Come friendly bombs, and fall on . . . the Chinese embassy

Just as the term 'military intelligence' has long been considered an oxymoron, so now is the phrase precision bombing. Len Deighton had a good take on it in his novel Bomber, when he had an raf pilot at a briefing ask why the target was the middle of a residential area. The pilot is told that there is a Gestapo headquarters and a poison gas factory there. In wartime such statements, however implausible, cannot be questioned. Thus, as his blood-thirsty scientific adviser Professor Lindemann ...