So, what would've been the reaction if there HAD been a bomb...

and the Marshalls had tried to calm the man down. Rationally. Calmly. No threats of violence.

Then... :nuke:

Would we be saying "It's a drag all those people died, but the Air Marshalls were a bunch of super stand-up guys for handling it the way they did. Good on them! :patriot:"

I think not.

There would be countless threads screaming about the administration's failure to keep us safe. "Look what Bush has done to America!!". "Where's all the money for security going?!" "HALLIBURTON!!" etc.

I'm just sayin'. :hi:

not one passenger heard him say anything about a bomb.

You just claim that he said something about bomb.

"Sorry, had to waste him, he might have had a bomb."

"It was an emergency, had to act according to training and ask questions later."

if YOU are placed in a position to safeguard HUNDREDS or THOUSANDS of peoples lives, YOU have to make the decision, in a split second, on what to do. YOU dont have the luxury of a discussion board to take a consensus of what EVERYONE else thinks, take bit to digest it, then make a decision.
When the entire story comes out, we can all sit back and armchair QB this to death, but until that time comes, we should refrain from attacking this Marshall as an executioner. I'm glad he is the one in that job, not one of us.

either way. Maybe if there was nuke and they didn't kill him, he would have been able to tell them where to find it? A gun to the head usually helps extract that sort of information and if it doesn't well, too bad airport screening isn't worth a damn.

and once they decided guns, violence, law enforcment, etc. are always wrong, they're always right. (the liberals).

At least 80% of them. Every now and then you'll meet a liberal who actually has an open mind - it's such a pleasure.

generalizations such as "Law enforcement officers are always right?"

Maybe we have core principles, such as "Don't use violence when non-violent means will work."

:patriot:

off before the marshall had the chance to shoot. so ding ding ding that. this isnt a movie where bruce willis gets him before he hits the button

If we can accept the story at face value, it's simply a tradgedy. It's a tradgedy for those who have lost a loved one and a tradgedy for those forced to carry around the burden of guilt for killing an innocently insane man.

If this sort of thing had happened 6 years ago, I would have thought the same thing. The only difference between now and then is I can't believe the story they told. Six years ago, I wouldn't have questioned a word of it. I'm not calling the story into question but it wouldn't surprise me if this guy turned out to be a peace-activist or prominent micro-biologist (Seriously, a lot of micro-biologists have died very stangely over the past few years).

.... A person was faced with a split second decision, and they chose "b" when they should have chose "a".

It could have happened to anyone here put in a similar situation. I feel sorry for everyone involved, it is very much like an accident to me.

But I do think that we've allowed the whole "terra" thing to get blown out of proportion, and you can guess who I blame for that.

job -

and I hope there was no screw up and indeed it was the correct decision -

but in general I'd prefer take him alive.

That's where we are as a nation.

goes off.

So basically we are trading off our freedom and liberty and the occasional shooting of innocents so that we can have a false faith that the nanny state is protecting us from bad guys with bombs.

If we had real courage we would refuse to trade our freedom and liberty for a false sense of security, but it seems that we are for the most part cowards.

apparently, running away shouting about having a bomb? I will fight that strongly. Just because Bush & Co. blow hot air about terra all the time, does not mean that it's not possible for it to happen. In fact, that's one of the unfortunate things they've done: now you have people who think any story about someone with a bomb has to be BS. The fact is, he could have been a real threat, and given the situation, they made the call. It was the 'right' call given the information they had and the situation they were in. It turned out that it might've been wrong to shoot, but in the context of the situation, they responded appropriately.

...shouting about having a bomb?" I find it more than a little odd that the only people stating that he was behaving that way are the air marshals.

And I believe that the passengers DID see the man's wife walking behind the man stating that he was bipolar and hadn't taken his medicine. That was shortly before they shot the man at least one time, and possibly more than five times.

The fact is that he WAS NOT a threat...he was just bipolar.

And, according to the passengers, the SWAT team came on board pointing their LOADED firearms at the passengers, knocking cellphones out of at least one passenger's hands, and generally frightening the crap out of people that had nothing wrong.

"Responded appropriately"? Well...I guess we'll find out as the facts emerge. So far, it's not adding up in the way that it's been officially "explained".

Right?

is EXACTLY what is going on in Iraq DAILY. Most often your troops are WRONG, as were the Air Marshals in this instance. I weep for America.

One man vs. millions is no comparison.

and for you the killing of one harmless person is acceptable because of what might have been but wasn't, but the Iraq war is unacceptable because tens of thousands have been killed. OK. But I think the ethical issue is really quite comparable. I don't think everything was done here to avoid killing a harmless person. I find that unacceptable.

as opposed to the mere SECONDS the marshals had to evaluate whether this man, who according to several accounts was shouting that he had a bomb, was a threat. They did NOT KNOW he was a 'harmless' person at the time; this is something known now. What would you have suggested "doing" to avoid the situation? He was *running from them* despite their telling him to stop. So "negotation" was not an option.

to shoot people when they feel like it. This is totally uncalled for.

shooting him wouldnt have stopped him from BOOM anyway. the reason the bomb didnt go off is because the guy didnt have one. if he did have one, the bomb would easily go off before the marshal could pull gun aim and shoot

so you want to do what ifs......

if anything, wouldn't it be more risky to kill the person who knows how to stop the bomb (meaning they would need him to turn the timer off, etc.?)?

It wouldn't much sense to have them on a timer, would it?

happen, probably he didnt have a bomb. isnt that ironic

Is my question?

Hasn't happened yet. The real bombers seem to always get away while innocent men get shot dead. Just got home a while ago. On my way home I had on talk radio and the freepers also just love guns and shooting. I guess the difference is that we Dems only like it when it sanctioned by our fears and when it is approved by the establishment. Jeesh.....

and is uncooperative, he should be shot down. Sounds to me like suicide by cop.

highly disputed. Suppose he made no such claims, what then? Still ok to kill him?

Now they say he did not claim to have a bomb.

..bouncing around in a backpack.

:(

I try not to jump to conclusions about such matters until I have all the info and some time to process it. All I'm saying is if the opposite result had occured, there would be people here (likely many of the SAME people) having an unfettered shit-fit about how we are so unsafe. :shrug:

(Not to imply you're one of those people, of course. :))

what if? constitutes putting the killing of an unarmed man into a context where you can sell it, or buy it. This is your society...rationalize away...

and it appears on the tarmac from the yellow crime scene tape I could see in the pictures, a small bomb that could be smuggled in a back pack most likely would have killed nobody except the bomber.

If the guy were a sophisticated terrorist with a real bomb he simply would not have acted the way he did. This poor fellow had a panic attack and so did the air marshalls.

The air marshals acted irresponsibly . They should be prosecuted.

Boom!!

someone who is actually trying to commit a crime?

I'm not saying what the marshalls did was wrong. I don't think we have all the information yet. But, if this man was not claiming to have a bomb; then I think what they did was wrong. These marshalls may not have been wrong in that they were following policy; but the policy may be wrong - and I believe it's the policy that should be the main concern.

The more I read on this, the less convincing are the claims of a bomb. From a story on MSNBC:
Before he ran off the plane he “uttered threatening words that included a sentence to the effect that he had a bomb,” said James E. Bauer, agent in charge of the Federal Air Marshals field office in Miami.

That seems a lot less certain then the stories I read last night.

And, yes, if there had been a bomb and the marshalls had managed to stop it from going off, they would be heroes. But that does have to be weighed against the number of innocents that are killed trying to stop that one potential bomber.

Al Qaida gets us by the planeload. The Federal Goverment on the other hand is more methodical. One passenger at at time every 60 years or so

:spank: :D

and had to work this one out.

n/t

I guess it's just you and me, Jake, who can see the point of this thread. :hi:

me 5 bucks for a mixed drink :grr:

then we would look really stupid for saying they should ot have shot the guy. What if Saddam had an arsenal of ICBMs, we would have looked really stupid then too. Or if he had an AlQaeda training camp in one of those fancy palaces, we would have looked really stupid again.

Fortunately, for us reality trumps wild speculation and fear mongering every time and so far we seem to be right more often than we are wrong.

Then . . . :applause:

I'm just sayin'. :hi:

When people are constantly being told to be afraid, they begin to lose their sanity. Shooting an unarmed, mentally handicapped person while he is in flight is nothing short of insane.

YES! Dolo Amber! YES!!

:applause:

Witnesses said Rigoberto Alpizar ran frantically toward the front of the plane, then ignoring air marshal commands to get down. He then reached into a bag before being shot, witnesses said.

http://www.nbc6.net/news/5487847/detail.html

Passengers were throwing themselves on the floor they were so scared of him:

"The man sitting next to me got on the floor," said passenger Olga Echeverrie, of Guatemala. "I threw myself on the floor to pray for God's mercy on us."

Witnesses say he was told to stop and didn't:

"Officers told him to stop and he said no," the teen said. "He was running like a crazy man."

http://www.nbc6.net/news/5491765/detail.html


I don't know about you but it sounded like this guy scared the hell out of the whole plane. It was a frantic, scary, intense situation and the Marshals adrenalin was probably really pumping. No one won here and no one was at fault, it was just a bad situation.

People started going to the floor after the shots were fired and Alpizar was dead. I listened to witnesses who explained that. Before the shots it was just an agitated guy in a hurry to get off the plane with his wife following him.

You just made that part up ("Passengers were throwing themselves on the floor they were so scared of him"). Neither of the stories you linked said anything like that. Why did you do that?

and thought, wow, i didnt hear that. well, changes things again.

thank you for clearing that up. i appreciate it

I haven't heard anybody say that they felt threatened by Alzipar. That may change as statements from the first-class passengers near the exit are received. Maybe they did hear him say he had a bomb and were scared.

But the people diving to the floor did so in response to the Federal Air Martials opening fire on Alzipar. That's when the plane started being terrified, as they heard loud shots outside of the exit.

Their terror continued when swat teams subsequently swarmed the plane yelling and pointing their guns at passenger's heads.

People sure are willing to jump into the comfort of terrorized-American-willing-to-let-anyone-kill-them-to-safety mode.

terrorists and personally i think it is a bunch of shit for anyone to allow some person, .... just a person.... i dont care if he is law, soldier, but for any person to put a loaded gun to my head.

i went thru security 6 months after 9/11 in a relatively small town. they didnt like my attitude. wasnt bad, but early, and not enough coffee, and again, i was the one pulled out. the female cop brought the head male dude to get in my face. for no other reason but to intimidate me. i dont get intimidated. what if that had pissed him off i dont get intimidated and he threw me to the ground. there would be some that say i deserved it, caused it, because i didnt allow this man to intimidate me. wtf,..... i happen to feel being a law abiding citizen, i am to be treated a certain way. when i saw them bring a man over to intimidate a 41 year old woman in a small town, i knew...... we as americans were screwed. and all those that say, they are keeping us safe. well..... this man is dead.

will wait to hear all hte story before deciding how safe they are keeping us americans

I never claimed it was from the articles. The direct quotes are after the collens::::::::::
This was the direct quote: "The man sitting next to me got on the floor," said passenger Olga Echeverrie, of Guatemala. "I threw myself on the floor to pray for God's mercy on us."

I was just summarizing what the article said.


Why would they put this sentence: "The man sitting next to me got on the floor," said passenger Olga Echeverrie, of Guatemala. "I threw myself on the floor to pray for God's mercy on us."

Before this one?:

"Officers told him to stop and he said no," the teen said. "He was running like a crazy man."

Perhaps I am wrong about what order it happened in but that is the fault of the guy who wrote the article not me. He put the sentences in that order.

http://www.nbc6.net/news/5491765/detail.html

why you drew the incorrect connection between people getting on the floor because of a gunfight and turning it into "Passengers were throwing themselves on the floor they were so scared of him:" when the article said no such thing.

You drew a pretty hard inference from just the sequence of sketchy early reporting in that article, but I can see how you did it. Fair enough. Are you willing to back off your conclusion that "this guy scared the hell out of the whole plane." and that "It was a frantic, scary, intense situation" before the Marshals opened fire?

The article jumps all over the place.

He should have said: "After the shots ran out everyone dropped to the floor and feared for their lives" or something similar to that. Instead it starts with the shooting, goes to what happened after the shooting and then goes even further back to when the man started freaking out. Based on the title I drew the wrong conclusion of what they were trying to say.

The title was: Air Marshals Felt Threatened Before Killing Passenger
Passengers Describe Man As 'Frantic'

I immediately got the impression it was chaotic when everything happened and as a Dyslexic I may have twisted the article around in my head.

Sorry for the confusion.

We straightened it out in short order. I see where the confusion stems from. These early articles about tragedies and conflagrations always seem to be like that - a mishmash of impressions and quotes with little overall coherence.

Hopefully people will get past their first impressions based on early 'reporting' if they do indeed turn out to be inaccurate, but those first impressions tend to take hold and color further details when they come in. Reassessment happens alot faster here on DU and the net. It could be days before the media uncolors their early 'Crazy man terrorizes plane with bomb - Marshals save the day!' storylines. By that time people are often no longer caring or even paying attention and have already assimilated their early impressions into their historical understanding.

There was NO BOMB.

The Lime coke was NOT a bomb.

The kitchen timer and ratwheel was NOT a bomb.

The kid carrying a burrito did NOT have a bomb.

The guy trying to retrieve his forgotten camera had NO bomb.

The 3 guys on I-95 had NO bomb.

Please inform me of any incident in recent times where there WAS a bomb.

Frankly, I think the biggest disconnect with Americans is that the country has never been subjected to the horror of bombing, although it's MIC has seen fit to liberally condemn others to such. Perhaps the unconscious fear of blowback is what drives the paranoia... :shrug:

better.

All these people are very happy that he is dead... DU'ers are just relieved that the FAMs had the guy cornered and were talking with him in 1st class, and let him keep his play sack right by him. They are just so relieved that he was able to break away from two well armed and highly trained FAMs get into a tight ass aircraft galley, get onto the jetway the whole time with the wife yelling he is bi-polar and sick. Mostly they are relieved that the FAMs shot an innocent man dead.

So far none of the passengers have been able to corroborate the FAMs story. Im sure they are relieved at that as well.

They have a lot of relief whenever LE of any kind does wonderful things like kill and lie. They will defend them till it is absolutely proven something went wrong because they think they deserve the benefit of the doubt more than a sick citizen.

I can't tell you how many times I heard people use derrogatory language to describe mental illnesses over the last day. There is a part of DU that thinks they are Liberal and compassionate and objective... the ones who used such language and say he deserved it are no better than those we fight against everyday here. They are ostensibly what they profess to despise.

Good article here:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1152AP_Shooting_Deadly_Force.html

<snip>
Although one of the two marshals speaks Spanish, the entire exchange with Alpizar - a U.S. citizen originally from Costa Rica - was conducted in English, Adams said.

Whether Alpizar was mentally ill didn't matter while marshals were trying to talk to him and determine if the threat was real, others said.

"The person was screaming, saying he would blow up the plane, reaching into his bag - they had to react," Amat said.

Indeed, a person's mental illness hardly guarantees that nothing bad will happen, said Jim Pasco, executive director of the National Fraternal Order of Police. If anything, it can make a situation more volatile.

"What if the officer had said, 'I think this guy is full of it. I don't think he has anything,' and that plane had been blown to smithereens. What would the second guessers be saying then?" Pasco said.

David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said he thinks the shooting may prove more "reassuring than disturbing" to the traveling public his organization represents.

"This is a reminder they are there and are protecting the passengers and that it is a seriously deadly business," he said.

---<end of article>

(as opposed to a movie sequence) in which a suicide bomber announced his intentions.

A real suicide bomber would have quietly sat there as he triggered the explosives, and the news reports would have been of "an explosion of an unknown origin."

Getting up and screaming and acting erratically out of the blue should be a pretty clear sign that the person DOESN'T have a bomb and is simply having a psychotic episode.

The Air Marshalls need to go back to school and read case studies of real suicide bombings and attempted bombings and compare and contrast them with the ravings of mentally ill people.

Cuz, hey, what if he/she DID have a gun/bomb/anthrax.

Better safe than sorry.

I was drawn aside and searched three EXTRA times at an airport because I had a one way ticket. Maybe would have been more convenient to shoot me, because they did seem to think I was a security concern.

This guy was apparently flailing his arms screaming about a bomb and wouldn't obey commands. I don't think they needed to kill the guy but your experience does not compare to his.

by a bomb carried into the seating compartment by a passenger? Does anyone know?

The flights on 9/11 didn't involve bombs. They involved hijackings and box cutters.

I thought that the US has been checking for bombs on airlines since the Nixon era.

It seems like a bomb planted in checked luggage that is going under an airplane *without being scanned* is a much more likely place to plant a bomb than in carry on luggage. So my question is this: why would any law enforcement official believe that there was even a slight likelihood of a bomb getting on a plane via carry on luggage when said luggage - and the passenger - go through x-ray and metal-detecting checkpoints? Answer: because even THAT security still sucks!

It's a shame someone died

But if he was acting erratically, and if he claimed he had a bomb, and if he didn't obey the Air Marshall, then he needed to be shot.

You can't expect not to be shot if you act crazy, claim you have a bomb, and don't obey commands from a man with a gun whose job it is to shoot your ass if needed to save the plane and passengers.

(Again the "if" is there, if this is true)

did he have to KILL the guy? I understand it's split second decision making but you're telling me all that training and he couldn't aim quickly for the knee or shoulder or something?

I am not a gun aficionado and I'm sure I'll be relentlessly schooled by individuals with far more gun-commando-sniper-tough person training than I. School away.

Without even lifting a finger, the terrorists won.

I'm going to make this one stick:

We have become a nation of fearful cowardly couch potatos.

Did you see the pictures of the passengers coming out of the airplane with their hands on their heads? That's our future if we tolerate this kind of bullshit.

I've had enough. Haven't you?

Beyond the initial tragedy, this is what's been bothering me the most and this is the first mention of it I've seen in any of the threads on this incident. The photo was on the front page of my local paper. I was perplexed when I saw it. What was the reasoning for this treatment of the other passengers? They just shot a guy and they then assume that everyone else on the plane is a threat as well? That's ludicrous, and I'd be outraged if I (after already being victimized) was treated as a suspect. Isn't it convenient that this provides excellent propaganda to keep people in fear and to know their place in this post-911 American police state - act up and we'll shoot you, with no hesitation or fear of reprisal.

why didn't he use it between Columbia and Miami? Why wait until he landed?
Call me a tin foil hat but I do not buy into this use of force against people in the name of terror when even the original 'terra'act 9/11 raises more questions than answers and, from that day, those I do not trust have grabbed more power while removing basic rights from ordinary people.

What I do know is that a Cubana aircraft with scores of Caribbean citizens was blown out of the sky a few decades ago and the perpetrators are walking free in the US.

I'm too old to buy into bullshit. People who whip up fear will not frighten me into giving up basic civil liberties. I can only die once but fear will not lead me to sanction the slaughter of fellow human beings.
I do not believe one word from these proven liars - not one word.

I decided that I wouldn't do that. Even at the risk of death I would have walked out of that airplane with my head, not my hands, held high. It is time for all of us to just say no. Like the war on drugs, the war on terror is a bullshit game where both sides need each other in order to justify their ongoing outrages perpetrated on us, the people of this planet. From suicide bombers to men in black forcing enemas on blindfolded detainees and hustling them off on midnight flights to torture centers in the former soviet union, the war on terror is big business and we are its raw material.

scatter yourself over a wide area. :)

I doubt he would have told everybody and then waited for the Air Marshalls to shoot him. I'm just sayin... :shrug:

Oh, wait -- it is! We have to torture (er, extract information) because what if a nuk-u-lar bomb might be going off over a major American city in the next 24 hours?????????

Shoot first, pray for no dead-man switch later...


mikey_the_rat

I used to make fun of 24 (see Dave Barry's blogging on the show, it was hysterical,) now you have convinced me that indeed that is what we have for Der Fatherland Security: a bunch of total fucking morans shooting and killing innocents in order to provide a warm comfort zone of blood for us to wallow in. 24 stupid? No way 24 was critical analysis of just waht a massive folly we have got ourselves into here.

in each and every situation. They can never do right, ever. I don't know whether the man said he had a bomb or not, but I for one am going to wait for all the facts to come in before I decide who to demonize.

The Professor

TSA for cutting back on screeners and on their training. And we'd be right. Looks like the marshals might even agree with us.

In a way, this upset isn't about the Air Marshals. It's about how we have to fight to get the straight story any more about any thing.

And then again, it is about the killing of yet another mentally ill person -- a national problem that is recognized by police departments all over the country. :hi:

If we have spent all that money and created another layer of federal bureaucracy so that sneaking a bomb as carry-on onto a plane was still possible, we'd have every reason to call for someone's head on a plate.
The Professor

when you can shoot first and ask questions later!

:-(

I had already had the same thought. I never-ever remember a bomber actually announcing that they had a bomb - except on lousy TV dramas :shrug:

out ot the mouths of babes...