I'm all in favor of targeting the individuals involved and obiterating their worthless asses.

This whole conflict, since 9-11 and even before, has nothing to do with nation-states, and therefore cannot be dealt with by any conventional approach to "war," where war is understood to be a conflict between one nation versus another. As we have seen in Iraq, targeting a nation or a government has no impact upon terrorist groups, except to swell their ranks by giving (relatively) innocent civilians impacted by "collateral damage" very good reason to hate and fear us, and for many of their young men to join up with our REAL enemies.

There has been a lot of controversy for many years about the shamefullness and international-illegality of, say, covert assassination plots such as what the CIA may or may not have ever planned for Fidel Castro.

I say, go for it! I completely reject the notion that all-out warfare, which causes widespread damage and suffering to so many people and families on both sides, is somehow preferable, or "more honorable," than simply identifying and eliminating a few guilty individuals. There would be no need to mobilize thousands of citizen soldiers; the entire project could be carried out by small groups of well-qualified and highly-motivated military "lifers," and I'm quite confident that, unhampered by political controversy and media coverage, they'd get the job done admirably well.