In reply to comments:

What could have been done to prevent the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes?

If I knew that, I'd be Commissioner of the Met and not an IT nerd.

All I know is that they'd been tailing him and they probably knew who he was, so they knew he was Brazilian - remember he was here on a student visa, so they'd have him on easily accessible picture records. One snapshot of his face to the right department and hey presto.

Now, in Brazil, if a couple of dozen people with guns start challenging you, you run pal. According to the reports, plainclothed armed police don't need to identify themselves. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. His gut reaction would have been to get the fuck outta Dodge. And our brave Bobby's gut reaction was to execute him.

He was a victim of misunderstood culture perhaps, or overzealous policing, or maybe the chap who blew his head off was just following orders, or maybe he and the police just made tragic mistakes. Maybe the policeman who did it is burning in his own hell right now.

I'm not apportioning blame and I'm not proposing an alternative. Before I even knew if this guy was a terrorist or not, I was condemning what happened to him. And I'll keep on condemning it. "Shoot to kill" policies are wrong. They're wrong in America, they're wrong when the killer is employed by Coca Cola or the Metropolitan Police or the LAPD. State sanctioned murder is wrong, end of story.

If we go around popping caps in the asses (or brains) of anyone who we suspect might be a terrorist, or who acts in a way that makes us believe he's a terrorist, or just pisses us off when we happen to have a gun in our hands and twenty friends to back us up, I can't see how that makes us any better than the people we're ostensibly at war with.

Like I said not too long ago, every person our government kills gives our "enemies" another reason to hate us, another justification for their actions, more converts to their cause.

How is this episode different to wading into Afghanistan and killing or imprisoning everyone who we think might be part of Al Qaida? How is it different to invading Iraq and allowing your citizens to believe a lie in order to easily justify the murders you commit?

Because he might have been a bad guy? because he might have been about to blow up a few dozen of our fellow commuters?

Sorry, I need more than "might have been"'s before I pull the trigger.