Macbeth wrote:
I'm fairly certain nobody gives a shit about Paki civilians enough that they wouldn't have accepted the "It would be too dangerous to send troops in" excuse.
Uh, no. Every time the US kills civilians they get shit on by some news outlet. By sending in one of the highest trained SpecOps squads to take him out, you ensure that innocent civilians in the area wouldn't have died. The process the military has to go through to prevent civilian casualties is pretty much ridiculous and they're not just going to pull the trigger on a JDAM and attempt to make excuses for it in a press conference. Maybe if this were 1944, sure.
Oh and in regards to your whole "it was nothing but college kids" argument, wrong as well. At least to my knowledge I'm the only person from this forum who went to either Ground Zero or the White House right after it happened, and the WTC site was flooded with members of Engine 10 (with radios on hand in case a call came in), police officers, taxi drivers, older men and women (some even brought pets for some reason), stock brokers and businessmen/women, members of the military, and so many other people. It wasn't just young college kids. From my 20-30 mins there before it started getting too crowded, I'd say 90% of the crowd was 25 or over.