By invoking the US military you have lost the plot. There is no justification for a US military type response to a journalist. Neither the London police nor the CIA are military.
You’re starting from a point that hasn’t been established.
> response to a journalist
You call him a journalist. The US government calls him a Russian asset. The UK court agrees more with them than you or he wouldn’t be holed up in an embassy.
The main dogma of media today is that you have to let governments create their own reality. If they say black is white, you say black is white, possibly with a note that some people contest claim that black is merely black.
No matter how unreliable they are, no matter how many times they've deliberately lied to you, next time you are obliged to trust them again. To do otherwise would be disloyal. The courts are objective and independent, because the courts say so.
In the latest court abuse of Assange, the UK wigs literally made that argument, that the US assurances MUST be trusted, and dismissed attempts to even argue from earlier betrayals that the US assurances might not be trustworthy.
If you accept this line of argument, you literally will accept anything.
Of all the things Assange has done to unmask the powerful, nothing has been as damning as the way they unmasked themselves, in their fury in attempting to "get" him.
Exactly like Putin. He likes to call all of the journalists he locks up foreign agents and the US always condemns him.
His less intellectually inclined supporters are generally of the view that their government can be trusted to make these kinds of judgements and that the journalists really are foreign agents.
The point is with regard to escalation of force rationale, getting bent out of shape about the mere mention of the big bad US military is a pathetic response. No, the London police and the CIA aren't military - neither enjoy anything approaching the same level of institutional memory, something that directly informs well thought out contingency planning.
> response to a journalist
You call him a journalist. The US government calls him a Russian asset. The UK court agrees more with them than you or he wouldn’t be holed up in an embassy.