Opinion: With its deadly drones, the US is fighting a coward's war

01/30/12: The Guardian features an opinion piece by George Monboit. He argues that if, as the US air force says, a drone’s missiles are less likely to kill civilians than those launched from a piloted plane, it must also be true that such easier and less risky deployments are more frequent.  Monboit notes that this danger is acknowledged in a remarkably candid assessment published by the UK's Ministry of Defence, which maintains that the undeclared air war in Pakistan and Yemen "is totally a function of the existence of an unmanned capability – it is unlikely a similar scale of force would be used if this capability were not available."