The Drone Wars are the new black. The once covert, highly-secretive and little talked about strategy of using unmanned aerial vehicles to target suspected terrorists in Pakistan and elsewhere has gone mainstream. And now everyone is talking about it. Even Leon Panetta, the former C.I.A. director, whose old agency doesn't officially admit that its drone program exists, is talking about it. Twice in a matter of hours last week he joked about the C.I.A.'s pension for deploying the ominously-named Predator drones. “Obviously I have a hell of a lot more weapons available to me here than I had at the C.I.A.,” he said, referring to his new post as secretary of defense. “Although the Predators aren’t bad.” Complete coverage: The Drone Wars Later that same day, on the tarmac of a naval air base, he said, coyly, that the use of Predators are “something I was very familiar with in my old job.” Soon after, a Predator armed with hellfire missiles took flight from the runway, bound for Libya
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