UK SAR bid process halted

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12389512

Well, exactly – this is the point I was trying to make. Some posters seem to think it as some kind of holy grail.

USA has not killed an innocent in 30 or more years, for the reasons explained.

I know not whether this is true, I am no expert, but a simple google search ‘death row inmates acquitted’ gives some interesting results –

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-list-those-freed-death-row

Now, perhaps this is evidence that the system weeds out wrongful convictions. So it should. But I have little faith that a system that wrongfully convicts 138 people to death (and these are only the ones we know about) has the wherewithal to identify every wrongful conviction.

Also, you appear to be falling for the ‘no true scotsman’ fallacy, by defining all those executed as guilty you discount the possibility some of them were innocent.

Prison is far from perfect, but at least it has some chance of redress. Much more so than other, more permanent measures.

DNA is far from a perfect means of establishing guilt. It can be used, for example, where someone has been, but not necessarily what they did there.

Even if DNA is found on a murder weapon, it can only show who has held it, not who used it to kill. DNA is another, very useful tool for identifying individuals, but it is absolutely no substitute for a properly conducted, thorough investigation.

A valid point from Swerve about the stats, I didn’t read them carefully enough 😉 As for the Nazis, I take the point, but they still came to power by exploiting the weaknesses of the democratic system.

Let’s put it another way then, something more realistic perhaps. Let’s say a party comes to power, a party that no longer recognises the state of Israel.

Would the US cancel all sales to Egypt? Would Israel push for more F-16s or F-15s, or even F-22s?

What are the chances of an extremist party taking over Egypt? If my memory serves me right, the last time an extremist party took over a ‘COUNTRY’ were the Nazis in Europe.

It has turned into a recurring nightmare for western governments. If there is any trouble in a Muslim country, out goes all rational thoughts and we start banging about ‘Extremists will take over’

We didn’t really see people saying fascists will take over Britain during the student demonstrations, and security implications thereof.

I’d rather discuss what we will do when aliens invade than fantasies of Mullahs taking over Egypt.

If by ‘taking over’ you mean ‘elected’, then yes, the Nazis were an extreme party who came to power. Other extremist parties have come to power, such as the Bolsheviks, the Khmer Rouge, and the Mullahs in Iran. Sometimes, what begins as a popular, secular uprising (see Russia and Iran) can turn into something that becomes a extreme political or religious uprising.

Also, with some polls showing that 59% of Egyptians identify themselves as ‘fundamentalist’ and 84% favor the death penalty for leaving Islam, I would perhaps say that the risk of Egypt going the same way as Iran are not entirely implausible. Polls from: http://pewglobal.org/2010/12/02/muslims-around-the-world-divided-on-hamas-and-hezbollah/

But as Swerve and Spitfire point out, there are strong economic reasons why Egypt would not try to antagoise the West.