Obama and Democrats Undermine Security and the CIA

The Obama administration and its congressional supporters committed major blunders last week by canceling, leaking and then deciding to investigate a highly classified program to eliminate al Qaeda leaders. Although much remains hidden from public view, the controversy highlights peculiarities in President Obama's view of his responsibilities as commander in chief.

Consider the legality and morality of using intelligence agencies to try to kill or capture key terrorists. In the post-Watergate congressional frenzy following President Nixon's resignation, House and Senate committees happily exposed formerly covert operations in full detail, including purported assassination plots against foreign leaders.

Although assassination attempts had hardly been commonplace and rarely had succeeded, Democratic legislators nonetheless mounted a substantial effort to prohibit them. President Ford countered with an executive order generally to the effect of blocking such actions in order to avert even more draconian Hill action. Mr. Ford succeeded, with the added advantage that his order and subsequent modifications were worded carefully to keep open the assassination option, at least in some circumstances.

Today, many in Congress are again saying they are outraged at the possibility of "targeted killings" of al Qaeda leaders by U.S. intelligence operatives. Why this should be so is puzzling. America's military forces have properly and legitimately been hard at work killing terrorists and destroying their capabilities since the murderous attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Obviously, however, in the war on terror, al Qaeda leaders do not conveniently dispose themselves on military battlefields, so the intelligence community's clandestine efforts appear perfectly suited to the "war in the shadows" that terrorists typically employ very well. Surely the terrorists care little whether they are being killed by CIA agents disguised as peasants or by grunts in camouflage uniforms and dirty combat boots.

America was attacked with deadly force on Sept. 11 and before, and we are entitled to respond in self-defense, including using deadly force, until the threat from the terrorists and their state sponsors is ended. - Washington Times Commentary