Reply #8: There's a big difference between permitting something and ordering it. [View All]

Kratos is a set of conditions - which you know I have criticised strongly - that permit the use of deadly force. They do not insist on it.

You knew you details of the case at exactly the same time I did, not before. What I found insulting was the slapdash use of language such as "death squads", and the implication that this killing was motivated on race grounds, which characterised a lot of the pro-conspiracy threads before the police story disintegrated. You can paint yourself as a defender of truth as much as you like, but you and I were both on those threads and saw what was said. The difference between us is that as soon as it became clear that I had been wrong to back the police account, I withdrew my remarks and apologised. But whenever I post fresh evidence that this was a blunder, not a plan, from reliable sources such as the BBC, The Guardian, the De Menezes family, their lawyer, their campaign, and the government of Brazil, I seem to be the one who gets targeted. Either that or claims are made that ALL these sources have been somehow compromised.

There was, it seems, a hopelessly bungled cover-up in the lower ranks, probably more out of panic than design. But the path to exposure was set when senior police officers expressed to Ian Blair their unhappiness with the situation the day after the shooting, and from that point on the emergence of the truth was inevitable. And there was no attempt at a cover-up from central government - none.