Wired's Danger-Room, here
"If we want to strengthen our friends and weaken our enemies in Pakistan, bombing Pakistani villages with unmanned drones is totally counterproductive," Dr. David Kilcullen tells Danger Room. Kilcullen, a former Australian colonel, is considered one of the leading thinkers on counterinsurgency, providing advice to both U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus and former Secretary of State Condolleeza Rice..All strikes should be carried out in consultation with Islamabad, in "an area outside of effective Pakistani sovereignty," and a time when "the target is positively identified and clearly distinguishable from surrounding populations, reducing the risk of collateral damage to a level acceptable to elected political leaders."...Kilcullen doesn't think all UAV attacks are bad. "While ever al Qa’ida remains active and can threaten the international community from bases within Pakistan, the need to strike terrorist targets on Pakistani territory will remain. But our policy should be to treat this as an absolute, and rarely invoked, last resort," he notes....But the UAV attacks in Pakistan are spearheaded by the CIA, not the Air Force. It's unclear whether the spy agency takes the same precautions, when it unleashes the killer drones..."
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