Shooting a suspected suicide bomber before they detonate their bomb sounds like "preventing crime" to me.

Shooting an innocent person sounds like committing a crime to me.

Shooting an innocent person isn't a crime if you're a police officer and you have reasonable suspicion that the suspect is a suicide bomber. It would be a crime if you weren't a police officer or if you were, but your suspicion wasn't reasonable.

Having a reasonable suspicion that turns out to be wrong isn't a crime, quite rightly.

Whether a suspect turns out to be "innocent" is neither here nor there. There aren't any prizes for being right in retrospect.

How do you propose that suspected suicide bombers should be dealt with?

"Come over here and let's take a look in your rucksack, sonny."

of anything...Ah'll start wi' ma'self'. Ouch!..... sorry - Oooch!

I mean seriously a guy in a mask and cape running into the underground train would be cause for concern.

But on the more serious side the same people who provided intelligence about Iraq also provide intelligence about 'potential terrorists' and should therefore never be taken seriously.

Also their collaborators: Metropolitan Police/Pigs as u like had to lie on several occassions just to try and cover up the fact that they cant do their jobs right. First the Guy was over-dressed, then he tried running away from them, then he had a large bag with him, and finally there were wires sticking out of his bag which led them to believe that he was a suicide bomber. The truth? He wasnt wearing a coat, he never ran from anyone, and there werent any wires sticking out of the bag coz there never was a bag. So Zorro the lesson weve learnt today is the British POlice as well as 'Intelligence' service only do damage either to the people of Britain or people abroad and therefore if there was any cause of 'concern' towards public safety the people who should be arrested are the Police and the dickheads at MI5. You keep wearing that mask though coz i wouldnt wanna show my face if i came up with the same shit as u.

Wee fat boab - haud yer wheesht.

let me offer some thoughts...

1) Shoot-to-kill NEVER refers to the policy of the state killing someone as a LAST resort in order to save the lives of other humans. That action HAS NO SPECIFIC NAME and is nothing more than a sensible continuation of the lawful use of violence by state appointed agents under the principle of least harm.

2) Shoot-to-kill (more correctly shoot-to-murder) refers to the specific policy of murdering people because of WHO they are, and NOT because of what they are doing at the moment they are killed. This is complicated by the fact that inherent in the policy is the idea that the murder MUST appear kind of justified to the simple-minded observer. Thus, the act is a combination of state execution AND black propaganda AND convenient circumstance.

3) By definition, shoot-to-kill is ALWAYS illegal under correctly understood concepts of British Law, but has ALWAYS been the standard method of execution by the security services.

4) NEW REICH trolls, like "zorro", use the standard false-argument method of suggesting that the more serious the potential crime, the more serious the state response, with LESS required from the evidence.

The argument goes like this. Shoplifter- minor consequence of crime, restrained response on good evidence. Bank robber- more serious crime consequence, less restrained response on quite good evidence. "Suicide bomber"- very serious consequence, violent response on poor evidence. "Alien from Zarg disguised as human with planet destroying quark bomb in head"- extinction of human race consequence, immediate ultra violent response on near zero evidence.

Some of you may have noted a slight flaw with the logic above. Of course, the logic of "zorro" was the same logic used by Hitler for the existence of his Death Camps and his mass human slavery and execution. He (like "zorro") stated that the risk to the state was so great, that the state was obliged to take the most severe of violent actions on "reasonable suspicion", in the name of crime prevention.

However, are ANY of you suprised when Blair's New Reich goons argue like Adolf Hitler???

5) Beyond the distracting phoney arguments and logic persued by New Reich goons is the real meat of the issue- POWER. "zorro" has the ability to laugh in our faces, because his people are murdering us, rather than we applying justice to them.

Ghengis Khan (and his successors) were well known for their strict and effective approach to crime and punishment. Of course, the man hanging that thief HAD exterminated whole cities down to the last women and child, with a level of depravity unrivaled in human history. Justice is law applied fairly and equally to EVERYBODY. However, people like "zorro" can go to Iraq, rape, torture, bomb, and murder at will, and have committed NO CRIME under the laws of Blair (the UK, UN, and the stooge government of Iraq give TOTAL IMMUNITY AGAINST ALL CRIMES COMMITTED BY BLAIR'S FORCES, MILITARY AND MERCENARY, WHILE IN IRAQ).

Thus, we do not have justice, or anything like it. Instead we have the pure use and abuse of power, and in that case all that matters is who HAS that power, and who does not. Blair is stating clearly that he WILL be free to murder whomever he wishes, detain whomever he wishes, and silence whomever he wishes, and all we will be permitted to do is argue with his agents like "zorro". For people with a knowledge of history, they would realise that this duplicates the situation with Nazi Germany and Hitler to the smallest detail.

That is why we have the second amendment here in the US, because it allows citizens to have some firepower to defend themselves and their property from an unjust government. Please don't give me all that B.S. about guns causing crime in America, look at New York, it has a much lower crime rate and much lower murder rate than London.

Yes, God bless America and its citizens' right to bear arms! Of course it makes sense for it to be legal for you to buy military grade automatic weapons for home use. For banks to be permitted to give away guns as a "thank you" when you open an account. America needs there to be 200 million privately owned guns (that's almost one for every citizen) and of course don't worry that they have more deaths due to shooting than almost every other country in the western world - surely that hasn't anything to do with it!

There isn't any doubt that the intelligence services ought to pull their socks up. But it's likely that the gaffes over Iraq are principally the result of political interference and the misuse of intelligence rather than the intelligence itself being of poor quality. Poor Mr Scarlett seems to have been the victim of some quite unwelcome arm twisting.

Likewise there are many questions still unanswered over the shooting of De Menezes but I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it in the end. As I've said before on this site many times, if it turns out that the police didn't have a reasonable suspicion, I'd be happy to see them in court to answer the case. No-one is above the law.

It still doesn't change the general principle that the police should be empowered to use reasonable force, and what constitutes reasonable will very much depend on the circumstances. Sometimes that means taking care of a suspect in a "no chance to say sorry" fashion. Fortunately it doesn't happen very often.

So they got it wrong. Have you ever screwed up at work? I know I have.

I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Get rid of the police and you end up with the kind of situation that we've seen in Birmingham lately. Frightful stuff and I don't for one moment envy the officers that had to steel their nerves and go and sort that rabble out.

Twilight, you've exceeded your usual standards by a considerable margin. Not just Hitler and Blair (your usual betes noires) but Ghengis Khan too! I await the next installment eagerly.

Your semantic argument about "shoot to kill" was most amusing and informed by more than the usual helping of paranoia. Do you have trouble sleeping?

I'm opposed to the Iraq war, remember, so it's not "my people" that are destroying Iraq, on any side. I find the whole thing utterly disagreeable.

Please take care to notice that my name is Zorro, with a capital "Z" and no quotation marks. Thank you.

Oh, while you're here, weren't there some unsupported wild assertions on various other threads that you were meant to be backing up with references? I think that Observer has the details. Be a good chap and see that it's dealt with, won't you? No-one here really wants to believe that you're not sound.

"Likewise there are many questions still unanswered over the shooting of De Menezes but I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it in the end. As I've said before on this site many times, if it turns out that the police didn't have a reasonable suspicion, I'd be happy to see them in court to answer the case. No-one is above the law."

So would do you think Ian Blair or Tony Blair should be on trial for the policy of killing innocents just in case ? Or both of them ? And should we bring back the death penalty for them ? 'Bring back the death penalty' - as if.

"Have you ever screwed up at work? I know I have."
Sure, I've screwed up big time. Never shot anyone through the head at point blank range 11 times just because they looked a bit arabic before though. Just been lucky I guess.

"No-one here really wants to believe that you're not sound."
And nobody here seems to think you are the best judge of what everyone here thinks. Nor am I need I add, but I wouldn't claim to be or imply I was. A lot of folk here seem to regard Twilight in a poor light, for good cause imo but I may be wrong. However no one here seems to have much regard for you either yet. I'm not scoring points, no one I know will read this and respect is an alien concept to me, I just pass thru here every year or so. Go on, convince me you aren't sitting in the next cubicle down from Twi't working to distract folk who should be out doing stuff to participate in meaningless conversations. Me, at first glance I'd judge Twi't as damaged amateur but Zorro as a professional but I'm flaky so pay no attention to my relatively baseless and pointless aspersions.



On the day the Brasilian was executed there was a SAS guy interviewed on the BBC - the standard SAS guy that they always interview , who took part in the Iranian embassy siege. Not your average liberal. And he said that there is no need to shoot a suicide bomber in the head to avoid detonating an explosive belt - unless by a freak chance you hit the detonator a suicide belt will not be exploded by a bullet passing through it. I don't know if that's true or not but I know the MET PR bullshit about shooting stalkers and shoplifters is designed to distract discussion away from the latest public execution and those same cowboys executed someone for carrying a table leg in public.

"That is why we have the second amendment here in the US, because it allows citizens to have some firepower to defend themselves and their property from an unjust government."

Hey, I'd support your right to blow other US citizens away in your pursuit of happiness or whatever, but please don't put it down to 'opposing an unjust goverment'. How damned unjust does your government have to get before you exercise your right ? Use the 'right' or lose it. Take a pot shot at Bush or forever hold your silence.

Blowing people away for carrying a table leg, ruck-sack, running, or wearing a bulky coat IS the death penalty.

"Blowing people away for carrying a table leg, ruck-sack, running, or wearing a bulky coat IS the death penalty."

Then you need to ask yourself why it doesn't happen more often? Do the police need more resources or are they just incompetent?

Strangely enough, not everything that has the same ultimate effect has the same intention, and life is just a touch more complex than your rather simplistic worldview.

The point of shooting a would-be suicide bomber in the head isn't to avoid a cardiothoracic shot or abdomen shot (and risking detonation). It's because a headshot is going to stand more chance of being instantly fatal. And why is a killshot important? To stop detonation happening.

You sure it was Andy McNab they interviewed or Steven Seagal perhaps???

Of course, this practice could be *easily* overcome by applying [I shan't give away any ideas... different detonators that incorporate different principals].