Compare and contrast. The Nazis seized a few innocent civilians as hostages, and killed them in cold blood in an attempt to gain their demands. We have, in effect, seized the entire civilian population of the world's poorest and most defenseless country as hostages, and now threaten them with imminent death unless their despotic leaders grant our demands. For the life of me, I can't see a difference. The world universally condemns the Nazis for their WWII hostage strategy.
International law forbids it.
The leaders responsible for it were convicted at Nuremberg. Far from being an embarrassment at presenting bogus charges in the first place, the DA could then be praised for respecting truth and justice over body counts and conviction statistics. But more to this point, the bastions of the First Amendment have their responsibilities as well. Reporting the news, respecting the truth and shining the light of public awareness into the shadows of our society is a sacred trust granted to the press from the very beginnings of this nation. It is not solely to be the purveyor of mattress sales and happy hours as it regurgitates AP faxes upon the public as a replacement for actual journalism.