I note that neither of your sources indicates which aspect of international law supports their questionable theories. Nice try, but doesn’t convince.

And pls. do honor my request not to continue this thread.

Professor Turner states that “under international law, and legally under Executive Order, there’s no prohibition against intentionally targeting Osama bin Laden or others who are engaged in an ongoing campaign of terrorism against the United States. There may be some pragmatic considerations for doing it or not doing it that are fairly obvious to everybody, but it’s not a legal problem.”

Here is the dictionary definition of malice

Now you claim:

Actually, the definition of malice that I presented is a legal definition

It can’t be both. Which is it?

Besides, what is ludicrous about this conversation is that the discussion of murder began with my quotation of the definition of “murder” from a dictionary, which included the pharse “premeditated malice.” So what does a supposed “legal definition” of “malice” have to do with anything, when the origin of our lexical dispute centered on a dictionary definition of “murder?”

Besides, I notice that you haven’t presented any legal or Constitutional justification for targeted assassination. Therefore all yr other pretty arguments saying we HAD to kill him, etc. are based on military/political decisions divorced from any legal or Constitutional norms.

I’d like to put this conversation to the sleep it so richly deserves. Your last comment restates sentiments you’ve already expressed in this thread. So let’s give it a rest. Feel free to comment on some other thread as long as you have some new ideas to present. But this one’s over for the two of us.

Here is the legal definition of malice as it applies to murder:

“When applied to the crime of murder, malice is the mental condition that motivates one individual to take the life of another individual without just cause or provocation.”

desire to cause pain, injury, or distress to another

And that’s certainly what we did to him.

There was ample just cause and reason for U.S. forces to kill al-Zarqawi

Can you quote me a U.S. legal/Constitutional basis for the doctrine of extrajudicial or targeted assassination?

First, I do not accept the false premise of your question. The killing of al-Zarqawi was NOT a murder. The words “unlawful” and “malice” (which underpin the definition of murder) are not applicable in this case. Here is the dictionary definition of malice: “The intent, without just cause or reason, to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another.” There was ample just cause and reason for U.S. forces to kill al-Zarqawi based on the fact that he posed a demonstrable mortal threat to both our military personnel as well as Iraqi civilians during a time of war.

The unlawful killing of one human by another, especially with premeditated malice.

# To kill (another human) unlawfully.
# To kill brutally or inhumanly.
# To put an end to; destroy: murdered their chances.

Wouldn’t you say we showed “premeditated malic” in Zarqawi’s murder? And Since the U.S. has never attempted to justify legally at least one U.S. citizen/alleged Al Qaeda operative it has murdered let alone Zarqawi, I feel comfortable calling his killing “unlawful.” They’ve certainly never bothered to make a case for it other than they wanted to get the somfobitch. As for the last two usages, they certainly fit this murder.

But you have to understand a few things. Besides my moral distinction between Nazis and other evildoers, the battle against Nazism was a multilateral world struggle in which the U.S. had numerous allies. The world agreed that Hitler was unalloyed evil. Today, we have no such consensus. Yes, most of the rest of the world believes correctly that Zarqawi was little better than pond scum. But virtually no one agrees with our rationale for starting the war to begin with. That is why few except for the true believers think that his murder will amount to a hill of beans as far as the overall Iraq conflict is concerned.

Returning to WWII, we’d actually declared war on Hitler using a legitimate Congressional mandate to do so (as opposed to Bush’s sham Congressional resolution which hardly anticipated the mess he’d get us into). When a country goes to war knowing more or less what it’s getting into there can be much greater consensus around issues such as murdering Zarqawi. But we’re a deeply divided country regarding the war (in fact, the majority now opposes our involvement) partly because of the way Bush prosecuted it to begin with & partly because most people now understand we can never win (or whatever you might call a positive outcome).