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
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