…I have to give credit where credit is due, even if it hurts (ouch!).

To tell you the truth, I’m somewhat impressed.

While our socialist president and his administration are beyond weak where homeland security is concerned (I wouldn’t hire Janet Napolitano as a security guard in a pet shop), Barack Hussein apparently realizes how important it is that we win in Afghanistan.

As I posted once before, a loss in Afghanistan would mean that the Taliban and their al-Qaeda butt buddies would be in a position to join their Islamofacist allies in Pakistan and help those evil Mohammedans overthrow the government in Islamabad (yes, Islam is bad, but that’s beside the point).

That, in turn, would give the forces of Islamofacism possession of a nuclear armed country from which to employ said nuclear arms in their war against We, The Infidels and as we know, those madmen and madmanettes wouldn’t hesitate, just as Ahmadmanjihad in Iran won’t hesitate once he’s got his nukes on-line and on the business ends of appropriate delivery systems, to commence a nuclear holocaust.

But once again, I digress.

From today’s L.A. Times:

The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan’s border region, according to current and former counter-terrorism officials.

The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as “pattern of life” analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

Yes, B. Hussein Obama, demonstrating something of the will to beat the Taliban, has continued the use of drones to wax terrorists who are badly in need of waxing, in an effort to wage a winning war, despite the fact that this kind of thing would seem to be totally counter to the sort of Queensbury Rules approach most “progressives” would prefer to apply to a war against a profoundly malevolent enemy who is chaffing at the bit to butcher every infidel, man, woman and child, they can lay hands on.

The information then is used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities are not known, the officials said. Previously, the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list.

The new rules have transformed the program from a narrow effort aimed at killing top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders into a large-scale campaign of airstrikes in which few militants are off-limits, as long as they are deemed to pose a threat to the U.S., the officials said.

Instead of just a few dozen attacks per year, CIA-operated unmanned aircraft now carry out multiple missile strikes each week against safe houses, training camps and other hiding places used by militants in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

As a matter of policy, CIA officials refuse to comment on the covert drone program. Those who are willing to discuss it on condition of anonymity refuse to describe in detail the standards of evidence they use for drone strikes, saying only that strict procedures are in place to ensure that militants are being targeted. But officials say their surveillance yields so much detail that they can watch for the routine arrival of particular vehicles or the characteristics of individual people.

“The enemy has lost not just operational leaders and facilitators — people whose names we know — but formations of fighters and other terrorists,” said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “We might not always have their names, but … these are people whose actions over time have made it obvious that they are a threat.”

Great! Kill ‘em all, or as close as you can come…

At any rate, I just thought that a president with whose every other aspiration for America and every other policy I take unmitigated umbrage should get at least two “attaboys” and one “way to go” for not discontinuing this particular Bush-initiated strategy.

President Bush secretly decided in his last year in office to expand the program. Obama has continued and even streamlined the process, so that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta can sign off on many attacks without notifying the White House beforehand, an official said.

Missile attacks have risen steeply since Obama took office. There were an estimated 53 drone strikes in 2009, up from just over 30 in Bush’s last year, according to a website run by the New America Foundation that tracks press reports of attacks in Pakistan. Through early this month, there had been 34 more strikes this year, an average of one every 3 1/2 days, according to the site’s figures.

{Above emphasis mine}

Go get ‘em, B. Hussein. Kill ‘em all, and let Allah sort ‘em out!