Ireland moots searches of US military planes

Random inspections may be carried out on US aircraft, the Irish government has warned, after a manacled marine was discovered by cleaners on board a military charter flight at Shannon airport.

The transfer of the prisoner - deemed illegal because permission had not been sought in advance from Ireland's justice department - has aggravated the political row over CIA renditions of terrorist suspects through European airspace.

The US ambassador, James Kenny, was summoned to the foreign affairs department to explain the failure to comply with international regulations. He has been asked to produce a report on the incident.

(snip)
"We will look at all options including, if necessary, random inspections," said Dermot Ahern, the republic's foreign affairs minister. "Given the fact that an incident like this has happened we would put the (police)on notice that perhaps they should start inspecting on a case-by-case basis."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1799011,00.html

Wonder where he was coming from?

The USMC has a rather perverse fondness for shacklles:

SAN DIEGO — The attorney for a 20-year-old corpsman — one of a dozen in an infantry company suspected in the April shooting death of an Iraqi man — criticized his treatment at the Camp Pendleton brig, where he’s shackled at the hands and feet and held in solitary confinement for all but one hour a day.

Jeremiah “Jay” Sullivan III, a former Navy lawyer, said the sailor’s treatment is worse than what some terrorists receive. “Even in Supermax (the federal high-security prison) people get to exercise,” Sullivan said Tuesday during a press conference at his downtown office.

Sullivan would not reveal the identity of the sailor, who is married to another corpsman and who was on his second combat tour in Iraq.

No charges had been preferred against the third-class hospital corpsman assigned to 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, as of Tuesday afternoon, although Sullivan expects the Marine Corps to charge the sailor with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit murder and conspiracy to commit kidnapping in the coming days.

The sailor and seven Marines with 3/5 are being held at the brig at Camp Pendleton, where four other members of their infantry company are being restricted to the base. The rest of the battalion, which deployed in January, remains in Iraq...
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1851659.php

Why was a civilian (I suppose) cleaner on a military flight?
Why were they flying the Marine out?
What had he done?
No permission (assuming the Marine was charged under a domestic law)?

But, not to worry, this paragraph says it all:

The US ambassador insisted that there had been no intention to break the law. "We regret this incident and are reviewing procedures to ensure that this does not happen again," he said.


You can count on that.

That'll show 'em.

about Ireland "mooting" the searches. "Mooting," to me, means rendering something useless or irrelevant. It sounds like Ireland is raising a stink, not mooting the issue. They say they may do random searches. Is that mooting it? I haven't read the full story yet. I know that Ireland, like other rendition flight and secret prison countries, has issued denials about a recent EU report on EU countries cooperating with US human rights violations, either by winking at the flights (Ireland) or harboring prisons. But what you have posted of this article does not support "mooting" the searches, but rather threatening random searches. Could you clarify?

you're supposed to, "Latest Breaking News." The article doesn't explain "moots" either.

WHOA! Where did that come from?

Someone from Congress should bring it up on the floor.

as a moot court. What we colloquially mean by "made moot" is to mean that something has in effect been decided, and any further discussion on it is only an academic exercise. By extension, saying that something is "moot" tends to mean dead, as in argued to death.
It is like the use of the word "prurient" taking the common meaning of "sexual in nature" when it actually means satisfying to oneself from the Latin root preus-- which means itch.
Therefore, a prurient interest in Latin roots is perfectly acceptable, given there are no peepees or woohoos (apologies to John Colbert) involved, as it satisifies myself, in that it scratches an itch I have for learning about Latin origins.