OH NO!! Seems one of the jackbooted Air Marshals of DHS has shot and killed a passenger of an aitliner that claimed to have a bomb in his carry on bag, and the man was a US citizen....HORRORS! Shouldn't he have tried to reason with the man? The Marshal totally ignored this mans right of free expression! (/sarcasm)
As far as I'm concerned, as a commenter at Lucianne's said:
"Good aim, big holes, what's the problem?"
There are those that will note that the decident was a Bi-polar that had missed a couple doses of his meds as an excuse for excoriating the Air Marshal.
Having been in similar situations where a life or death decision has to be made in less than two seconds, I can catagorically state that I think that the Marshal did exactly the right thing.
It is a tragedy that a man died because he failed to properly manage his illness, but it would have been a far greater tragedy if the Marshal had erred on the side of PC caution and the man had been serious about setting off a bomb next to an airliner filled with passengers, parked next to a teminal and other planes.
Give that man a big cigar and let him smoke it in public. Wasn't it just yesterday that the left was decrying that the Department of Homeland Security wasn't working? Now they'll carry the banner of excessive force, tough shit. We've established the rules of engagement, they work. What's needed now is it to fine tune the method, they should have shot first, instead of trying to tackle a crazed martyr. This should serve notice to the terrorists that they will be killed instead of being Mollycoddled.
Posted by: Jack at December 8, 2005 12:50 PM