By Kimberly Dozier
The White House is considering delegating more authority to the Pentagon to greenlight anti-terrorist operations like the SEAL Team 6 raid in Yemen
that cost the life of a Navy SEAL, to step up the war on the so-called
Islamic State, multiple U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast.
President Donald Trump has signaled that he wants his defense secretary, retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, to have a freer hand to launch time-sensitive missions quickly, ending what U.S. officials say could be a long approval process under President Barack Obama that critics claimed stalled some missions by hours or days.
In declared war zones, U.S.
commanders have the authority to make such calls, but outside such war
zones, in ungoverned or unstable places like Somalia, Libya, or Yemen,
it can take permissions all the way up to the Oval Office to launch a
drone strike or a special-operations team.
Trump’s subsequent defense of the Yemen raid, and discussion of
accelerating other counterterrorist operations, shows his White House
will be less risk averse to the possibility of U.S.—or
civilian—casualties, unlike the Obama White House, which military
officials say was extremely cautious to the point of frustrating some
military commanders and counterterrorist operators.
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Source: The Daily Beast
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