I've seen some discussion on the US Hamster Wheel of our concerns in the US regarding the lack of oversight, which puts the Drone strike mode of enemy disposal in line with the controversy over the Patriot Act monitoring of electronic communications.
At the heart of the latter was that the FISA court mechanism provided an overisght of the executive, and a requirement to keep nose clean. The Bush admin, driven mostly by Rumsfeld as I recall at the time, wished to not have to be bothered with getting a post op Judicial review/approval. Yes, 48-72 hours AFTER the tap, they had to get a judicial ruling on it being legit. Even that was considered too much trouble by the executive branch.
The same problem arises with the use of Drones to attack, depending upon the RoE. I have some small experience on the RoE side of this, in terms of dealing with a very tight RoE and trying to get any weapon off the rail on any target, at all. That's some years ago. Most of the armed units I dealt with returned home with weapons still on the rail. Not for a lack of targets, but for a lack of permission.
Near the end of the Bush administration, particularly in Pakistan and that area, and apparently still in Yemen, the RoE has loosened considerably. I probably would not recognize the RoE now, as compared to what I had to work with.
And this leads to the question raised elsewhere: at whose authority does RoE change, and what is the oversight process?
If a FISA type requirement was laid on the missions that are assassinations, at the least oversight and an adherence to a given rubric, might provide for the kinds of protections that are being required for most law enforcement operations.
ON the other side, if you have joined an organization fighting and killing out people, you are a target. I don't care where you were born, you are now on the other side.
It's that in between crap that, while inconvenient, needs to be addressed as we can be sure that humans being humans, they'll attempt to either get around or just ignore what modest protections are in place.
A slippery slope indeed.