President Obama has put special ops strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to strike militant targets from Libya to Mali -- if CIA investigators can find the al-Qaida linked group responsible for the death of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on that terrible night in Benghazi on September 11th. Details on the administration's position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.
However, the officials say the administration, with a week and a half away until the presidential election, is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on al-Qaida is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group's profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa. The dilemma shows the tension of the White House's need to demonstrate it is responding forcefully to an al-Qaida, that Obama bragged was finished with Bin Laden's death, balanced against its long-term plans to develop relationships and trust with local governments and build a permanent U.S. counterterrorist network in the region.
''With the election less than two weeks away, they are aiming for a small pop, a flash in the pan, so as to be able to say, 'Hey, we're doing something about it and Obama should stay another term,''' said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rudy Attalah, the former Africa counterterrorism director of the Department of Defense under George W. Bush. Attalah noted that in 1998, after the embassy bombing in Nairobi, the Clinton administration fired cruise missles to take out a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan that may have been producing chemical weapons for al-Qaida. ''It was a way to say, 'Look, we did something,''' Attalah said.
Finding the militants who overwhelmed that small security force at the consulate isn't going to be easy. The key suspects are members of the Libyan militia group Ansur al-Shariah. The group has denied responsibility, but eyewitnesses saw Ansar fighters at the consulate that night and U.S. intelligence intercepted phone calls after the attack from Ansur fighters to leaders of al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb bragging about it. The affiliate's leaders are known to be mostly in northern Mali, where they have seized a territory as large as Texas following a coup in the country's capital.
The burden of proof for U.S. covert action weighs heavily, but action by the CIA or Special Ops forces still requires a body of evidence that shows the suspects either took part in the attack or presents a ''continuing and persistent, imminent threat'' to U.S. targets, current and former. But if the U.S. acts alone to target them in Africa, ''it raises all kinds of sovereignty issues....and makes people very uncomfortable,'' says Robert Grenier, former director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. He added, ''Even a strike that happens with permission could prove problematic, especially in Libya or Mali because both countries have fragile, interim governments that could lose popular support if they are seen allowing the U.S. unfettered access to hunt al-Qaida.''
Longtime Congressmen Pete Hoekstra -- former chairman of the powerful House Intelligence Committee -- said, ''This presidency, this administration has been very, very reluctant to go after terrorism through the intelligence community, you know, doing no enhanced interrogation and really pulling back boots on the the ground -- the kind of intelligence that you need to ba able to identify the low-life Islamic scum that were responsible for the Benghazi attack and stop them in their tracks. I'm not sure that we've got the kind of up-to-date intelligence that will enable us to attack with any kind of precision.'' He continued, "I'm more worried about the kind of flippant response coming from Obama that we saw back in the 1990's....just to score so political points so close to the election.''
The Way I See It....I am not surprised the Obama administration has leaked plans for a possible retaliatory strike. Barack Obama's government has dug itself in such a deep hole on Benghazi with either total incompetence/or the lies that have been coming out of this administration. I'm not at all surprised that we're hearing about these things only now. This administration, after the embarrassment of Benghazi, is now going to try to do everything that they can to look really, really tough on radical Jihadists. Obama said on Friday, ''My biggest priority right now...is bringing those folks (?) to justice.''
The difficulty President Obama faces is how he can coordinate such an attack without acknowledging that al-Qaida is still a major threat and that his strategy in Northern Africa and parts of the Arabian Peninsula is in a shambles. They will have to admit that even though bin Laden was killed, al-Qaida is alive. It's thriving. It has breeding and training grounds in Northern Africa -- these all developed after the Arab Spring and that this isn't an Arab Spring. It is an Arab Upheaval. It has given some great opportunities for al-Qaida to reconstitute itself and prepare itself for further attacks on America. The next President must drop Obama's ''leading-from-behind'' policy and challenge these anti-American forces head on!
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