One of those passengers subsequently turned out to be an American citizen. -- And the difference is...?

Middle East

On the road with Murder Inc

By Ian Urbina

WASHINGTON - Last week Israel announced that it would begin taking a more aggressive role in the war on terrorism, including the use of so-called targeted killings in the US and other friendly countries.

This was a significant shift for the Israeli government, which has since the late 1990s officially steered away from practicing lethal covert operations beyond its own borders and throughout the occupied territories. But the most surprising thing about the announcement was the subsequent silence from the Bush administration, which until recently has been a vocal critic of Israel's use of extrajudicial killings. Indeed, it seems that both Washington and Tel Aviv, to some extent in interplay with each other, have come a long ways toward rehabilitating the legitimacy of state-sanctioned assassination.

David Irving comments: ONCE again the decrees of George W Bush and Tony Blair et al. compare unfvourably with those of Adolf Hitler and his regime.    One of these days -- when my stolen files are returned to me by the British government's officers -- I will post on this website the entry in the wartime diary of Colonel Erwin Lahousen, chief of Abwehr II (counter-espionage), which records the ruling by Hitler, on an application Intelligence Chief Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (below), that there are to be no assassinations of foreign leaders or staffs. The entry in Lahousen's diary of February 2, 1943 read: Hitler had "on principle expressly forbidden Abwehr II [i.e., sabotage] attacks directed against individual personages."    Canaris had asked permission to mount an operation to liquidate the Soviet General Staff.. Related file: Our dossier on some of the origins of anti-Semitism

For the past five years, Washington has undergone a slowly creeping return to lethal cloak-and-dagger operations overseas. Officially, the US got out of the business after 1974 congressional hearings aired an embarrassing laundry list of American activities abroad, many of them botched, in attempts to knock off such figures as the Congo's Patrice Lumumba, Haiti's Jean-Claude Duvalier, Indonesia's Sukarno, and the Dominican Republic's Rafael Trujillo. The toxic cigars, exploding seashells and poisoned bathing suits from the list of attempts on Castro's life have become notorious examples of a bygone era.

But over the years, the categorical ban on political assassination, written into law by then president Gerald Ford, has been diluted by "interpretations" that allowed for the "offing" of enemies when it came as the unintended consequence of a military action against a country involved with terrorism.

So, in 1986, without stating any explicit intention of killing Muammar Gaddafi, Ronald Reagan ordered the bombing of the Libyan leader's compound, remarking that he would shed no tear if Gaddafi were killed. President George Bush Sr took a similar tack in hitting Saddam Hussein's palace in Baghdad in 1991, offering up the statement, "No one will weep for him when he is gone." President Bill Clinton further loosened the military's hands, with a secret memorandum expanding the use of deadly covert actions and authorizing in 1998 lethal force against al-Qaeda.

With the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent declaration of the war on terrorism, Bush, with the US Congress at his side, laid claim to unprecedented global jurisdiction. Washington vowed to pursue Osama bin Laden's followers with force wherever they may hide. Over 40 countries were seen to have al-Qaeda cells on their soil. Nevertheless, some hesitation remained on the part of the US to a full return to the use of targeted killing.

As recently as four months ago, the US displayed this hesitation over the killing of foreign civilians because Pentagon advisors worried that such actions might place the CIA outside Washington's own legal limits. In October 2001, the air force sought permission to attack a convoy of Taliban vehicles in Afghanistan, but a government lawyer argued against the strike - in part because women and children might be harmed, but also because the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, might be considered a civilian. The attack was called off.

But all this seemed to change on November 3 of last year when Bush gave the green light for operatives to kill Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, a suspect in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen. From 150 miles away at a base in the east African country of Djibouti, the CIA launched a remote-controlled unmanned drone to track al-Harethi, and when his car reached an open road in the Yemeni countryside, a Predator missile was fired from 10,000 feet overhead. Al-Harethi and the five other passengers in the vehicle were immediately incinerated.

One of those passengers subsequently turned out to be an American citizen.

In the past, the Bush administration had been quite clear when the matter of targeted killings came up, which was most often in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was especially true last July when Washington firmly reprimanded the Ariel Sharon government for having bombed a crowded Gaza apartment building in the hope of eliminating Hamas leader Salah Shehade. The explosion killed 11 civilians in neighboring residences and injured 176 others. The White House referred to the action as "heavy-handed", reiterating "we've made repeatedly clear that we oppose targeted killings". The State Department also subsequently opened a review of whether the Israeli government had been in violation of rules of US-sold equipment in the attack.

WITH the Yemen Predator attack, though, much shifted. Targeted killings in the Israeli-occupied territories increased, but the Bush administration decidedly kept its eyes elsewhere while State Department reprimands sharply decreased. One former senior White House official stated the matter plainly to the New York Times: "Criticism diminished as the administration sought to move aggressively against al-Qaeda."

In recently increasing the Mossad budget, Sharon is certainly not alone in his ambitions. Certain hawks in Washington are equally eager to declare open season, while pushing for even broader jurisdiction for US agents. Eight months before the September 11 attack, in fact, US Representative Robert L Barr Jr introduced a "Terrorist Elimination Act", which designated al-Qaeda fundraisers as legitimate targets for death.

In many respects, the Yemen missile strike was a first for the US. In the context of the war on terrorism, it was the first time that the US had killed an "enemy combatant" outside of Afghanistan; it was the first time it had done so in a country with which the US was not at war; and it was the first time it had assassinated a US citizen. For Israel, the Yemen strike was also a sign that Tel Aviv could now operate with more leeway.

But aside from the change in US posture, Israel was also handed a prime opportunity to step up its overseas activities several weeks later in Kenya. In late November, Mossad dispatched a fleet of agents to Nairobi after terror attacks on a hotel and an airliner there that killed 16 persons. "Our arm is long," Sharon remarked to the press, promising "none shall escape".

Sharon's promise is particularly reminiscent of the last time Israel was active in overseas targeted killings. "This is a turning point, [much] like the massacre at the Munich Olympics in 1972," said Zalman Shoval, a diplomatic adviser to the prime minister. That event, in which 11 Israeli athletes taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists were killed in a botched German rescue attempt, was followed by the systematic elimination of the organizers. The so-called "Wrath of God" battalion of Israeli agents combed the globe searching for the alleged perpetrators. All but one was ultimately killed.

But this same period in Mossad history also shows the dangerous potential for mistake. In 1973, for example, in the midst of hunting the Munich murderers, Israeli agents conducted a targeted killing in Norway. But they hit the wrong guy. Due to mistaken identity, the agents shot a Moroccan waiter, Ahmed Bouchikhi, who was walking home from the cinema with his pregnant wife in the ski resort of Lillehammer.

The gradual drift back toward assassination has raised criticism. Legal scholars and human rights organizations have expressed dire concern over the precedent such actions will have for international law. As agents operate on foreign soil with relative impunity, the sovereignty of nation-states also begins to fall away. Furthermore, it is not altogether clear whether private contractors, such as DynCorp, which the US is using to an increasing degree in overseas operations, will be covered in the new and expanded jurisdiction of targeted killings.

Many worry that if the CIA and Mossad begin killing more suspected terrorists in more countries, it will surely have the effect of "legitimizing" terrorist attacks against US military officers at home or abroad. The US has also attempted to publicly distance Israel from its war on terror so as not to play into bin Laden's rhetoric about Christian crusaders being in league with the Jewish state against the Arab and Muslim world.

Fending off this perception will grow only more difficult as the two countries' practices of state-sanctioned overseas targeted killings increasingly converge.

Justin Raimondo: Watch Your Back: Mossad Assassinations on American Soil? 

Israel's Mossad to start killing enemies in U.S., allied nations

Israel unleashes its death squads

The Guardian: Belgium may revive Sharon war crimes case