In canvassing the opinions of legal experts regarding the death in combat of Osama bin Laden, perhaps Jo might have looked no further than the ANU?

'As a combatant [bin Laden] is ... a lawful target and can be killed because he enjoys no immunity as a combatant. He has combatant status as he is the head of al-Qaeda, an organisation involved in armed conflict with the US, not only because of the events of 9/11 but because it continues to be at conflict with the United States' - Donald Rothwell, professor of international law at the ANU College of Law.

Osama bin Laden was a combatant in a self-declared war against the United States (see his fatwa of 1996, 'Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places').

Bin Laden may have been unarmed at the moment he was shot, but when he ducked into a room upon sighting them, the SEALs legitimately believed he was trying to reach weapons - which were indeed in the room.

By the same principle, does that make Barack Obama a 'combatant' and therefore a legal target, as he is the commander in chief of the US armed forces?

I'm not being facetious - it's a genuine question.

Otokonoko

I agree.

To the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do-brigade:

Those claiming that this is a war situation like WW1 or WW2, which I do not believe it is, must accept that the actions of the SEAL troops invite appropriate retaliation and Obama, therefore, would be a legitimate target.

It's an interesting question. I don't know whether a 'combatant' differentiates between a political-military commander and a field commander and active combatant - as bin Laden was both.

I think the biggest problem facing international law and military law today is that existing laws are mostly predicated on war being fought between nation-states, when many modern conflicts do not fall under this rubric at all.

That's a very valid point as well. I don't know that a great clash of the nation states in the vein of the two World Wars, or the Franco-Prussian War or anything along those lines will happen again anytime soon. Even Vietnam and Korea were not defined along national lines. The rules, as always, have taken a while to catch up.

On a side note - can we do something about those creepy Medibank ads??