Much liberal wailing and breast beating going as a result of a US Justice Department memo being published. Apparently some fairly random people are making decisions about who can or can't be killed in drone strikes, including US citizens, using some fairly broad criteria:
Congress considers putting limits on drone strikes - US News and World Report
I'm genuinely curious as to who they thought was making these decisions on a daily basis? Did they think that the President was sitting down with the Supreme Court every day and agreeing who got slotted? The true irony is in a nation that is paranoid about "due process" there is a dawning realization that when the bad guys won't follow the rules, you might need to change the rules.
The obvious problem of course is who decides the targets and how good is the intel on which the decision is made? Suddenly "due process" is down to intelligence analysis and the laws of probability. Hard to deny you were an active AQ member after an active Hellfire has remodeled your bedroom with you still in it. At this point you have to hope your ratio of definite bad guys to unlucky pizza delivery guys eviscerated is suitably compelling.
Some interesting legal questions for UAV operators involved in armed actions, you'd better hope there was some serious i dotting and t crossing done on that task authorization. So who gets to put the red 'X' on the UK's target list? Or is this one of those ROE documents the public will never see.