My question still remains unanswered. Are there any “real” terrorists?

What is the exact nature of the threat to our security?

When do we get a judicial investigation?

Do we still support the rule of law?

You still haven’t provided a real problem.

By the way, the police have had the powers that have you in such thrall since before 7/7.

Didn’t help, did it?

“But he was suspected of being a terrorist.”

So what. If I suspect you of being a terrorist, can I blow you away? After all, maybe you have a nuclear weapon. So if you are killed, MILLIONS of lives will be saved!!! Spot the flaw.

This was not a killing in self-defence or in defence of others. Even if they’d had the right man - and (besides being wrong) they had the thinnest of evidence on which to conclude they had - there was no evidence the guy was about to kill anybody.

No bag, no bomb, no detonator, no bulky coat, no “mobile phone” (which don’t work very well on tubes).

You might want to google the term “dead man’s switch” also.

“IN LAW (whatever that meant) innocent”

It means innocent until proven guilty. You can read about the concept in history books.

Cue Christopher.

A suspect is IN LAW an innocent man. Jean Charles de Menezes was IN FACT an innocent man.

I expect EQUAL justice under the law.

That means suspects get a fair trial, not vigilante “justice”.

And that means policemen can get tried for murder.

” I would really want to know from you what your VIABLE EXPERIENCE BASED solution is to all this.”

Solution to what? An extremely rare type of attack that kills and injures many orders of magnitude less people than diet, smoking, alcohol, road accidents, and much more besides?

Besides, someone who says ‘don’t do something stupid, unnecessary, ineffective, and immoral” doesn’t need to come up with an alternative. The alternative is not to do the something stupid.

BUSH: I propose that we change RED traffic lights to BLUE!

DEMOCRATS: I don’t… are you– I mean I guess we could pull them down part way or something.

http://www.livejournal.com/users/tongodeon/259489.html

I think the problem is that, the moment something goes horribly wrong, the first question asked isn’t ‘Oh no - what did we do wrong?’ but ‘Oh no - how can we avoid being hung, drawn and quartered in public for this?’

Thereafter, the train of misinformation, speculation and news ‘management’ chuggs out of the station and on its merry way…

GM

“It is certainly an issue for the media, as some of the innaccuracies are from “selected” witnesses. These were reported as fact. Note that the family were told directly by the police that the victim was not wearing a “bulky jacket”. But the press just ignored them.”

Not quite, they quietly retracted at a later date. This has been the pattern ever since 7/7 - the media has been full of various BS stories which have been quietly retracted a day or two after (never with the prominence of the original BS, of course). Very reminiscent of the warm up to Iraq, where “Saddam” and “Al Qaeda” were mentioned as often as possible in the same sentence, and you had to read the fine print to realise that there was no link.

After the tube shooting it was also striking how the media was the next day full of CCTV pictures of the flour bombers. Another pretty obvious attempt at media management by waving the terrorist bogeyman in everyone’s face….”Nothing to see here! Boo! Terrorists!”

@AF

“Its only sinister in the way that it is constantly relayed to us. What happened REMAINS a very tragic mistake by police officers.”

Hardly. At best it is gross, and institutionalised, incompetence. At worst it was a planned execution - and still grossly incompetent. More power for these clowns? I don’t think so.

Hell, the “police marksmen” couldn’t even get more than 70% of shots on target at point blank range.

We are left with a discredited police service, a dead Brazillian and no further knowledge of what exactly happened and who if anyone is responsible for 7/7.

I am more concerned about the subsequent confusion over a story that has almost turned on its head. When the stakes are so high we need some certainty.

I wonder if the police ought simply to refuse to speak on demand to the media about such things. Maybe they should make it known that there will be a 7 day cooling-off period after major incidents such as this so that they can at least garner some basic facts themselves.

Because, assuming no conspiracy, it seems the Commissioner got his story wrong almost from the statrt. In such circumstances that’s not acceptable. If he feels the media put him under pressure to produce instant facts before he’s actually in possession of them then maybe he needs to lay down the law (no pun intended) and tell them he’s got some checking of his own to do before he can start talking to the world about it.

GM

Mature journalists know the police make up evidence rather a lot when under pressure, hence the need for so many enquiries. To then carry on this sham debate about “stopping possible al-Qaeda suicide bombers” when no such thing has been proven to exist is the worst outcome.