This article in the New York Times explains how the first drone strike in Pakistan happened in 2004 as an agreement between the CIA and Pakistan's military to effectively assassinate someone that Pakistan had defined as an enemy of state. CIA gained airspace, enabling them to shift from capturing to targeted killing.
That back-room bargain, described in detail for the first time in interviews with more than a dozen officials in Pakistan and the United States, is critical to understanding the origins of a covert drone war that began under the Bush administration, was embraced and expanded by President Obama, and is now the subject of fierce debate. The deal, a month after a blistering internal report about abuses in the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons, paved the way for the C.I.A. to change its focus from capturing terrorists to killing them, and helped transform an agency that began as a cold war espionage service into a paramilitary organization.
This implies that these two architectures - incessant interrogations within secret rooms and rapid assassinations by flying robots - are interchangeable within some framework. Will we just keep vacillating between being disgusted by one or the other?
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