In Praise of Some Assassinations

Rocky Mountain News Reporter Camos accuses Glenn Reynolds of being a right-wing lunatic for advocating the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. (Reynolds responds here.)

I can't understand why any American wouldn't support the assassination of such scientists.

First, anyone working to give the government of Iran nuclear weapons is child-killer level evil and so deserves death.

Second, such assassinations will, on average, save many human lives. To see this let's be very optimistic about what would happen if Iran had several nuclear weapons and assume that there is only a 1% chance that Iran would use them as part of some kind of Armageddon-Jew-killing-plan. (From the way Iran's President Ahmadinejad talks 1% is surely too low.) Let's further assume that only ten million people would die in such an Iranian nuclear Armageddon. (Given that any nuclear attack against the U.S. or Israel would cause a massive nuclear retaliation against Iran this ten million number is also low.) Thus, the expected cost in human lives from Iran having a healthy nuclear weapons program is at least 100,000 lives. If assassinating a few hundred scientists who are voluntarily helping Iran develop nuclear weapons would significantly reduce the chance of Iran getting atomics then the U.S. is morally obligated to carry out such assassinations.

Finally, if targeted assassinations would prevent the U.S. or Israel from bombing Iran's numerous nuclear weapons facilities then shouldn't even liberal doves support these assassinations?