[url]http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26961[/url]

Edited title to minimize confusion  RAF

This wench sounds like a wacko.

At least they didn't kill the dogs.

I guess you never had a pet.  Any kids?

The only wackos were a vet and some official that illegally broke into a shed on private property.

That's pretty messed up.  If that happened to me, I think I'd be pretty damned upset too.

I know the brits are subjects, and not citizens, but our bill of rights was based upon the rights of englishmen.  If this had happened in america, let's see--that would violated the fourth amendment (there was no kind of warrant, then the shed was broken into--unlawful search, then unlawful seizure as the goat was removed from it,) the fifth amendment (lack of due process, then property taken/destroyed without just compensation,) and possible the 7th amendment (right to jury trial when value of roperty exceeds $20.)

I know some would say that this was an awful lot of trouble to go through for a goat.  While I do agree that the woman was perhaps a little too attached to her pet, fighting against an unreasonable, and unlawful authority for WHATEVER reason is laudable!

Umm, not to put too fine a point on it, guys, but this was in a hoof-and-mouth-disease quarantined area.  That illness caused billions of dollars in damage to the British economy -- a "September 11th" level of damage -- and they did whatever they had to to eradicate the infection.

Even if it meant snuffing someone's pet goat.

Too bad for the goat, and for the woman, but that's life.  If smallpox ever broke out, I would expect there to be similar strict quarantines -- and the only reason the government wouldn't kill and bury everyone who was infected would be that they're humans, not goats.  Try running the roadblocks, though, and they'd shoot to kill.

The people themselves instituted strict quarantine measures.  All visitors were forced to decontaminate when entering and exiting the property.  The goat was kept isolated from any visitors or other animals.

The folks who showed up to euthanise it did so without ANY paperwork (be serious here, the government--any government--washes along on a sea of paper, and bureaucrats cant even wipe their asses without a form, much less authorize the destruction of private property) and without ANY proof or even reasonable suspicion that the animal was contaminated.  

They then broke into a locked storage area to accomplish their mission.

Not exactly a critical "we've got to do this now" issue, more of a "we've got the power over this peon, so let's just do it."

A classic example of why it is better to be an American citizen with a gun than a British subject with a knife!

At Ruby Ridge they shot the dog, the kid and the mother. For good measure they wounded some other people.

Incident escalated from surveilence to gunfire when the family dog betrayed the presence of undercover officers on the Weaver property. Their cover blown they killed the dog with a suppressed MP5. They Weaver child, not knowing who these men were in the woods who just killed his dog, fired on them with a hunting rifle. After a brief exchange with the weaver boy and his friend a agent was shot. The two boys ran back to the house and one agent shot the weaver boy (12 years old I think) in the back. It all went south from there.

Now I ask you, what damn bit of difference did killing the dog make? Did it somehow make them invisible again? If I was 12 and you killed my dog in front of me, you probably would have gotten the same reaction. Hell you'd probably get the same reaction today.

Excuse me, but WTF has this to do with the subject at hand?

Too damn long to read - FWIW I agree with SA.

Just another example of government creating a bad situation because they view pets merely as property and feel it is at their discretion to make arbitrary decisions about said property.

Doesn't matter.  Hoof-and-mouth's vector is the wind.

"Proof or suspicion" wasn't part of the program.  They were killing every single animal that could possibly ever get infected, whether in the past, present, or future.  Every cow, sheep, horse, goat, llama, or other appropriate quadruped in the district, because even if the animal wasn't infected at that instant, they were cutting a firebreak around the known infections so that a stray breeze couldn't reestablish the disease somewhere else.

It isn't pretty, but neither was nuking Nagasaki.