Center for a New American Security

Gah!!!

Chris: I do not care how many civilians drone strikes actually kill. And I do not care how many civilians Americans think drone strikes in Pakistan kill.

Tom Ricks is the one who usually gets the interns at CNAS to do the spade work on his blog, but I was talking with intern Matt Irvine about an event he attended on drone strikes recently and, struck by some of the things Bruce Riedel in particular said (like the fact that he was sceptical of any and all figures produced by the U.S.

I do not usually make it to think tank events in DC, but I made the time today to sit in at the start of the Brookings Institute's Defense Challenges and Future Opportunities confab put together by the awesome Pete Singer, he of Wired for War fame.

A few months ago, I allowed my housemate's subscription to the Washington Post to lapse and used my Delta Skymiles to buy a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. I quite like the Journal, even though its news side has perhaps grown unncessarily partisan in the past year, because it forces me to read articles about subjects -- namely, finance -- that I would not normally study.

In case you missed it or have not forked over the money to buy a copy of the New Yorker, Jane Mayer -- who is even more powerful than Nate -- has written perhaps the very best piece on the use of unmanned drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I don't know about you, but I spent my Independence Day catching up on my Foreign Affairs reading.

The Onion is now weighing in.

I love it when readers contact me with "You've probably already seen this, but..."

A clutch of anonymous intelligence and military officials -- no doubt stung by the degree to which the efficacy of drone attacks in Pakistan has been questioned of late -- have hit back in defense of the strikes in an article written by the reliable Karen DeYoung in today's Washington Post.