What happens when “aggressive interrogation” elicits too much moral outrage? We call in the drones:
Some counterterrorism experts say that President Obama and his advisers favor a more aggressive approach because it seems more practical — that administration officials prefer to eliminate terrorism suspects rather than detain them. “Since the U.S. political and legal situation has made aggressive interrogation a questionable activity anyway, there is less reason to seek to capture rather than kill,” wrote American University’s Kenneth Anderson, author of an essay on the subject that was read widely by Obama White House officials. “And if one intends to kill, the incentive is to do so from a standoff position because it removes potentially messy questions of surrender.”