The New York Times.
WASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the
intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The
mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook
layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who
looked even younger than her 17 years.
President Obama,
overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen
security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to
study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office
punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with
catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful
attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without
uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.
“How old are these people?” he asked, according to two officials present. “If they are starting to use children,” he said of Al Qaeda, “we are moving into a whole different phase.”
It
was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the
helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for
kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely
theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with
American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might
soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal
conundrum this could be.
