Greg Miller, writing the first of three articles in a major series on targeted killing by the US government, has revealed for the first time details of the decision-making calculus of life and death used by the government:

Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the “disposition matrix.”

The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. U.S. officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of American drones.

There have already been a number of responses to this, particularly Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian, and thousands of reader comments.

One of the key points is how this represents a (continued)…