Seriously... This is supposed to be a criticism of my comment? "We haven't actually started rounding people up in internment camps, so we're better than a nanny state where people have mandatory checkups like those nanny state liberals want to do?"

Geebus.

Yetanotherjohn - well framed response.

Pushed to its extremes this is the kind of thinking that leads to the nanny state mentality. We must protect people from not only the bad guys, but themselves as well. After all, unbridled excesses in eating has been claimed to lead to 400,000 premature deaths due to obesity.

Yea, thank god the deaths of 3,000 people 5 years ago hasn't lead to throwing the constitution out the door, several major treaties, the torture and holding of persons without counsel or the illegal wiretapping of citizens in the US.

I mean, that would really, really be far worse than anything any liberal wanted to do, like make you see your doctor every year.

Glad we dodged that bullet.

Pushed to its extremes this is the kind of thinking that leads to the nanny state mentality. We must protect people from not only the bad guys, but themselves as well. After all, unbridled excesses in eating has been claimed to lead to 400,000 premature deaths due to obesity.

Superb! Linking a rightwing wet dream to a leftwing wet dream.

If the police knew that if a mistake was made and they accidentally shot the wrong guy, no matter how certain they were that they had a guy who was an imminent threat, the police would have been thrown to the wolves, do you think they would have hesitated? Absolutely. That would be human nature. Only those who don't think they could make a mistake or who aren't smart enough to allow the possibility of a mistake wouldn't have that threat slow them down.

So let's go with your logic and throw the book at everyone up and down the chain. The trigger man gets life (no death penalty over there). The stake out guy gets 10 years for accessory to murder. The managers get 20 years, etc.

But there is a catch. Just as the police involved here had to make a decision and live with it, so do you. But the deal is from now on, if any terrorist could have been stopped but the police hesitated for fear of being thrown to the wolves if they made a mistake, and someone gets killed by the terrorist, you die (we do have the death penalty over here). You are taking personal responsibility for "doing what is right no matter what" and in turn causing the police to hesitate. If you are right and we live in a better world with the terrorists being just as likely to be stopped and the police less likely to make a mistake, great. If you are wrong, you have personally put your life on the line. You will get a trial, they have to prove that the cop hesitated because he feared a witch hunt if he made a mistake, but if they prove that the sentence is mandatory.

Do you feel that the idea is such a good one if that is the deal?

Of course, you have had a lot more time to think about this than the cops in the metro station did. So you can't complain that you didn't realize what was going on. If you didn't realize that the implications of writing the post were, that you would be put into such a bargain, that is your mistake. And of course, any mistake must be paid for.

The bottom line is that not all mistakes require a scapegoat. Some things, no matter how tragic the outcome, some things are just a mistake. Not a willful act, but a mistake. Should there have been two guys on stake out so one could take a whiz while the other one watched? In hindsight, sure. But how many times have the stakeouts not had a problem and how much more do we pay in taxes to fund the additional manpower? Should the policeman who fired the shots have had a less lethal alternative (such as a taser)? Sure, in hindsight. But what if the less lethal weapons had let the guy get away and set off a bomb. We know now he wasn't a threat, but not at the time.

So what is the ratio of people killed by terrorist in London subways vs those killed by police in trying to prevent people being killed by terrorist? About 77 to 1, I think. Not exactly police gone wild is it? Unless you expect perfection with no mistakes. But then you signed up for that now haven't you.

p.s. I am using the example of you being subject to the death penalty if you contribute to someone else's death by terrorist by slowing down police reaction as an example. In no way is it a 'death threat'.