Not really , RR.

There are some legitimate questions raised by people who are sticklers for law and process no matter what if the operation was legal and moral. Look at the letter here by Benjamin Ferencz, a former Nuremberg prosecutor.

The counterargument, which I would tend to agree with in this particular instance was that OBL was fair game due to an ongoing conflict and the 2001 Senate authorization.

Quote:

In 2001, congress passed a law giving the office of the President the “use all necessary and appropriate force” against nations, organizations, or individuals who played a role in the 9/11 attacks.

Harold Koh said, "Some have argued that our targeting practices violate domestic law, in particular, the long-standing domestic ban on assassinations. But under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute 'assassination.' ".

Defending the killing of what the White House has acknowledged was an unarmed bin Laden, Holder said he was a legitimate military target and had made no attempt to surrender to the American forces who stormed his fortified compound near Islamabad and shot him in the head.
"It was justified as an act of national self-defense," Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee, citing bin Laden's admission of being involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States that killed nearly 3,000 people.

It was lawful to target bin Laden because he was the enemy commander in the field and the operation was conducted in a way that was consistent with U.S. laws and values, he said, adding that it was a "kill or capture mission."

"If he had surrendered, attempted to surrender, I think we should obviously have accepted that, but there was no indication that he wanted to do that and therefore his killing was appropriate," he said.

To put it bluntly, as I've written elsewhere you can't step on the football field and then get upset when the linebacker hits you. OBL knew the risks and accepted them. The larger policy of assassination overseas (ie. that American citizen in Yemen) I still disagree with. However OBL was a special case and I wouldn't use the term "assassination" any more than I would have described the killing of Yamamoto as such.

As far as entering Pakistan w/o permission that was illegal, no question about it. But Pakistan doesn't necessarily have the ability to DO anything about it.

Since this is a gangster board I wanted to point out the recent column by the otherwise execrable Maureen Dowd here.


No wonder the president’s top generals call him “a Cool Hand Luke.”

After giving the order for members of a Navy Seals team to execute a fantastically daring plan to, let’s be honest, execute Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama put on a tuxedo and gave a comedy speech Saturday night in a Washington ballroom of tippling journalists and Hollywood stars.

If we could have seen everything unfolding in real time, it would have had the same dramatic effect as the intercutting in the president’s favorite movie, “The Godfather,” when Michael Corleone calmly acts as godfather at his nephew’s baptism at church, even as his lieutenants carry out the gory hits he has ordered on rival mobsters.

Just substitute “Leave the copter, take the corpse” for “Leave the gun, take the cannoli.”