Regarding Dorner and the support of capital punishment

[Tommy_Carcetti]

4. To me, it's a lot like the Osama Bin Laden situation.

I am 100% against capital punishment, and vocally so.

However, I can't fault there being a looser rules of engagement given the target.

With Dorner, smoking him out doesn't automatically mean killing him. He could have easily exited the cabin before it became fully engulfed in flames, at which point I would expect him to be apprehended and subjected to justice (assuming he didn't come out shooting, that is.) And it's not as if smoking a suspect out is anything new or unheard of: think John Wilkes Booth, for starters.

With Bin Laden, had he fully and unequivocally surrendered with his hands up to the Naval Seals, I would fully expect him to be taken alive. I can only take the President at his word that the mission was not intended solely as a kill mission, but instead as a kill-or-capture mission. However, absent that capitulation, they were dealing with someone who long advocated violence and in his videos always carried a weapon at his side, so I don't necessarily blame a looser rules of engangement. As much as I would like to have seen Bin Laden taken alive, if it comes down to his life or the life of one of our men, I'm going to err on our side.