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| Terror Networks |
| Headley listed among 5 high-value targets |
| 2013-02-16 |
| President Barack Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan has listed convicted key Mumbai terror attack plotter David Coleman Headley among five high-value targets that had been captured with US intelligence support. Brennan, Obama’s nominee to be the next chief of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), listed Pakistani-American Headley, who was last month sentenced to 35 years of imprisonment by a Chicago court for his role in the Lashkar-e-Taiba staged November 2008 Mumbai attack, in response to questions from a Senate panel. Since January 2009 when he became Obama’s terrorism adviser, “dozens of individuals have been arrested, detained, interrogated, and convicted of terrorism-related offences in federal court,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee in written answers Friday. “Individuals arrested here in the United States include David Headley, Mansoor Arbabsiar, Najibullah Zazi, Faisal Shahzad, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.” “Individuals initially taken into US custody overseas include Ahmed Ghailani, Jesse Curtis Morton, Mohamed Ibrahim Ahmed, and Betim Kaziu, and subsequently brought to the United States for interrogation and prosecution,” Brennan said. In response to other questions, Brennan said setting up a special court to oversee deadly drone strikes against American citizens is worth considering but raises difficult questions over how much authority it would have in decisions currently made by the president. “It would raise some novel, and potentially difficult, questions and furthermore would grant courts authority over decisions that have traditionally been exercised principally, if not exclusively, by the executive branch,” he said. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #9 OTOH DEFENCE.PK/FORUMS [old] > [India Times = Econ Times of India] SENTENCE PROVES DAVID HEADLEY WAS A DOUBLE-AGENT FOR THE US [+ LeT]. Sniff, sniff - Penn State + "Professor" Muhammed Atta??? |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2013-02-16 21:03 |
| #8 I thought they meant Headley Lamarr... |
| Posted by: mojo 2013-02-16 16:39 |
| #7 Based on US policy of targeting anyone in terrorist areas US citizens included. If Isreal had a similar policy I conclude they could target anyone visiting Palestine. |
| Posted by: airandee 2013-02-16 14:48 |
| #6 John Brennan will lead us back to the "good old days" of Allen Dulles and the crazy crap nonsense that was the CIA with secret wars over half the globe. When my career as a military guy ended, I asked my OPO officer why and he said, well officially its a RIF, unofficially the Army hierarchy is purging the officer ranks of anyone who was doing the CIA dirty work. Too many rogue operations and too many officers with compromised senses of moral/ethical duties and responsiblities vis a vis the Geneva Convention. So we'll have another generation of military officers flung into crazy situations doing heroic things and getting the shaft when a new DCI and CJCOS take over. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2013-02-16 12:35 |
| #5 Death by drone is simply an expansion of CIA market share. They've been at war with DoD (less special mission units) for decades and are now winning. The appointment of John Brennan as the Director CIA should be given very, very close scrutiny. I fear this man and the trouble he may bring us. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-02-16 11:27 |
| #4 An over-simplification, but if you don't own [control] the terrain and fail to control the border and eliminate border insurgent sanctuaries you lose, simple as that. Thousands of madrassas and mosques in Quetta and Chaman are incubators and armories for the Afghan insurgency. It is my view that all terrorism or counterinsurgencies are "state sponsored". The challenge is what "state" is doing the sponsoring. If you stick your finger in a stock tack you'll be able to see the ripples. If you pull your finger out and come back 5 minutes later, no ripples are visible. It will be as though you were never there. Trying to introduce these people [tribal Afghans or Paks] to western democracy is a fool's errand. It has been from the start. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-02-16 11:15 |
| #3 "having to ask whether this president thinks he can drone zap US citizens on US soil" No need to ask. He does. >:-( |
| Posted by: Barbara 2013-02-16 10:46 |
| #2 What we have right now is a mess. But I'm not sure I agree with you Besoeker. There's a good argument to be made that it was precisely a military response to non-state actors that has tied us in knots. A much more aggressive paramilitary response in Afghan, Iraq, Yemen etc. while maintaining public silence on what would trigger larger scale intervention might well have gone a long way to creating more helpful attitudes around the world. Muslim authorities insist that jihadi terrorism isn't their policy? Fine. Then a lot of people will end up having unfortunate and sometimes quite dramatic accidents while State takes heavily sweetened tea with their counterparts. In addition, mixing military and intel issues so pervasively is exactly what has brought us to the point of having to ask whether this president thinks he can drone zap US citizens on US soil. |
| Posted by: lotp 2013-02-16 10:27 |
| #1 The designation of HVT's, detention [POW's], and targeting should be the business of the military commander engaged in combat operations on the ground, not the White House or the Central Intelligence Agency. Unity of effort is destroyed and success is impaired when you have politically disparate elements running around the battlespace, conducting their own private wars, failing to share information and intelligence. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2013-02-16 03:36 |