Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

And then 9/11 happened. After that, drones such as the Global Hawk and Predator carrying Hellfire missiles swarmed the skies of Afghanistan and then Iraq, theatres of war that Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs said “provides a tremendous laboratory” to test the Pentagon’s new toys. Someday, there could even be “whole squadrons of pilotless attack planes,” and would make up 90% of all combat aircraft by 2025, media outlets gleefully announced in November 2001. The CIA (at the time the main overseers and users of drones) pressed for increased use of attack drones, implying that if they’d had them sooner they could have killed Osama Bin Laden, thereby preventing 9/11. As the months went on, drones were increasingly credited with victories in the Global War on Terror. Admittedly, drones crashed more often than war wagers would have liked … but this was a work in progress.