US drone 'kills five in Pakistan'

[Peter Presland]

I don't know that anyone has made an accounting of [even purported] badguys v. innocents killed, but my sense is it is about 1 to 20, or so.....

And that assumes the 'Bad Guys' really are bad enough to warrant summary airborne execution by anyone, let alone a robot controlled from a country half a world away. Our BBC R4 News this evening reported that Hilary Clinton has described the Taliban as 'a mortal threat to the entire world' (something big must be brewing eh??), when all they really want is for the US to get the hell out of their country.

And have you ever wondered about the names they give to their military toys?

Predator - carnivorous animal that hunts, kills and eats its prey
Reaper - The latest big scary version - as in the 'Grim Reaper'
HellFire Missile - Hellfire and damnation eh? - because they're worth it I guess.

Same applies to military exercises - they usually carry a non-to-well-hidden subliminal message that says something like 'Don't mess with us 'cos we're Big, Tough, Mean, Mean Goodies.

Even applies to our police here in the UK. Did you know that their G20 policing operation - the one that killed Ian Tomlinson and seriously roughed up dozens of others - was named 'Operation Glencoe' - as in the infamous massacre of the Macdonalds by the Campbells in 1692.

And what about the Israeli's Operation 'Cast Lead' ?

A ripe subject for an entire psychological dissertation I'd say.