CIA Wants An Even Longer Leash For Drone Strikes In Yemen

From The Telegraph.

CIA 'seeks permission to widen scope of Yemen drone strikes'


The Daily Telegraph and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism reported last month that drone strikes and other US airborne attacks on Yemen had risen to match the levels recently seen in Pakistan.

US officials have never officially confirmed that the country was waging a drone-based bombing campaign in Yemen but the Washington Post on Thursday said the strikes were being orchestrated from a secret base on the Arabian Peninsula.

The newspaper said that Gen David Petraeus had assessed al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) represented the strongest threat to US security of any terrorist group.

As a result the CIA had asked President Barack Obama and the National Security Council to authorise a widening of the campaign

Officials would be able to launch missiles based on information from informants that terrorists were "likely" to be in an area.

But AQAP has been expanding its area of operations in Yemen as the country has been immersed in a political crisis that forced Ali Abdullah Saleh, the president, to resign after months of protest.

Intelligence officials said concerns over the proposal centred on fears that US firepower would be used on fighters opposed to the Yemeni government. Attacks that killed local insurgents who control a large slice of the country around Abyan in the south would provoke a backlash among ordinary Yemenis. "How discriminating can they be?" a senior US official who had seen the request told the paper. "I think there is the potential that we would be perceived as taking sides in a civil war."

American strikes have killed 90 suspects since the start of March.

A US drone accidentally killed the teenaged American son of al-Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki last year, despite the fact he never was formally charged with terrorist activity.

AQAP sent printer cartridge bombs on international airlines to Chicago synagogues in 2010, just months after it trained Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the "underpants bomber".