Lion in Winter

Red herring.

These are not the only two choices we have.

Lion in Winter

And this justifies his shooting how?

Lion in Winter

Oh hell, better shoot 'em all, just in case.

Lion in Winter

Aha! The voice of reason. (Brit? Is that you? )

Mercedes

It doesn't justify his shooting, but innocent people die all the time, and humans make mistakes. I don't see you harping on about the other innocent people who died minding their own business either by some religous fantatic. But now I guess more people may die because some copper in the future, may scratch his head when faced with an actual suicide bomber and decides not to take that shot, because he may get into trouble, and he isn't 100% sure, and the consequence of that action may be train load of dead people and one of them may be even be you or someone you love. Life isn't perfect and people make mistakes, and sometimes innocent people pay the ultimate price.

Ray

That would be Belmarsh cat A ...prison...
In any conflict there will be collateral damage..to people and property

Lion in Winter

Indeed they do. And this is just the point.
And then, when such grave mistakes are made, should we not decide what should be done about it so that it doesn't happen again?

Well no, I'm more of a singer than a harpist really, but I don't think anyone here has argued that the deaths of the people blown up on the trains and buses were anything other than horrible, tragic, unjustified, and wrong. Some do seem prepared, however, to brush off the death of this man as simply "collateral damage" as Bush and his friends would call it. The unavoidable fact of the horror of the bomb deaths doesn't make the shooting by authorities of an innocent man, due to a series of mistakes, any better, or mean that we shouldn't do everything in our power to prevent it happening again. If we start finding it so easy to accept that sort of thing, and justify it - well I've spent time in countries that have been down that slippery slope, and I don't care to see England go that route.

Why do you guess this? I see no logical reason to come to this conclusion.

Isn't the idea to improve procedures and intelligence so that the "copper" actually has a reasonably correct idea of who he is actually facing? Or should they continue to shoot people who are running for the train just in case?

Yes they do. And this man has. And let's not belittle that.

Lion in Winter

But they'd better not scratch your truck, eh?

Ray

That would come under the termination with extreme prejudice rule

ImHere

Everyone's a critic.

Amazing really...all these people that can score goals better than professionals, referee a game better than professionals and work on anti-terrorist jobs better than the professionals.

Lion in Winter

Better use the cold steel, or you'll make holes in the truck. I hear they don't like it up 'em.

ImHere

No...just always be aware of your backstop.

Lion in Winter

Ah, yes, we had one of those in rounders. I don't suppose she would have liked it up.............oh never mind.

ukemigrant

After all the threads about this, and all the posts to the threads, I believe I've come to a couple of conclusions.

1. Some of us lament killing whether it's when terrorists do it, or the people defending us do it to an innocent by accident.
2. Some of us lament killing by terrorists, but not of innocents by accident by the people defending us, if they feel it's justified by the circumstances.

That's the long and short of it IMHO.

Lion in Winter

Actually, it's known as civil society exercising its right to speak up on the issues that matter to it and tell the government how it wants its country to be run. You know, democracy.