I don’t share or fully understand the visceral distaste a lot of people have for drone strikes. My problems with The Long War have more to do with strategy than tactics. But I would like to know more about the “dyspeptic Muslim convert whose code name is Roger.” He was apparently in charge of the drone strikes for nine years before he recently was replaced. Steve Coll, who has some connections, calls him “perhaps the most powerful figure inside the C.I.A. since the days of James Angleton, who, as the agency’s chief of counterintelligence from 1954 to 1975, was charged with identifying Soviet moles.”
I talk about Angleton a lot. But that’s primarily because some small portion of his nefarious activities have been declassified over the years.