Talk of the day is about the New York Times story on his kill list using armed drones to go after terrorists. I thought the war on terror was over exactly who is he going after? One thing is for sure about the Emperor, he is one hardcore killing machine using drones and special forces!
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Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a Test of Obama’s Principles and Will
By Jo Becker and Scott Shane
WASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.
President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.
“How old are these people?†he asked, according to two officials present. “If they are starting to use children,†he said of Al Qaeda, “we are moving into a whole different phase.â€
It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations†process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.
Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,†poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards†of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for adrone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation. …Read More