That the US get their will doesn’t mean that it’s reciprocal. Otherwise we’d take US fingerprints (and Chinese, too). The Brazilians have more guts in this regard.
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No of course not (though not the first time a thuggish foreign leader has done something like this in the US) it is, however, opportunity for schadenfreude.
This is the point I came here to make. But I’m going to go further and say D.C. police failing to protect people makes them a party to the crime and though we cannot prosecute these Turkish thugs we can and should prosecute the D.C. police. We should send a clear message to law enforcement that 'To Serve and Protect" is not just a slogan it is their sworn duty.
Furthermore, while it may or may not be true that prosecution cannot take place, we should certainly arrest people who commit crimes even when we know that they may be let go depending on their diplomatic status.
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WTF? Diplomatic guards may have immunity, but they ought to be taken right to the airplane in cuffs.
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Sure … launch the Minutemen!
So the DC cops don’t have tasers?
Don’t know. Am I wrong to enjoy the idea that Erdogan’s bodyguards had to come to the U.S. to get a healthy dollop of free speech?
Yeah. Actually they’re fleeing to Germany.
Based on the video, it looks like they tried - I saw police give attackers a whacking with batons and try to grab guys, but they were overwhelmed by the crowd and chaos.
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Overwhelmed by not bringing enough resources you mean. They seem to always have enough for a good kettling whenever people try to demonstrate, but not enough for this incident?
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I suppose it’s better than the Libyans, who opened fire on protesters outside the Libyan People’s Bureau in London with a submachine-gun, in what was clearly an attempt to murder opponents of the Gadhafi regime. Unfortunately for them, while they hit and injured a number of the people they were aiming at, they also hit and killed a female police officer (the video of her lying dying in the road afterwards is one of those things you can never quite unsee).
The Libyans claimed that they were defending themselves against an angry mob storming the building. Video showed that the “angry mob” was actually confined behind barriers on the far side of the street, where they posed not the slightest threat to anyone and were sitting ducks for the gunman. HM Government was distinctly unamused by the whole business, and some unpleasantness followed. As far as I know, the killer was never brought to trial.
So I confess that my first reaction to the news about the thugs in DC was “At least they didn’t machine-gun anyone this time.” All the same, there’s a horrible sameness to these tyrants and their secret police thugs: attacking protesters in foreign capitals serves no practical purpose whatsoever, but they just can’t seem to resist doing it. Dictators gonna dictate, I guess.
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@cybernixon posted a working link.
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That’s fair, they probably weren’t expecting it to get so out of hand. When I said “could have” I meant more in the legal sense, not what would have been practical, and I could have (and should have) been clearer about that 
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Yeah, although “we need extra resources to protect some protesters because the President of Turkey is coming by and bringing his attack-thugs” probably was not on their list of things to consider…
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Bad habits are hard to break. Unlike, say, protesters’ bones.
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