re: #218 Killgore Trout

Poor bin Laden. Shot unarmed while wearing his pajamas. Oh, well, These things happen.

Even putting al-Awlaki’s citizenship aside (that’s a separate hornets’ nest), the main difference is that the U.S. had reason to believe that bin Laden posed an imminent threat (the international requirement for killing someone outside of a warzone), whereas al-Awlaki’s status as an imminent threat was tenuous at best.