> These assassination are occurring in countries that we're not at war with (and in some cases, never have been). Sure, but the issue is two-pronged: 1) Whethe

> These assassination are occurring in countries that we're not at war with (and in some cases, never have been). Sure, but the issue is two-pronged: 1) Whether the target is considered to be "at war" with the attacker and 2) Whether the state he's in allows the military action (or at least, doesn't consider it to be a causus belli). The issue we were discussing is the first (i.e. whether it is appropriate for the U.S. President to put an American citizen on a "kill list" without trial). Many people claim that this is unusual behavior, but it's really not in the context of the military (even in the media, e.g. Apocalypse Now). Or differently, if an American officer had defected to the Nazis during WWII and was known to be in a certain bunker you can bet he would have been facing a bunch of incoming U.S. ordnance. However speaking towards the second point for just a bit, the U.S. assassinated a Japanese Admiral (Adm. Yamamoto) during WWII and didn't wait for him to be in Japanese-controlled areas to do so. He was killed in international waters, and not even during a battle as we think of them. He was a militarily valuable officer in a military organization fighting the U.S. and off he went. And, even if he somehow managed to overfly some nation's airspace, he would have been hit as long as the nation involved would tolerate the incursion. > Furthermore, many the citizens being assassinated have never even been accused of a crime. Well, they have (insofar as the process as it's been released theoretically requires some form of justification). They haven't been accused in a courtroom, perhaps, but that's a civil law matter, not military/international law. I want to stress real quick that I'm not even personally decided for/against on this issue myself, but I'm a firm believer in garbage in == garbage out and so I just wish to point out that this issue isn't as crystal-clear as it's sometimes made out to be. If we treat this as a military affair (and AQ certainly does) then there is plenty of reason to treat the U.S. reaction under military terms as well, and those are much muddier waters than civil/criminal law.