong.

 

I am obviously failing to make my point. Let me start by again saying that I think the police acted in the only way they could have. Yes, I question if shooting him multiple times in the head was the best thing to do, but really for their own safety as well as those around them, the wisest choice of action was the one taken.

While the Brazilian had breath left in him, he certainly could have detonated a bomb. He certainly could have had multiple pounds of explosives strapped to him. The fact that he didn't is immaterial because we have to make the assessment based on what information the police had available to them at the time. The police thought they were killing a potential suicide bomber.

Now let's look at the Iraqi - as far as the U.S. soldiers knew, while the Iraqi had breath left in him, he certainly could have detonated a bomb. He certainly could have had multiple pounds of explosives strapped to him, or a grenade, or whatever. The fact that he didn't is immaterial to the U.S. soldier as well. As far as he was concerned, he was killing a potential suicide bomber.

I guess the point I'm making is that the situation doesn't become similar until the Brazilian is knocked the the floor and officers start piling on top of him. At this point, he is effectively immobilized as much as the injured insurgent. I feel at this point that the Brazilian could have been searched just as easily as the insurgent to determine if he was a threat.

I can't say that I remember anything about the U.S. soldier being told by a camera man that the injured insurgent was not a threat. All I remember is that the U.S. was catching hell because one of the soldiers shot an unarmed man. I won't go so far as say he was innocent as the guy was an insurgent and was trying to kill U.S. soldier before he was injured. To me this is a close parallel to what happened in this case. The police shot an unarmed man. However, in this case, he wasn't even a foreign combatant that had been attempting to kill Britons in the past few days. He was just an innocent civilian. In that regard, it makes it even worse. In both cases, the man killed can be called unarmed, but he cannot be called innocent in both cases.

 

So we can now shoot any person running away from certain neighbourhoods in the head? The only reason being that they are running from the wrong neighbourhood?

I rather see 100 innocent people killed by criminal terrorists than 1 innocent person killed in such a casual and callous way by the institution who is supposed to protect and serve innocent persons.

 

Appolgies if the following question comes across wrong I just want to clean this up a bit...

So if I took 100 of your close friends and family you would rather see them blown up by a terrorist than one of them accidently shot by a police officer trying to protect the innocent even if it be a mistake in judgement?

 

Joac, I understand your point about police using excessive force but I think it's hardly fair or accurate to characterize their actions in this case as "casual and callous."

 

Yes, theoretically of course, pure mathemathics would force me to just have one killed though as it would be too much of a bother to get a complete new set of friends and family.

100 innocent strangers most certainly though.

The issue for me is how and for what reason the one innocent person was killed by the police. Being killed with five shots to the head because you are seen running from a neighbourhood, it doesnt sound wrong to you? It sounds hellishly wrong to me, that is not what the police in a democratic society should be doing.

All we can do is to try to prevent terrorists from committing atrocities while we control the police (hopefully) and shouldnt order them to committ atrocities.

 

From what I understand the man was shot because he came from a neighbourhood that had been under surveillance as one suspected of harbouring terrorists and thus this Brazilian dude was instanstly a suspect when the police spotted him leaving the area and when he ran from the police (due to lack of passport/papers thingamajing afaik) they shot him down as a suspected suicide bomber.

That is how I have understood the situation, please correct me if I am way off.

Either way I cant see how it can ever be the right thing to do to shoot someone dead on a very vague suspicion of a crime.

The really disgusting thing isnt that it happened though, **** happens, police-men are human and make mistakes and so on but that it is condoned and encouraged by the big shots and large parts of society.

Terrorism truly wrecks our reasonably free open democratic societies, but the way they do it is only by encouraging and giving us reasons to wreck them ourselves.

 

What I've found out is that his house was under watch for a time, he came out, went straight to the tube station (which he probably took every day but had been the main target for terrorists), didnt stop when asked to blah blah blah...

And yes your right... **** happens and its being served in double sized servings these days

Its easy to point fingers at a stranger and hard to blame a friend...

 

One thing I find ironic is that the police are being given a pass because they had to make a split second decision and they guessed wrong. I think of the homeowners in England that have been prosecuted and sent to jail for using lethal force in defense of their homes against intruders. Apparantly, to the common citizenry the same rules do not apply.

That being said, I totally support the police in this instance. The guy was an idiot and should never have run in a situation like that.

 

I had to laugh at this one; At a meeting I was in this morning, the leftist nutcase in my department (and after reading this, I think you will have to agree that she is a loon) said that the terrorist attacks in London would not have happened if we hadn't invaded Iraq, and that even 9/11 wouldn't have happened if George W Bush hadn't have taken us into and immoral and illegal war. I started laughing so hard I almost fell out of my chair. One of the other people at the meeting pointed out that 9/11 occurred before we invaded Iraq, and all the loon could say was "you know what I mean" and she stormed out of the meeting. One of my friends actually blew coffee out of his nose!

Seriously, when is the world going to figure out that the invasion of Iraq, or the existence of a Jewish nation in the ME, or the Shah, or whatever else that the jihadists blame their actions on are just rationalizations, and that their real goal is the destruction of western civilization, and the implementation of their view of Islam upon all off us? You can't make peace with these people. Either you kill all of them, or you force the ME to join the rest of the world in the enlightenment of the modern age


I think that even Tony Blair is starting to hint at it.

Source for the following:

 

Ironically, you and your friend should get along very well, as you sustain eqully pathethic conspiracy theories and bogeymen. That's the Jehova's witnesses claim on world domination you are afraid of here!

That's what I thought about Oklahoma. Nuke'em and get over with it! Timmothy McVeigh, your idol ?

And by they way, there is another thread concerning your Blair excerpts already.

Edit: But seriously. There is no world conspiracy, be it catholic, islamic, jewish or whatsoever. All there is is a civil-war like turmoil in a wide region between the far east and here. And there is collateral damage. Bystanders in other countries and from other countries that get hit too.

 

Iago,

First off, I have no idea of who the "your friend" that you are speaking of is.

I have no fear of any religious group taking over the world, but that doesn't mean that it isn't their goal to do so. Christians freely admit it is their goal to "save" everyone by converting them to Christianity, and the Bible states that it is their duty to attempt to do so. The Koran contains many of the same types of directives, but the difference is that while Christians have on many occasions twisted the Bible's meaning to justify horrible actions (the Crusades and the Inquisition for examples), the Koran doesn't have to be twisted to derive the justification for violence.

I believe that the vast majority of Muslims are peaceful people who do not approve of the way in which a small number of people are using their religion to rationalize a radical movement. That said, the culture of the ME is based almost entirely on the Islamic religion, and while the people of this region may not agree with the actions of these radical groups, the culture is such that they will do little or nothing to eliminate or minimize the radicals. IMO there is nothing that can be done to eliminate these radicals until the culture that is permissive of their existence is changed.

Now as to the motives of these extremist groups, there is no empirical evidence that supports the claim that these extremists desire to "just be left alone". These extremists have publicly stated that the west is evil, decadent, and that as infidels we are subject to persecution. This clearly gives insight as to their goals.

Finally, I live in Oklahoma, and I resent the implication of your comment about McVeigh. It is inflammatory, and brings nothing to this discussion, as well as being insulting as I have never expressed any support for McVeigh (or any other terrorist), and I know people who lost family members in the Murrah Building. I have visited the Memorial in Oklahoma City, and I will tell you that anyone who doesn't shed a few tears, and walk out of there in a state of shock needs to have their pulse checked. McVeigh's true motives are still a mystery, and always will be. It is also a mystery as to what groups may have provided support to McVeigh, though it is ironic that there are a large number of people connected to the investigation, including IIRC an FBI agent, who are convinced that McVeigh received assistance from certain individuals who are traceable back to the Middle East.

It seems that it is true; all roads do seam to lead to Mecca.

I do have to state that the fact that you consider someone killed in London or New York, who is a non-combatant, possibly even a child, thousands of miles away from any civil war "collateral damage" a bit chilling. Collateral damage occurs when a bystander is caught in a military action. The people killed and injured in these terrorist attacks are not bystanders, they are targets. Don't you think that seeking to minimize the significance of their injuries or deaths by calling them collateral damage is disingenuous?

 

Well, DW, to be honest you really dont have to twist the bible much if anything to get plenty of justification for all manner of atrocities. Especially if you focus on the old testament, which most hardcore christians seem to do.