The US military's most elite counter-terrorism force, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), prides itself on the secrecy of its operations. JSOC runs classified, compartmentalized task forces in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, the Horn of Africa and elsewhere around the world. It has operated secret prisons and detention sites globally and is the premiere organization tasked with killing or capturing individuals deemed by the president to be threats to the national security of the United States. It maintains a "hit list" of people targeted for kill or capture, including Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen living in Yemen. While there has been an uptick in media focus on the possibility of a widening CIA role in Yemen, JSOC has been operating in Yemen for years, where its operatives have carried out a variety of operations, including unilateral direct actions—in other words, they have bumped people off.
What has become abundantly clear is that the Obama administration has taken the Bush-era doctrine of the world as a battlefield and run with it. US special forces are now operating in seventy-five countries across the globe—up from sixty under Bush—and special operations sources say Obama is a major fan of the work of JSOC and other special operations forces.
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