Drone Strike Kills Top al Qaeda Strategist The tip came from the pakis. They waited till he left the house and got in a car with a couple others.

“Mr. al-Libi has been one of the most sought-after terrorist targets since his escape from the prison at Bagram Air Force base in 2005″

fwiw this is the kind of war the cia wants to fight. Likely they had him on a big monitor in a big/small room in Langley.

imho this is the kind of war that LBJ dreamed of fighting. he just didn’t have the technology.

Where is the point of the spear?

Isn’t it actually with bureaucrats?

imho it had to have taken a lot of permissions to make this happen and yet they happened in real time. why?

that is why did the permission systems work in real time for al libi but not for the local commander.

that is, how could permissions system for al libi be mapped over to small unit warfare?

My betting is that the difference is that al libi was already pre approved. but the local taliban commander was not pre approved.

that is there was a standing order in some detail to take al libi but there was not a standing order in any detail to take the local taliban commander.

there for the way to make these takedowns happen in real time on the local level is get get the bureacracy to pre approve take downs on the local level. for example. there was a body of info on the local Taliban commander. A lot of reports had to have been filed on that taliban commander before the opportunity to take him presented itself. all of the reports on the taliban commander likely would have pointed to making it appropriate to take him. However, the actual standing order to take him was not in the files nor was the amount of risk/threat assessment leeway allowable–ie he’s so important you kill him with his family while you have the chance –as with Mehsud who the cia took out a couple months back….or he’s not so important so you wait till he comes out of his house and get in his car –like al libbi. or you want him for info alive like the taliban commander. or dead.

in any case all the important decisions all have to have been made before hand. threat value — take him/not take him; dead/alive; etc.

As it was, each of the american soldiers Major’s captains colonels etc had to go through the whole thought process. Some men can make those calculations in real time. Most can’t.

The way you solve that problem is to get pre approvals.

That way when the local GI has actionable info — he can go to his computer and check what’s allowed. If the bureaucrats have been following the trail of info the GI and his buddies have been filing for the last xxx months on the taliban–and they have been ordered to give approvals or not– then the bureacrats will have a ruling onscreen.

That ruling can then be forwarded to all the support people the GI needs to do his job–who in turn — seeing the ruling are both covered and empowered to get the GI the support he needs.