[Al Arabiya Latest] The Obama administration has authorized operations to capture or kill an American-born Muslim cleric based in Yemen for his alleged role in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, U.S. officials said on Tuesday.Oh, the impending carnage among puppies, kittens, baby ducks!
The decision to add Anwar al-Awlaki to the U.S. target list followed a National Security Council review because of his status as a U.S. citizen. Officials said Awlaki posed a direct security threat to the United States. "Awlaki is a proven threat," a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. "He's being targeted."
| We can only hope that next time the decision process won't take nearly as long, now the path has been broken. |
| Whoops! Osama bin Ladin has just been demoted, without so much as a 'by your leave'. I just hope he was kind to the people he climbed over on the way up. |
She told Reuters that Awlaki's U.S. citizenship made going after him "certainly complicated." But Harman said President Barack Obama and his administration "made very clear that people, including Americans who are trying to attack our country, are people we will definitely pursue... are targets of the United States."
Yemen has carried out air strikes with U.S. assistance targeting al-Qaeda leaders, but there have been conflicting reports about whether Awlaki was present during any of those attacks. Officials believe he remains in hiding in Yemen.
U.S. intelligence agencies had viewed Awlaki as chiefly an al-Qaeda sympathizer and recruiter for Islamist causes with possible ties to some of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. But that assessment started to change late last year with revelations about Awlaki's contacts with both the Nigerian suspect in an attempted bombing of a transatlantic passenger jet as it approached Detroit on Dec. 25 and to the U.S. Army psychiatrist accused of shooting dead 13 people at a military base in Texas on Nov. 5.