A remote airstrip in Saudi Arabia (Bing.com)
Obama’s New Drone Policy Leaves Room For CIA Role -- Washington Post
Four years ago, as a new al-Qaeda affiliate in Yemen was proving itself a potent adversary, the Obama administration made plans to attack it with airstrikes just as the United States had been doing to the terrorist network’s core in Pakistan.
But this time, the White House decided there would be a key difference: The strikes in Yemen would be carried out by the U.S. military, not the CIA.
Two years later, in mid-2011, a mysterious construction project began to emerge in the Saudi desert, an elongated compound with a ribbon of concrete running parallel to the ridgelines of the surrounding dunes. CIA drones were about to enter the skies over Yemen after all.
The change was driven by a number of factors, including errant strikes that killed the wrong people, the use of munitions that left shrapnel with U.S. military markings scattered about target sites and worries that Yemen’s unstable leader might kick the Pentagon’s planes out.
Read more ....
My Comment: I have been mentioning in the past few months that the reason why the CIA handles a good number of targeted drone strikes is a simple one .... they have become very good at it. Shifting this program to the military is raising the appropriate questions .... and kudos to the Washington Post for raising them.
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