Long Distance High Tech State Terror
Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/4595
Date Written:  2016-03-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2016
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX21374

Book review of Andrew Cockburn's Kill Chain: The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The kill chain itself is the chain of command that authorizes lethal drone strikes and special operations. As this review was being written, the news was awash with reports of the death by drone strike of Mohammed Emwazi or "Jihadi John," the Briton who executed hostages on video, and Wisam al Zubaidi, the head of the ISIS affiliate in Libya. Before we attach too much importance to these reports, we should look at the results of some past drone strikes.

In fact, the Air Force knew that the sort of thing that happened on the Kandahar-Kabul road was likely to happen when they put the drones into service. A military reform movement in the 1980s attempted to stem the tide of ever more expensive weapons of dubious utility, and in 1983 it succeeded in creating the Office of Operational Test and Evaluation, one of the least popular agencies ever conceived.