...which still doesn't have anything to do with the argument that they were typical boss fights. All I can say is that Warren Spector himself has stated that one of the intentional design principles behind Deus Ex is to allow players to sidestep or work around many of the apparent combat aspects of the game, and to avoid directly rewarding players for killing human beings.
Yes, its probably true that Anna Navarre was intended to actually die (although I would argue that the code that keeps Gunther from mentioning avenging her death implies otherwise), but even then she can be killed by words, and that is not by any means cliche in videogames.