&gt; but I don&#x27;t see conclusive evidence of this in the article.<p>You are talking about something which is usually kept secret within the &quot;state secrets&quot; cabinet. Your expectations seem misconfigured for this topic. There&#x27;s no way the CIA&#x2F;DOJ&#x2F;FBI would willingly allow that level of information to make it into wide circulation and the current administration has gone to unprecedented lengths to prevent further leaks.<p>I tend to agree with you that the media news coverage in the US tends to focus mostly on certain specific military attacks (where the US government claims we either hit or believe we hit a &quot;top leader&quot; in whatever group) or where the US military strike was on bad&#x2F;stale information (eg. we killed western hostages or a Doctors without Borders hospital in Afghanistan). I am not conflating drone strikes with other military strikes -- I am combining them because I see them as part of the same issue.<p>I tend to see the media as willingly reporting only what little information is available from the only source, the White House via the US military. Journalists are reporting one very biased side of the story without making any significant effort to find other sources (because there usually are none). From a journalistic ethics standpoint, this _is_ malicious.<p>I view US drone strikes &quot;on terrorists&quot; within a context of (what I believe to be) known information about our CIA drone strikes (which, granted might be outdated or otherwise inaccurate and is basically unverifiable):<p><pre><code>  * &quot;signature strikes&quot; are designed to attack targets based on data points without knowing their identity
  * a &quot;double tap&quot; strike is when first responders are attacked immediately after a previous attack on the assumption that they know who was killed and care about the terrorist target and not the innocent victims of the first strike
  * weddings, funerals, and other public gatherings are attacked on the probability that terrorist or terrorist sympathizers will attend
  * an &quot;enemy combatant&quot; is any male of combat age (15-50, IIRC) [1] -- this is especially troublesome for US propaganda.  See [1] for &quot;deliberate intent to deceive the public in the media coverage of civilian victims of Western attacks&quot;. It might not even be &quot;conclusive evidence&quot;, but I still think that standard is too high for any topic which is covered by national security where we will always be in an information &quot;fog of war&quot;.
</code></pre>
These items are all claimed &#x2F; documented characterizations of CIA (or JSOC or other similar US government&#x2F;intelligence&#x2F;military agency) attacks, but clearly not verifiable (the nature of state secrets). They were all covered by the movie Good Kill[2] (Ethan Hawke plays a drone pilot in Nevada dealing with the human consequences of being a killer in the drone war).<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salon.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;05&#x2F;29&#x2F;militants_media_propaganda&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.salon.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;05&#x2F;29&#x2F;militants_media_propaganda&#x2F;</a>
[2]<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt3297330&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.imdb.com&#x2F;title&#x2F;tt3297330&#x2F;</a>