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According to reports from Pakistan, the first drone strike under President Obama's new drone strike policy occurred this morning in North Waziristan. How it was different than previous strikes isn't exactly clear — but there's a new checklist, and new scrutiny from across the globe.
On Thursday, the president plans to deliver a speech focusing drone attacks and military detention — a pretty sweeping agenda for a simple policy speech, one that might signal a sea change in America's counterterrorism efforts, and Obama's foreign policy legacy.
The U.S. drone war remains cloaked in secrecy, and as a result, questions swirl around it. Who exactly can be targeted? When can a U.S. citizen be killed? Another, perhaps less frequently asked question: What happens when innocent civilians are killed in drone strikes?
A new Gallup poll suggests that public support for drone use, while broad, narrows as strikes get closer to home. It also raises a question: What is up with 13 percent of Americans?
A strange thing happened on Tuesday. Just a few hours after an airline pilot spotted an unidentified "drone" hovering a few miles from JFK airport, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that drones strikes on United States soil were not out of the question.
The Senate Intelligence Committee voted in favor of John Brennan's nomination to be CIA director, 12-3, after it was announced that the committee finally got more access to the White House's legal memos about drone attacks.
David Kravets on Obama's drone problem, Michael Kugelman on global agribusiness, Doyle McManus on the mortgage interest taxes, Duncan Black on the failure of 401Ks, and Alec MacGillis on Eric Cantor's call to cut the medical device tax.
While there weren't a lot of groups actually registered for this year's inauguration, it was hard to miss the agitators in and around today's ceremony. Did they have an impact? Or were they just annoying?
The details of the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia — a centerpiece of the Obama administration's national security approach — remain shrouded in secrecy. Here's a guide to what we know — and what we don't know.
As President Obama nominates John Brennan to lead the CIA, the future of the controversial program they've worked so closely on swings into uncertainty: What happens now, and what details might we learn about America's secret war?
Maulvia Nazir, a Pakistani tribal leader with links to the Afghan Talbian, was killed on Wednesday night along with 12 other militants in two U.S. drone attacks near the Afghanistan border.
In the latest sign that President Obama's targeted killing program may be forever shrouded in secrecy, U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon has denied a Freedom of Information Request from the American Civil Liberties Union and The New York Times.
Josh Begley's little — or not so little — social media experiment is a chilling reminder of the vastness that has been this past decade in morally questionable killing.
Administration officials regularly celebrate the drone war’s apparent successes— often avoiding details or staying anonymous, but claiming tacit credit for the U.S. And when it comes to details of that process, the administration clams up.
American drones have killed 27 people in northern Pakistan over the last three days as the unmanned aerial attacks show no signs of slowing down.
Memorial Day weekend brought news of more U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan and Afghanistan as The New York Times raises new questions about President Obama's so-called "Kill List" of terrorists targeted for assassination.
The United States has "relaxed" its rules regarding unmanned drone attacks in Yemen, giving the CIA and the military the authority to fire on suspected militants even when their identity can't be totally confirmed.
In the three days since the United States resumed drone strikes in Pakistan after a two-month hiatus, it's carried out two attacks, killing 10 people and indicating the tactic of targeting terrorists with drones is fully back in favor with U.S. commanders.
At least some U.S. officials say the military got 'played' when it acted on local intelligence to conduct a drone strike in Yemen last year, killing not a terrorist but a political rival of Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
A new militant group called the Khorasan Mujahedin has sprung up in the tribal areas of Pakistan, kidnapping and murdering people it believes are helping the U.S. drones that routinely target Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders.
"Ask Osama bin Laden" has become President Obama's catchphrase and policy when it comes to the fight against al-Qaeda, but the successful results of America's drone program only provide one answer--and perhaps it's not the only one we want.
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