Democrats Horrified US Might Kill Terrorists

More information is coming out about the CIA program that never made it passed the discussion phase during the Bush administration. The CIA was finally ready to do something but it seems Obama's "No Meddling" policy now applies to terrorists.

CIA officials were proposing to activate a plan to train anti-terrorist assassination teams overseas when agency managers brought the secret program to the attention of CIA Director Leon Panetta last month, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The plan to kill top al-Qaeda leaders, which had been on the agency's back burner for much of the past eight years, was suddenly thrust into the spotlight because of proposals to initiate what one intelligence official called a "somewhat more operational phase." Shortly after learning of the plan, Panetta terminated the program and then went to Capitol Hill to brief lawmakers, who had been kept in the dark since 2001.

...The CIA declined to reveal specifics of the terminated program. But agency spokesman George Little said it was "never fully operational and never took a single terrorist off the battlefield." Since his appointment, Panetta has been "aggressively using the vast tools and tactics at our disposal -- those that actually work -- to take terrorists off the streets," Little said.

It took the CIA almost 8 years to develop a plan to target terrorists for assassination but only a day or so for Obama's CIA Director to kill it.

Boy, we really dodged a bullet with this one. Of course, by 'we' I mean al Qaeda.

Dear liberals...this kind of crap is why conservatives think you guys aren't very serious about dealing with America's enemies. Why wouldn't we want this type of capacity? We might never use it but isn't it prudent to have trained teams ready in case they are needed?

It seems when this idea first came up it was over taken by the rise of Predators and other UAVs. The problem is, terrorists may be in countries we can't just lob Hellfires around in. Even in places we were able to launch air strikes in, like Iraq and Afghanistan, concerns about civilian casualties are limiting our ability to continue those kinds of attacks.

Thanks to Obama and his national security team, we've now preemptively and unilaterally taken another option off the table.

BTW- Nancy Pelosi still hasn't provided any evidence for her charge that the CIA regularly lies to Congress. I know we aren't supposed to remind people of that but....

posted by DrewM. at 11:23 PM

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