(Gulf News/Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service) Greg Miller - For years, the debate raged within the CIA: Should the United States hunt down and kill its terrorist foes, or would Israeli-style "targeted killings'' only invite retribution and feed an endless cycle of violence? The debate ended Sunday, current and former intelligence officials said, when the CIA incinerated a carful of al Qaeda operatives in northern Yemen with a laser-guided Hellfire missile. "The discussion is now over and the operations have begun,'' said one former agency official with extensive experience in the Middle East. James Woolsey, director of the CIA in the early 1990s, harkened back to World War II, before the agency had even been created. "We broke the Japanese code and sent up aircraft to shoot down Adm. Yamamoto's plane and killed him,'' Woolsey said. "It was a targeted killing of one of their greatest military figures.''
2002-11-08 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive