I am in no way qualified to answer the question as to legality. JMM has got to be the man on that one.

I would also suggest that sometimes, you need to kill more than just combatants. Political leaderships being one, and unarmed (woman with a cell-phone) reconnaissance being another.
It is your straight shooting common sense that I love, but eventually I intend to sell you some IW stuff .

Getting back to the real issue, you hit the nail on the head once again, and thus supported (probably unintentionally) my argument that our current targeting focus, which is focused on the militants and the bomb makers is far from complete. We need to identify the underground political structure and neutralize it with equal priority, to include their propagandists.

The question is not the practice of war by the opponent but your practice of war.
I disagree, the Geneva Convention is an "agreement" between potential warring parties; sort of a quid pro quo thing. I realize there are rules of law beyond the Geneva Convention, but if your enemy fails to follow anything resembling a set of rules of conduct (murdering civilians intentionally, using human shields, terrribly mutating their prisoners, etc.), then why are we obligated to treat them like Soldiers? I'm not advocating whole sale slaughter or torture, but simply that they haven't earned the right of being treated like a legal combatant.

I got you, we did some stupid stuff on "rare" occassions, and of course those events were magnified in the media a 1,000 fold. You would think the undisciplined kids in Abu Grab (sp?) reflected the majority of our military instead the aberration that it actually was.

The first casualty of war is the truth, and this is just one example.

I'm not an advocate for torture, or even abuse, but I am an advocate for killing those non-shooting insurgents/terrorists who post videos on the web that inflame hate and recruitment to the radical side as much as I support killing those who are emplacing IEDs. Those videos translate into lethal fires over time.

Then the cause has to be just otherwise you have in fact a bench of genius monkeys. Or you have trained people that have been cheated and the day they realise they are being taken for donkeys you are in deep troubles.
With the exception of your use of "monkeys" I agree, and I think we experienced that in Vietnam, and perhaps other conflicts. In Afghanistan our cause is trust (our methods may be off track, but the reason we're there is beyond question).

I realize the media circus undermines our efforts in any conflict. When the conflict is new, all the reporters are patriots and report on the great things we're doing, but after awhile that isn't news worthy and the angle of the story changes (they're looking for dirt). At the same time they start ignoring the atrocities that our enemy commits on a daily basis. IMO this is a key reason we don't well in long conflicts.

I don't think the media does it intentionally, but rather they focus on the negative because the negative is "news", and by definition the news is a current event (relative term) that stands out from the norm. If the audience would understand that what they're seeing is aberrations and that is why it is being reporting we wouldn't have the perception that the U.S. military is out of control and breaking the law.

On the other hand, the fact that terrorists commit atrocities on a daily basis isn't news, so it doesn't get reported. If a terrorist risked his/her life to same an innocent civilian that would be news worthy. The asymmetry is there for everyone to see if they would just look.

There are none so blind as those who won't see (Italian philosopher).