Al Qaeda Network Exord - The Sword of Black Ops

I can’t wait for the Bush Administration to end. However, my anticipation stems only from the desire to see more military secrets that will hopefully be declassified and made public as soon as the administration ends. We are talking Rainbow Six, Navy Seal, Halo 4 type secrets. Through an executive order, a Presidential power that is not reviewed by Congress, President Bust had:

“authorized its special forces to carry out more than a dozen raids in countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, four years ago as part of a stepped-up hunt for al-Qaida, according to a former senior CIA officer. Highly publicized attacks by American forces across the border from Iraq into Syria last month, and from Afghanistan into Pakistan's tribal areas in September, are just the tip of an iceberg of special military operations.”

-Ewen MacAskill in Washington writing for the Guardian UK.

We have Delta forces tromping around Syria, Seals swimming off the coast of Somalia. I am sure that some Green Berets are kicking some ass some where, but I want to know. I need details. The release further stated that many of these classified forays into non-war zone countries (all other countries except for Iraq and Afghanistan) were video taped by US predator drones.

“In 2006, for example, a Navy Seal team raided a suspected militants’ compound in the Bajaur region of Pakistan, according to a former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency. Officials watched the entire mission — captured by the video camera of a remotely piloted Predator aircraft — in real time in the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center at the agency’s headquarters in Virginia 7,000 miles away.”

-ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI writing for The New York Times

If that is not bad ass (but also really scary) then I do not know what is. Hurry up and end Bush administration so I can see all your secrets. Where have my tax dollars gone? What black ops have I funded and how many bombs have I dropped, what are the fruits of this poisonous tree and are we making the kool-aid to drink from the bounty?

“Apart from the 2006 raid into Pakistan, the American officials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan and other countries. They made clear that there had been no raids into Iran using that authority, but they suggested that American forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.

According to a senior administration official, the new authority was spelled out in a classified document called “Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order, that streamlined the approval process for the military to act outside officially declared war zones. Where in the past the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days when there were only hours to act, the new order specified a way for Pentagon planners to get the green light for a mission far more quickly, the official said.”

-ERIC SCHMITT and MARK MAZZETTI writing for the New York Times

No raids into Iran? Let’s see what the gov’t has to say once Bush is out.