In an article published on FoxNews.com on Monday, the Palestinians are singled out for receiving aid from the United States during a time of sequestration, ignoring both the benefits of aiding the Palestinian people and the multitude of other countries the U.S. provided foreign assistance to.

At issue is the Obama administration decision to release $500 million of aid to the Palestinians, a decision Fox seems to take umbrage with given the continuing effects of sequestration. Fox goes on to list several departments and agencies under the knife thanks to sequestration, before pointing out once more the Palestinians’ relative largess in tough fiscal times:

Attorney General Eric Holder also said in a memo that he was using his “limited authorities” to shift around funds and give the Bureau of Prisons $150 million to avoid furloughing correctional workers at federal prisons. This, he said, would have created “serious threats to the lives and safety of our staff, inmates and the public.”

But he said he was still “evaluating” whether his department can avoid other furloughs.

Foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority alone, though, easily eclipses the amount Holder used to spare the correctional workers division.

Despite making the claim that lawmakers have “heavily scrutinized a number of foreign aid transactions,” the article only lists aid to the Palestinian people as being worthy of judgement in the current fiscal climate. But American foreign aid to over one hundred other countries somehow manages to go utterly overlooked.

The Center for American Progress has an interactive map that shows just how much aid flows to which countries and for what purposes, highlighting both the large amount that goes towards helping people as well as those funds devoted towards military spending. As just a small example, Poland managed to go unmentioned by Fox after receiving $39 million in foreign military financing during Fiscal Year 2011.

Congress attempted to block the amount paid to Ramallah — after previously appropriating the amount to the State Department — due to the successful Palestinian push for an upgraded status at the United Nations. President Obama overrode that decision, signing a waiver based on the clear national security interests served through providing the promised assistance.

According to the State Department, the Fiscal Year 2012 spending released includes $195.7 million is for economic, development and humanitarian assistance, with the other $100 million budgeted for narcotics control. The $200 million from Fiscal Year 2013 will go directly towards supporting the Palestinian Authority’s budget, a needed boost for the beleaguered government of President Mahmoud Abbas. All of this will help the Palestinian Authority end a budget crunch, helping stabilize a government seeking to move forward peace negotiations with Israel, an investment that Fox shouldn’t overlook.

A new poll from Gallup is out today showing wide support for the Obama administration’s use of drones in counter-terrorism operations overseas. But what this poll — and many others on the subject — doesn’t tell us, however, is what Americans think about a far more significant aspect of the administration’s counter-terrorism program: targeted killing.

Taken in the weeks after a new surge of interest in drones, the new Gallup poll finds that 65 percent of respondents agreed the U.S. “should use drones to launch airstrikes in other countries against suspected terrorists.” Only 28 percent disagreed with the question, with 8 percent professing no opinion on the matter. Sixty-six percent disapproved of using drones against terror suspects on American soil. An even greater number — 79 percent — felt that the U.S. should not launch airstrikes on American citizens in the U.S.:

Gallup’s results are similar to findings from both a Washington Post poll taken in 2012 and one conducted by Fox News earlier this month. In those polls, the support for drone use was even higher, but all three do not ask whether respondents agree with the Obama administration’s targeted killing program — the policy for which drones are just one tool used to carry out the policy.

Indeed, what’s more controversial is not drones themselves — as evidenced by the fact that these polls’ results line up with the Obama administration’s position — but the underlining policy that mandates their use: targeted killing of suspected terrorists. Unfortunately, because of that singular focus, none of these polls tell us much about how Americans feel about this program.

Most of the focus in the debate about the Obama administration’s policies has been on the use of new technology in the form of drones, rather than on the killing program itself. In actuality, the program extends far beyond drones, also incorporating the use of Special Forces as well as missile strikes from naval vessels and manned aircraft.

These omissions are significant because we fail to learn what the respondents feel about the targeted killing program in its entirety. There is no mention of so-called “signature strikes” to target military-aged males without knowing precisely who the targets are. Nor are respondents asked about the lack of transparency surrounding the only recently acknowledged program and the unknown number of civilians included in the still disputed number killed under it.

Reports that elements of the targeted killing program may move from the CIA’s control to the Department of Defense likewise seems to build on the focus on the technology over the policy. In making the move, the administration on the surface seems to be responding to public pressure for more transparency related to the program. However, the result may be even more secrecy under the Pentagon’s many clandestine programs.