LazerHound. Quite blatantly, in some circumstances, it is impossible to do such things. In which case, I would have thought that you would have to get cover from either your ROE, because you are at war, or an over-riding mandate from the UN. Otherwise, the hit is effectively 00; as in 007, licence to kill, without recourse to any kind of proof whatsoever. To take this a step further, the US could efectively decapitate anyone they like in the world by first branding them a terrorist suspect. As it is, they lock them up for years without trial in a prison in contravention of the Geneva Convention so I suppose the next step is to kill them, to save on beds/food etc. Does the US play by the rules or not? As I said, we can decend to playing by terrorist rules, but then, imho, we cannot claim to be a force for good - the waters muddy.
As for the IRA in Gib?
1988: 'SAS killed lawfully' - Gibraltar jury
The killing of three unarmed IRA suspects by British soldiers was lawful, a Gibraltar court has found.
The jury took less than seven hours to reach the 9-2 majority verdict on the shootings in March 1988 of Sean Savage, Daniel McCann, and Mairead Farrell. The elite SAS team shot the suspects because they believed the republican dissidents were about to detonate a remote control bomb in the tiny British territory.
There was a jury & court involved, post the event I grant you, but justuce was upheld. Will these Somali 'suspects' be tried in court, ever? Probably not. Because most of them were probably collateral.