[tater]

I have no point? Come again?

There is no way to prevent innocent deaths in military action where combatants intentionally dress and hide among civilians. None at all save not ever engaging them. Terrorists strike, and you make zero response. That has a 100% chance of not killing innocents. ANY other military action can cause unwanted deaths, period.

Show me otherwise, and I'll happily correct myself. US police SWAT teams kick the wrong doors down periodically, and they act within full due process (warrants, etc). People die by those mistakes, too.

My point is we could do very much worse. Any action other than grabbing these few up (total throughput at Gitmo is what?) would be presumably attacking said targets of presumed value (some of which will certainly be mistakenly placed at value). That would mean more innocent dead, period.

"Could have done worse" is fine, and realistic. A "zero tolerance" policy is an impossible standard, and in fact "actionable" intel that results in the use of deadly force has a far lower standard than the due process we afford citizens.

I'm fine with mitigating such unwanted imprisonment as much as is possible, but some loss of freedom by a few is without question better than killing more people. It's a sad calculus, but it is realistic, and has an end result that is better than not doing it.

The 2 atomic bombs, for example, without question resulted in fewer deaths than had the war continued. Fewer Japanese deaths, in fact. Kill a couple hundred thousand to save many more. Tough call, but a good call.