The current edition of NPR's On The Media i.a. focuses on how the Pentagon does whatever it feels like doing, and then dresses it up textually to sort of agree with where US politicians say their military branches are blowing their bomb leaves.

Almost four years after Obama prematurely received the Nobel Peace Prize, he actually said drone strikes weren't the "cureall" for terrorism problems, and would only be used where "near certainty" had been determined, that no civilian casualties would occur. But on average 6 (in words: SIX) civilians die in every strike!

In fact the Pentagon nowadays, OTM reports, doesn't care much about ascertaining certainty - it just uses a "low Collateral Damage Estimate". And then a lot of civilians - non-US citizens, who legally apparently don't matter - just perish through these strikes. A good deal more than the no. of - assumed! - terrorists killed.

The latter are even targeted when "signature" behaviour identifies them as possible terrorists. What a thoroughly uncivilised, un-Christian thing for the Pentagon to decide to do; sanctity of human life be damned.

I felt bile rising when listening to this. So tired of this kind of aggressive crap being perpetrated on an already ravening world by the "leader of the free world". More like "ethics-free". No wonder there's ever-increasing global blow-back.

And we're hearing basically all presidential candidates of some likelihood of getting elected saying they will act even tougher than good old turncoat Obama.

When will anyone get up to lean on the brake of this run-away train of US military might? That probably forces its presidents to choose the red pill of conventional warfare vs. the blue pill of apparently riskless drone death-dealing near the beginning of their careers. Which they then have to try and talk their ways out of. Or not, always depending on the mood of the US electorate at the time.

And damn the - hey, short-term! - opinions of the rest of the trembling world. There is no free world any more. Just a sad & deadly hegemony in the shape of a five-sided line of fire.

Let's see how the modern-day lords of Zardoz explain the MSF hospital bombing, which will now apparently be "investigated" by the US military. The most recent above-average civilian overkill action to disgrace our news feeds.