Mother Jones

In 2004, when an American missile fired from a Predator drone killed Taliban leader Nek Mohammed, an observer told a journalist that the bombing was so exact it "didn't damage any of the buildings around the lawn where Mohammed was seated." It was an endorsement, if ever there was one, of the Bush administration's post-9/11 efforts at assassinations using what are known as decapitation attacks.

Her face placid under a black headscarf, Kadro Mohamed sits on the floor of her new home: a tiny shack constructed of sticks and shredded bags. She cradles a restless baby, while her other seven children huddle nearby. Several weeks earlier, her husband was killed when their home in Mogadishu was destroyed by a random mortar, fired during a battle between the Ethiopian troops that occupy Somalia and the rebels who are trying to drive them out.