in defense of Lon Horiuchi
Anonymous <anon@anon.efga.org> mumbled:
It's amazing that Freeh would admit that shooting an unarmed woman holding an infant is what "he was trained to do" and was "within the scope of his authority" and that he "reasonably believed [it] was proper" to do so. What are they teaching at FBI school nowadays?
Horiuchi's defense is really no different than Timothy McVeigh's: "yes, it was a mistake but he felt it was justified and reasonably believed at the time that what he was doing was proper..." Too bad McVeigh didn't have a badge saying FBI on it.
Lest any naive readers who aren't familiar with the details of the event buy this kind of spin-doctoring, please be aware that the woman in question was probably not visible to the sniper, and it is almost certain that he was aiming at her armed husband who was shooting back. The bullet travelled through a door or some such obstruction I think (I forget the details) before hitting the victim. You could more reasonably blame the husband for having the stupidity or carelessness to get in a firefight with his wife and child in the building. More generally, don't buy any of the spin that anonymous cypherpunks (and plenty of named ones) like to put on such stories without reading the more balanced accounts yourself. Anonymous, above, would _like_ you to think of the FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi as a murderous baby-killer who chuckled gleefully when he saw his opportunity to take out a toddler. Anonymous is no different from hatemongering pamphleteers and propaganda ministers in any penny-ante revolution or Orwellian minitru. Perhaps he's on the side of the good guys, but his tactics have the same stink that I recognize from reading the propaganda blurbs of the bad guys. Regards, Zooko, Journeyman Engineer
snip snip snip snip
stories without reading the more balanced accounts yourself. Anonymous, above, would _like_ you to think of the FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi as a murderous baby-killer who chuckled gleefully when he saw his opportunity to take out a toddler.
Regards,
Zooko, Journeyman Engineer
Dear Zooko; I dunno much about cypherpunking, I dunno much about much at all, I do know a little about marksmanship, I do know a little about countersniping, I do know a little about use-of-force. The marksman in question fired -we are led to belive- without being certain of his target. This is contrary to all aspects of this type of shooting. Either the marksman in question is a murderer, or he made a very very very very very very very very bad judgement call that he has been trained in probably hundreds of hours of instruction, NOT TO MAKE. Manslaughter is when you get something in your eye while driving and run down a bicyclist. Not when you recive hour opon hour opon hour of training in long distance sniping and hour opon hour opon hour of shoot/no shoot scenario training and hour opon hour opon hour of use-of-force briefings, and you STILL shoot. Thats not manslaughter, thats something else entirely. When you recieve your training in these matters, you are told quite clearly tha t the action you take that adds up to the time between 1/20th to 1/10th of a second that it takes to actually "take the shot" will be reviewed and second guessed by very many people with hours and hours to think about it, therefore one had better be pretty damned certain of ones target before committing that shot. better be DAMNED certain. Even dumb ole me, who ain't no crack shot, with one of those nifty (off the shelf) Styer-Mannlicher countersniper rifles with the neato Zeiss autoranging scope was able to punch a coke can 5 for 5 after one ranging (cheater) shot at 600 meters. I'm told that the FBI has much nicer rifles than that. And I ain't trained. (couldn't hit the Mountain Dew can, couldn't see it) luv chipper Zz zZ |\ z _,,,---,,_ /,`.-'`' _ ;-;;,_ |,4- ) )-,_..;\ ( `'_' '---''(_/--' `-'\_)
participants (2)
-
Chip Mefford -
Zooko Journeyman