A dynamite piece, well worth 10 minutes of your time. In fact, there’s no better proof of just how far O’s “evolved” from his 2008 counterterror posture to the “Cheney lite” figure we know today than the number of sources who cooperated with the Times on this story. This isn’t just one “senior administration official” blabbing to a reporter about how the White House handles terror targets; this is “three dozen of his current and former advisers,” including Dennis Blair and Bill Daley on the record, cooperating. They want people to know about this, likely for two reasons. One: It’s a bit of transparency to try to pacify critics of the process, not unlike the NYT story from last October that revealed the basic thrust of the OLC memo that approved the targeting of U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. By releasing dribs and drabs of info to the Times instead of the underlying materials themselves, the White House keeps one foot in the “disclosure” camp and the other in the secrecy camp. Two: It’s a way to boost the campaign narrative of Obama as the strong, decisive leader who’s pummeling Al Qaeda. Remember, after he spiked the football on the anniversary of the Bin Laden killing, he was criticized for taking credit that rightfully belonged entirely to the SEALs. This piece is an implicit rebuttal: He’s more hands-on than you’d think. Savor the irony that the guy whom the left elected as a repudiation of Bush/Cheney is now using the NYT to make sure that people know he’s personally giving the thumbs-down to jihadis in the Oval Office.
There are too many interesting passages for the standard three-paragraph blockquote so let me snatch a few of the more intriguing details for you.