On the conceivable

UPI reports that "Israel is embarking upon a more aggressive approach to the war on terror that will include staging targeted killings in the United States and other friendly countries".

The Israeli government routinely assassinates people with methods ranging from poison injection to the ear to missile strikes from US-supplied military helicopters. More interesting than the extension of this policy from the Occupied Territories, Jordan, Belgium and so on to the US, is the reaction of the people interviewed by UPI:

A congressional staff member with deep knowledge of intelligence matters said, "I don't know on what basis we would be able to protest Israel's actions." He referred to the recent killing of Qaed Salim Sinan al Harethi, a top al Qaida leader, in Yemen by a remotely controlled CIA drone.

Note that the staffer does not exactly approve of the idea of assassinating people on US soil: rather, he evidently cannot think of a reason to disapprove. Let's imagine that Hamas declared that it will now murder Israelis also on US soil. That comparison is not quite fair, for a number of reasons, one of them being that Hamas is not a state agent. So let's compare with another state - say, what if the pre-invasion Iraqi government had declared it would start assassinating people in the US thought to be responsible for terrorism in Iraq (such as Iyad Allawi, the current prime minister of Iraq)? Could UPI have found any congressional staffers who would have been able to come up with any basis for disapproving? Is it even sane to ask this question?

Returning to reality, the comparison to US assassinations is quite reasonable. If one accepts the principle of murdering at will, the only problems left are precisely those discussed in the UPI report: sometimes you kill the wrong person, sometimes you fail to kill anyone altogether.