http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MI23Ak03.html
As Somalia undergoes its worst famine in six decades and Yemen slides into civil war, the administration of President Barack Obama is expanding its network of bases to carry out drone strikes against suspected terrorists in both countries, according to reports published in two major United States newspapers on ThursdayOperations in Saudi [Arabia] are [the] only new expansion to this plan," the official was quoted as saying. "The rest has been working for over a year when we long ago realized danger from AQAP [al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula]," a Yemen-based affiliate which, according to recent statements by US intelligence officials, has been consolidating links with al-Shabaab, the Somali group which Washington claims also has ties to al-Qaeda.ndeed, none other than Obama's first top intelligence chief, Admiral Dennis Blair (retired), told an elite gathering of foreign policy and national security wonks in July that it was a mistake "to have [an air-only] campaign dominate our overall relations" with Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
"Because we're alienating the countries concerned, because we're treating countries just as places where we go attack groups that threaten us, we are threatening the prospects of long-term reform," he said. Such strikes should only be carried out with the consent of the host government.
But Obama's new Pentagon chief and former CIA director Leon Panetta rejected that criticism, insisting that the tactic had been and would continue to be "effective at undermining al-Qaeda and their ability to plan attacks [against the US]".
Panetta and the Pentagon have also reportedly led the charge in an ongoing debate within the administration to broaden the current target list in Yemen and Somalia from high-level leaders of AQAP and al-Shabaab, who are presumed to share al-Qaeda's global aims, to include low-level foot soldiers, whose motivation for joining such groups may be more parochial and less ambitious.
The drone has increasingly become the administration's "weapon of choice" in its efforts to subdue al-Qaeda and its affiliates, although it has been used far less frequently against targets in Yemen and Somalia than in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq.According to the Post and Journal accounts, Washington used a base in the Seychelles in 2009 and 2010 to fly drones for surveillance of both Somalia and Somali piracy activity in the Indian Ocean. According to the WikiLeaks cables cited by the Post, Seychelles President James Michel has concurred with the idea of arming the drones.The Post reported that the US had negotiated with Ethiopia, with which Washington also cooperates closely on counter-terrorism activities, for four years over building a base for armed drones on its territory. Fox News reported that the US had flown surveillance drones from several Ethiopian bases."But it runs the very real risk of actually exacerbating the situation," he noted. "The problem with drones is that the US doesn't have a very good track record on killing who it's aiming at in Yemen. So it often ends up killing civilians, which drives their brothers, fathers, sons, nephews, etc into the hands of al-Qaeda and makes it easier for al-Qaeda to argue that Yemen is an active theater of jihad, no different from Iraq or Afghanistan."
He also expressed concern about the CIA building a base in Saudi Arabia. "One of the primary motivations for Osama bin Laden's jihad against the US were military bases housing US troops in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War [in 1991]," he wrote on his blog, Waq al-Waq. "Does the US think this current of thought no longer holds sway in Arabia?
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Originally Posted by Pericles
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