[the_scalp]

David,

You're like the annoying student in ethics class.

Hard case makes bad law. This is not at all analagous to stem cell research.

What you are arguing with is what is called the principle of double effect. Basically, Catholic canon lawers have long held that you can take an action which forseeable, evil consequences ONLY if the following conditions are met (stolen from Wikipedia):

1) The nature of the act is itself good.
2) The intention is for the good effect and not the bad.
3) The good effect outweighs the bad effect in a situation sufficiently grave to merit the risk of yielding the bad effect.
4) The good effect (killing the dictator) is not directly dependent on the bad effect (killing the children).

Your hypothetical case with the five children sticks at criterion 4. You seem to think this is obviously illogical. If you're operating as a strict utilitarian, you're absolutely right, but in that case you wouldn't need the principle of double effect to gauge the morality of suspect actions -- you'd only needed to ask whether the fruits of the act justified the negative consequences.

I guess what I'm saying is, your argument boils down to this:

1) Posters claim to not be utilitarians in another thread.
2) Look at this extremely unlikely hypothetical situation where they're clearly not acting as utiltiarians!!!
3) . . .
4) Profit!