U.S. Develops Secret List to Track, Kill "Terror Suspects"

PRESS TV
10/24/2012

The US has been secretly developing a new plan to track and kill what it views as anti-American “terrorists,” boosting the blueprint as a next-generation targeted killing list referred to as “disposition matrix.”

The so-called matrix, developed by Obama administration’s national security and military officials, includes the names of “terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations,” leading US daily The Washington Post reports Wednesday.

The database, according to the report, is intended to reach beyond existing American killing lists, mapping plans for the “disposition” of suspects beyond the reach of US assassination drones.

The development of the matrix reflects a new mindset among the US administration’s counterterrorism officials: “The United States’ conventional wars are winding down, but the government expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years,” the report says.

Top Obama administration officials, meanwhile, agree that such assassination operations by US forces, surrogates and terror drone strikes will extend “at least another 10 years.”

“We can’t possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us,” said a senior administration official quoted in the report. “It’s a necessary part of what we do. .?.?. We’re not going to wind up in 10 years in a world of everybody holding hands and saying, ‘We love America.’ ”

Meanwhile, according to the Post article, the number of militants and civilians killed in the drone campaign over the past 10 years “will soon exceed 3,000” exceeding the number of those killed during the sophisticated and now highly controversial 9/11 incidents in New York and Washington, which the US has remarkably blamed on al-Qaeda operatives.

“Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war,” the report adds.

The daily reported earlier this week that CIA Director David Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones. It added that the proposal reflects the spy agency’s transformation into a paramilitary force and underlines the fact that it does not intend to dismantle its assassination drone strike plan and return to its pre-September 11 focus on gathering intelligence.

According to the report, targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.

Currently, it further adds, the US operates multiple drone programs, including acknowledged American “military patrols over conflict zones in Afghanistan and Libya, and classified CIA surveillance flights over Iran.”

A US military base in Djibouti has been transformed into a “launching pad for counterterrorism operations” across the Horn of Africa and the Middle East.

The database, according to the detailed article, is intended to map out contingencies, creating an operational menu that dictates the role each US military or intelligence unit involved in a operation in case a suspect surfaces in an unexpected spot. “If he’s in Saudi Arabia, pick up with the Saudis,” said a former US counterterrorism official. “If traveling overseas to al-Shabaab [in Somalia] we can pick him up by ship. If in Yemen, kill or have the Yemenis pick him up.”

Although administration officials refused to reveal the identities of suspects on the matrix, they pointed to the capture of alleged al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame off the coast of Yemen in 2011. Warsame was held for two months aboard a US ship before being taken to the custody of the Justice Department and charged in federal court in New York.

MFB/JR

2012-10-25 23:00:14

Source: http://www.freepeoples5thestate.com/2012/10/us-develops-secret-list-to-track-kill.html