Comment Re:Ellsberg got a fair trial (Score 1) 519
It wasn't an execution, it was an armed conflict on a battlefield. Americans were shot at from and inside the house. There was every reason to believe that Osama would have a suicide vest or otherwise resist violently to capture. Osama made no attempt to surrender and was therefore a combatant. Of course they shot him on sight. If they'd found him face down naked and spread eagle on the floor screaming "I surrender" they would have taken him alive.
Not necessarily. The truth is that taking prisoners in that sort of OP is very dangerous. Especially the sort of prisoner where they are surrounded by other combatants who would quite happily do something suicidal to help them escape. If Osama survived it may well have been at the expense of every other person in that complex.
I am also reminded of the SAS raid on the Iranian Embassy Siege. In that case the SAS topped quite a few people who were no longer a threat. The first was the leader of the terrorists, he had been subdued by armed police officer who managed to keep his gun through the whole siege. The second and third were a couple of unarmed terrorists who had been convinced to surrender by their hostages. The SAS had orders to "make sure there was no ongoing problem after the siege" and they took this to mean long winded trials and such.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
In the end one terrorist did manage to survive, as executing him after he had been led out of the building in front of the TV cameras would have been a bit iffy.
The truth is that special forces like SEALS are often put in situations where taking prisoners is simply a luxury they cannot afford, unless they are given a strict "must be captured alive" remit. Those sort of missions are probably harder than the ones where you can just shoot anything that moves, especially if the people who you want to take alive are not hostages.