"Oops ~ sorry Jim; had no wish to quarrel."
No - I'm sorry Mike.
I certainly overstated my comparison with Belsen, which was, of course, an extermination camp.
However, I see no problem with describing Guantanamo as a concentration camp holding illegally held 'suspects', uncharged and untried, in intollerably inhuman conditions.
As for Lidice; following the assassination of Heydrich the village of Lidice was raided; 198 women and 98 children were rounded up and sent to Ravensbruch; 137 men were executed.
On the other hand, somewhere between 347 and 504 men, women and children were massaced by US troops - the punishment for which was, as Guest No 6 acurately describes, a travesty of justice.
"By killing OBL, the atrocities he was planning may have been prevented."
As we have no idea which atrocities he was planning (his role has been more or less universally acknowleged as spiritually inspirational rather than operational), we'll never know how many lives, if any, were saved by his being assassinated.
However, we do know that at least half a dozen revenge attacks, minimally reported, have taken place since his death, including a fairly major one in Pakistan - an odd way of saving lives, don't you think?
Not sure of your point about 'The Law of Armed Combat', though it does serve to illustrate the fact that the US appears to regard it as not applying to them.
If nothing else, this turn of discussion does appear to have put to one side your earlier bullshit claim that you don't regard civilian hostages as 'expendable' = "The undropped 2000 pound bomb would have been considered proportionate."
To you maybe (that would be 8 women, 13 children and 4 or 5 men in order to make sure that 1 man didn't escape - are you sure you know the meaning of the word 'proportionate?). To the civilised among us it would have been an act of cold-blooded murder in order to ascertain that their quarry didn't escape; even the US authorities realised this in the planning of the raid and took it into consideration.
Jim Carroll