A Quote on War and the Legality of Killing

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Reading military literature can afford one a great deal of insight into the mindset and modus operandi of psychos. Here is one quote that stands out in its clarity from the seemingly innnocuous techno-babble of most military publications. It is illustrative of the mindset and it is reminiscent of the unhinged israeli asseverations that everything they do to the Palestinians is "legal":

John Paul Vann, speaking of Vietnam, said: “This is a political war, and it calls for discrimination in killing. The best weapon for killing would be a knife, but I’m afraid we can’t do it that way. The worst is an airplane. The next worse is artillery. Barring a knife, the best is a rifle – you know who you’re killing.” When asking about the legality of using a knife to kill a certain Taliban leader, the author was told by a U.S. Government attorney that use of an edged weapon constituted “assassination,” hence illegal, whereas use of a Predator armed with a Hellfire missile to destroy the man’s home (and possibly accomplish the same end, but also killing members of the man’s family or community) was perfectly legal.

Third footnote on page 8 of "Jihad of the Pen: A Practitioners Guide to Conducting Effective Influence Operations in an Insurgency" by G.L. Lamborn.
PDF at http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/journal/docs-temp/366-lamborn.pdf