License to kill.

"The International Association of Chiefs of Police [IACP], which represents the heads of police departments in the United States and across the world, has issued new guidelines saying that officers who confront a suicide bomber should shoot the suspect in the head," reported the August 4 Washington Post. Those guidelines "were published July 8--about two weeks before the London police, acting on a similar policy, fatally shot an innocent Brazilian seven times in the head because they mistook him for a suicide bomber."

On what basis would a suspected suicide bomber be recognized? The IACP's "behavioral profile" recommends that officers look for "multiple anomalies" in individual behavior, including (as paraphrased by the Post) "wearing a heavy coat or jacket in warm weather or carrying a briefcase, duffel bag or backpack with protrusions or visible wires. The person might display nervousness, an unwillingness to make eye contact or excessive sweating. There might be chemical burns on the clothing or stains on the hands. The person might mumble prayers or be 'pacing back and forth in front of a venue.'"

All of these "anomalies" combined do not produce clear evidence of an imminent danger, of course. But the new guidelines emphasize that the suspected threat does not have to be "imminent"; rather, all that is necessary to justify a preemptive head shot would be a "reasonable basis" to believe that the targeted individual is a suicide bomber.

"I can guarantee you that if we have, God forbid, a suicide bomber in a big city in the United States, 'shoot to kill' will be the inevitable policy," predicts Miami Police Chief John F. Timoney. "It is not a policy we choose lightly, but it's the only policy." This is because in a situation involving an actual suicide bomber, police "need to get him dead as quick as possible," continues Chief Timoney. "The easiest way to do that is a head shot. That's the only way to guarantee.... If you shot him in the upper torso, that person would be able to make movements and make sure the bomb, if he had it, could go off. A body shot very seldom kills instantly."

It's worth remembering that one objective of terrorism, as described in Carlos Marighella's Mini-Manual for the Urban Guerrilla, is to provoke law enforcement agencies "to intensify repression. The police roundups, house searches, arrests of innocent people, make life unbearable." For their part, the terrorists escalate their tactics, "resorting without letup to sabotage, terrorism, expropriations, assaults, kidnappings, and executions, heightening the disastrous situation" until political liberty is extinguished. Authorizing law enforcement officers summarily to shoot in the head anyone displaying "multiple [behavioral] anomalies" fits Marighella's formula perfectly.