closeted experts rather than the democracy. The lack of media coverage of this expansion of state secrecy testifies to its success. Discreet, cheap aerial control abroad fundamentally alters democracy's relationship to war; by making war virtually costless at home, it stifles public condemnation of the conflict. Despite the major legal, philosophical, and constitutional issues it raises, drone use has never been debated in the US Congress or voted on. As in 1920s Britain, secrecy about aerial policing is accompanied by an effort to spin it in positive ways. We are fed the romance of technical wizardry. The sheer futuristic coolness of unmanned aerial vehicles is an easy sell in an age that worships high-tech gadgetry. Such public relations may not satisfy determined critics but has successfully popularised the drone programme as, on the whole, a very good thing despite the damage it may do to democracy, relations with the Middle East or the soul of the president and those who sit on the secret panel that devises the 'kill list'. Hence the strong bipartisan consensus on the programme. Behind this consensus lies the resilient old idea that that part of the world can simply take a type of violence that would be unacceptable anywhere else. Indeed, this is the foundation of the refusal to keep casualty counts, The British thought it futile to keep casualty counts in an essentially deceptive place where, as the head of the British administration in Iraq put it "the term 'civilian population' has a very