By RUPERT CORNWELL
For the Bush Administration, the assassination of Qaed Senyan al-Harthi is not only a "very successful tactical operation", in the words of Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defence.
It is also a correct and morally justifiable tool in the war against terrorism .
For the President and his advisers, this conflict is a shadowy struggle fought across the world, where the adversary does not fight by the normal rules.
But his forces are combatants nonetheless, and all means of military action - including assassination - are justified against them.
The philosophy was set out by the President in his June speech at the West Point military academy when he argued for "pre-emptive action" against the new enemy.
"If we wait for threats to fully materialise we will have waited too long," he said.
"We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge."
But even without that doctrine, US officials say ample legal basis exists for assassinations of suspected terrorists.
They claim the US constitution implicitly sanctions the right of a President, as commander-in-chief, to order lethal force against individuals in time of war.
Last September, moreover, Congress specifically authorised Bush to use "all necessary force to deal" with people involved with the September 11 attacks .
Al-Harthi, who is said to have helped plan the October 2000 attack on the destroyer USS Cole in which 17 American sailors were killed, certainly qualifies under this definition.
Finally, late last year, Mr Bush directed the CIA to use "lethal covert operations", if necessary, to remove Osama bin Laden and his high command .
Not that political assassination is anything new in the US arsenal.
Until President Ford's 1976 executive order banning the CIA and other US government employees from carrying out political assassinations, the practice was not uncommon - ask Fidel Castro.
It was outlawed partly as a result of the moral revulsion sparked by the Watergate affair, but also because it was often botched.
As the al-Harthi killing shows, technology provides ever more reliable tools .
Undoubtedly the US has tried to assassinate Saddam Hussein, either directly or by putting together a plot to kill him. Assassination falls into a grey area, where the public does not want a war, but conventional diplomacy is not working.
Suppose Saddam defies UN weapons inspectors again, and invites upon himself the threatened "serious consequences". Would it not be better for those consequences to be a single hit against a single person, than a war in which thousands of Iraqi civilians would die?
- INDEPENDENT
Story archives:
Links: War against terrorism
Timeline: Major events since the Sept 11 attacks
All's fair in Bush's war on terrorism
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