Extrajudicial Killing: That euphemism comes under scrutiny in Jon Rauch's analysis of the tactics of the terror war:

The repercussions of Israel's "extrajudicial killing" (read: assassination) of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and head of the Islamist militant organization Hamas, have only begun to be felt. In the immediate echoes of the explosion, however, came confirmation of two unpleasant truths. First, the war on terror really is a war, and not a police action. Second, America's terror war and Israel's are not separable, however much we might wish they were . . .

Last week, while Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was being fricasseed for hitting Yassin, the September 11 commission was grilling Clinton's former secretaries of State and Defense for missing bin Laden. Even by Washington's standards, the inconsistency was glaring. Whatever the tactical differences between the two cases, morally they are indistinguishable.

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