Painful English

Sign between the airport and the hotel, "Welcome to the National Capital Region"

Phrase on CNN, "The arrest of the three suspects, the alleged supects." Which begs the questions, if they aren't suspects, why were they arrested.

Quick post on the shooting

Damned stupid.

Every way I look at this it was unconscionable.

It, almost gets worse if he was packing a bomb under his clothes.

This was not a split second decision. They spent not less than 20 minutes following him from the house he left. He walked to the bus, rode said bus, changed for The Tube, was allowed into the station and then chased down and shot.

Plainclothes cops. A gang of men, with guns, chasing him. I don't know what I'd've done, were I him. But it may not have mattered, depending on the actual wording of the shoot to kill directive, and the actual instructions to the officers, he may have been a walking corpse the moment he headed for The Tube.

I know how I'd have run such an operation, if I'd been told to watch/apprehend someone from that building.

Some non-uniforms, to observe the house, and grab him up the moment he walked out the door, if he's a suspect.

We'll take, arguendo, the point of view he's being followed in the hope he will lead them to someone else. At some point they decide he's going to blow himself up (though the MO of this set of bombers doesn't match his behaviour, he had no bag). Stop the bus and take him in.

At the very least they nab him as he gets off.

Ponder this: the BBC reports there were more than 10 (I have seen numbers as high as 20) cops in on this. If they weren't on the bus with him, they were waiting at the Tube, so there must have been some co-ordination, which makes stopping the bus feasible.

Despite this they let a suspected suicide bomber (see above, the lag of a bag/container to leave behind) into a crowded train station. Stupid. Counter-productive and, from the external evidence, not neccessary.

They, according to most reports, had him pinned to the ground when he was shot. That's the part which bothers me most. If he was pinned there was no reason to shoot him, in fact there was every reason not to; dead men can't answer questions. There was certainly no reason to put four rounds into his torso (where there might have been a blasting cap. Blasting caps are notoriously unstable, and they cause HE to go off).

This sort of thing makes the situation less safe. As car alarms created carjackings, I expect this to cause those who are willing to carry out such attacks to create dead-man switches, so that shooting the bomber causes the device to go off. Portable EKGs are just that, so even a head shot isn't protection.

Worse than this is the actual deed committed.

Proponents of capital punishment in the States like to say we've never killed someone who wasn't guilty (though a report last week calls that into official doubt, as opposed to my, mere, moral certainty of it being false). This, on the other hand is a summary execution. What happened in the London Tube is what (in the most favorable light) happpened when the convoy on the way to Baghdad International Airport was shot up. The justification for the liberal ROE there is they troops never know who might be planning to do them harm, so they need to be allowed to kill people who make them nervous.

Britain has said it feels this to be counterproductive, in Iraq, and points to the better relations its troops have in Basra, where they have a much more limited right to shoot people.

But at home they've decided cops on the street are to be allowed to, "Shoot to kill to protect." No trial, no arrest, no chance at appeal. If one of these officers decides you are a threat, he has the absolute right, even duty, to shoot you in the head.

I can't say as this makes me feel any safer.

I've edited my last post.

There were some less than clear comments. They are better now.