Guinea-Bissau president 'killed'

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: BBC

Renegade soldiers have shot dead the president of Guinea-Bissau, Joao Bernardo Vieira, officials say.

The news comes just hours after the killing of the army chief of staff, who had fallen out with Mr Vieira.

Gunfire has been heard in the capital Bissau and it is unclear who is in control of the West African nation.

Bissau is one of the world's poorest states. It has a history of coups and has become a major transit point for trafficking cocaine to Europe.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7918061.stm

[Demeter]

1. Was He A Bushbot? Anybody Know?

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. I'd guess not, but stranger things have been know to happen:

The two men were bitter rivals and both have been accused of being involved in the hugely lucrative cocaine trade, organised by the Colombian cartels who have taken advantage of the country's feeble law-and-order institutions. The UN office on drugs and crime warned last year the country was in danger of becoming a narco-state. Both men have survived assassination attempts in the past four months.
...
Vieira, 69, had been president on and off for nearly 23 years. In 1998 he was ousted in a coup and spent seven years in Portugal as an exile. He returned to Guinea-Bissau in April 2005, two years after his elected successor, Kumba Yala, was also deposed in a coup. Vieira, a Chinese-trained former guerrilla commander in the country's campaign for independence, said he was coming back as a "soldier of peace". He ran as an independent, campaigning among the young and unemployed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/02/guinea-bissau-president

Background: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/02/guinea-bissau-background

[On the Road]

9. He Was Succeeded by Someone

called KUMBA-YAla?

[Posteritatis]

13. And?

Mocking foreign names; how wonderfully progressive.

[Rebubula]

5. LOL

That has to be one of the lamest questions that I have ever seen.

So...let's say that he was. Does that justify his murder and the sending of his country deeper into a probable civil war?

[Demeter]

6. Forgive My Desire to Know Which Side Is Taking a Hit

seeing as my tinfoil hat isn't sufficient protection nowadays.

[anigbrowl]

14. No; ignorance is not an excuse

questioning whether foreign leaders are 'bushbots' is exactly the sort of thinking that justifies assassinations, coups, and so on. You could more easily have taken 2 minutes to look up the history of the country and form a first opinion. Myself, after seeing 2 high-level assassinations of opposing political factions, I figure the next likely development is gunfire in the streets and a lot of civilian deaths. Even if the assassinated president was Bush's #1 fan in Africa, I'm worried for the people of that country.

I fail to see how your question is any different from that of a freeper asking if the guy was an 'Obamabot'.

[Posteritatis]

8. To some here, probably

I find that reaction funny too; looks like people see someone they don't know in the news and have to ask to see if they're somehow connected to Bush (or the US in general) so they can tell what they're permitted to think.

It's telling that that question was the first reaction to this article. Ugh.

[slackmaster]

11. That's pretty cold

A man was murdered. You don't know anything about him, and the first thing you care about is if he was a Bushbot.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

3. The headline says he was shot dead not "killed".

Really, why is killed in quotes? Is he going to make a stunning appearance at his own funeral a la soap operatics?

[muriel_volestrangler]

4. Because they were quoting someone else, and didn't feel it was completely confirmed at the time

The BBC do actually use quotes for their proper purpose - to indicate it's someone else's claim. Now that they have confirmation from more sources, they've changed it. Slightly more annoyingly, they update their stories in place - hence the change from "'killed'", when I posted the OP, to "shot dead".

[Posteritatis]

7. BBC is incredibly meticulous about using quotation marks around any quoted statement (nt)

[Alhena]

10. I hereby offer my services as president of Guinea-Bissau

[conspirator]

12. You have life insurance? nt