Reply #49: Aside from the niggling little technicality ( so quaint and obsolete now as

[coalition_unwilling]

to hardly bear mentioning) that only Congress shall have the power to declare war, according to the U.S. Constitution, aside from that little technicality, I could maybe accept your statement that it is not a bin Laden exception but a 'war exception'. If we took bin Laden's fatwas so seriously, then why did neither Bush nor Clinton ask Congress to declare war? Could it be because one declares war on nations, not on individuals?

I don't think you really want to get into what the Geneva Conventions mandate and the little Orwellian trick Bush and now an Obama spokesperson have used to justify our manifest violations of them, specifically here in justifying the hit job by referring to OBL an an 'enemy combatant.' If you do want to discuss complaince or lack thereof with Geneva, just say the word.

Later in the same paragraph, Greenwald asks another pertinent question:

"Isn't it necessarily the case that you're endorsing the right of the U.S. Government to treat any top-level Terrorists in similar fashion?" So where are you going to draw the line? should we just whack Khalid Sheik Mohammed using your logic? That seems a bit like poor sportsmanship, given that he has already been tortured while in captivity (see above re Geneva).

As for the battlefield being "generally" Afghanistan and Pakistan (your word), nice that you neglected Yemen and Somalia. Extra-judicial executions have taken place there as well. In fact, just yesterday, I saw reports that a drone strike just missed Awlaki in, I believe, Yemen.