Think of it like this, with the death penalty as a punishment, there are alternative punishments which other nations such as ours believe to be suitable, such as life in prisonment (although in this country, a few years imprisonment appears to be more the case).
There are alternatives to the death penalty.
With an insurgent stronghold surrounded by civilians (as they are trained to do by Iran and Syria because of the negative image dead civilians give to the West), there is often no suitable alternative than to attack from afar, with the risk to civilian lives.
Where alternatives are suitable, they have been shown to be taken, such as the recent raid on a police station.
Rather than doing a nice safe airstrike, forces were used to take the building, and then destroy it.
Now, it's all well and good being armchair generals, and saying "yes but they could have sent in special forces" etc (not saying you in particular are doing that, because you aren't), but we don't have all the facts, the people calling the shots have more than we do, and they don't have all of them either.
---------- Post added at 11:34 ---------- Previous post was at 11:27 ----------
Once again, you're wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2004Jun23.html
*That'd be the law in Iraq at the time of the document, incase you didn't get that.