Reply #21: I don't think you get it. Although a sane person might "wish" that

[truedelphi]

Some hated tyrant die swinging from a lamp post, what separates us from savages is that we have laws. And we use those laws to manage our day to day lives.

Your post reminds me of an OP that another DU'er posted - that if it was okay for civilians and soldiers under Hitler to plot his assassination, then it is also okay to kill off Usama bin Laden, or Khaddafi, or whomever.

But that is apples to oranges thinking.

During the Third Reich, there was no way to bring down Hitler without plotting such an attempt. A civilian certainly couldn't get on the phone and ask the US Marines or special ops people to storm the bunker, as our people were already trying to off Hitler.

But there is no excuse what so ever for us killing Usama bin Laden. We had so many people available to enter his compound that day, and once he was seized, he could have easily been subdued. Then he could have been brought to court. So why wasn't he. (Possible explanations - if he was alive, he could explain how he didn't have anything to do with Nine Eleven - and that would be embarrassing. Or perhaps Usama was already dead, as Bhutto claimed in her interview with David Frost weeks before she was assassinated.)

The case for our seeing to it that Khaddafi had protection isn't as clear cut. THe people who took him perhaps didn't have the resources needed to keep him protected, or else they wanted him dead.