Head hunting

From the start, the Cheney administration's main tactic in the Global War on Terror (GWOT) -- besides invading Iraq, that is -- has been to draw up a diagram of al Qaeda leadership as of Sept. 12, 2001, and tick off each name as the next "number-three" has been killed or disappeared.

I'm not sure it makes much sense, though, when in the course of an attempted assassination, we take out the rest of the neighborhood even as we sometimes miss the "high ranking member of al Qaeda."

The CIA's failed Jan. 13 attempt to assassinate Al Qaeda second-in-command Ayman Zawahiri in Pakistan was the latest strike in the "targeted killing" program, a highly classified initiative that officials say has broadened as the network splintered and fled Afghanistan.

The strike against Zawahiri reportedly killed as many as 18 civilians, many of them women and children, and triggered protests in Pakistan. Similar U.S. attacks using unmanned Predator aircraft equipped with Hellfire missiles have angered citizens and political leaders in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.

Little is known about the targeted-killing program. The Bush administration has refused to discuss how many strikes it has made, how many people have died, or how it chooses targets. No U.S. officials were willing to speak about it on the record because the program is classified.

Several U.S. officials confirmed at least 19 occasions since Sept. 11 on which Predators successfully fired Hellfire missiles on terrorist suspects overseas, including 10 in Iraq in one month last year. The Predator strikes have killed at least four senior Al Qaeda leaders, but also many civilians, and it is not known how many times they missed their targets.

Critics of the program dispute its legality under U.S. and international law, and say it is administered by the CIA with little oversight. U.S. intelligence officials insist it is one of their most tightly regulated, carefully vetted programs.

I don't dispute that this program may be essential in disrupting al Qaeda's financial and tactical networks when key leadership is operating outside the reach of any legitimate law enforcement. But is it worth it to kill one "mastermind" when in the process we're creating a new generation of "masterminds" radicalized by watching a missile from a low flying predator drone kill a family of 18?

And how soon before the Cheney administration decides that they have the legal right to broaden this program to target political leaders that don't serve "United States interests? Pat Robertson may be a more accurate reader of the administration tea leaves than anyone's given him credit for.