Delays in Effort to Refocus C.I.A. From Drone War (Pentagon too incompetent???)

New York Times ^ | April 5, 2014 | MARK MAZZETTI

[Seizethecarp]

In the skies above Yemen, the Pentagon’s armed drones have stopped flying, a result of the ban on American military drone strikes imposed by the government there after a number of botched operations in recent years killed Yemeni civilians. But the Central Intelligence Agency’s drone war in Yemen continues.

In Pakistan, the C.I.A. remains in charge of drone operations, and may continue to be long after American troops have left Afghanistan.

And in Jordan, it is the C.I.A. rather than the Pentagon that is running a program to arm and train Syrian rebels — a concession to the Jordanian government, which will not allow an overt military presence in the country.

Both Ms. Feinstein and Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, have urged Mr. Brennan to push back against the White House policy announced last May, citing what they regard as the Pentagon’s poor performance in lethal operations outside of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A number of bungled drone strikes carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command in Yemen led the government there in recent months to temporarily ban drone strikes by the military, which are launched from an American base in Djibouti.

In Pakistan, where the C.I.A. also is in charge of the drone program, the pace of strikes has declined sharply, and there have been none since the government in Islamabad formally entered peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a group that tracks drone strikes.

But American officials said that the drone program there could continue for years, and Pakistan’s government has long insisted that it be run by the C.I.A., not the American military.

This was one of the terms of the deal reached a decade ago between the Bush administration and Pervez Musharraf...

[stocksthatgoup]

Mike Rogers - RINO

[AndyJackson]

What does Mike Rogers being a RINO have to do with this. Bob Gates’s recent book is a real eye-opener-about constantly having to fight a bloated Pentagon bureaucracy dedicated to their parochial concerns and uninterested in fighting the wars we were actually in.

[Always A Marine]

Why do we think we are justified to assassinate people from 50,000 feet above other countries and then label them as terrorists if they try to kill Americans here at home? We’ve obligated ourselves to more commitments than we can possibly meet, and one day our adversaries are going to expose us by calling our bluff at once. It is time for us to start minding our own business and let others sort out some of their own messes.