On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 15:27:44 +0100, "Paul J. Adam"
wrote:

You mean your time-sensitive targeting is entirely dependent on your
President's personal habits?

That is the way this sort of thing works in a democracy.

What, all military decisions require on-the-spot signoff by the
Commander in Chief?

Simply put, yes.

The military
implements policy and does not attack other nations unless ordered to
by the President.

Except that this scenario describes enough surveillance and intelligence
to have a decent confidence of bin-Laden's whereabouts and movement, and
sufficient military assets in place to make a credible effort at killing
him.

All that effort and nobody sorted out delegation?

There's no need to sort out anything. The chain of command is clear.

Hopefully, things work in a similar manner in your country.

I rather hope not - we prefer "Mission Command" to "Do absolutely
nothing without Downing Street's approval in quadruplicate".

Well, I too sometimes prefer to leave decisions to the professionals.
But that carries with it it's own set of problems. To call Clinton
Era military policy "risk adverse" would be to make one othe most
profound understatements of all time. But our Constitution sets out
the President as CinC and we take an oath to uphold that Constitution
and to obey the orders of said President (even if he's lying, craven,
*******'s whoreson).

And when somebody DOES do as you suggest we have something like
Iran-Contra. No matter how this might be viewed in other quarters it
was a truly renegade operation in violation of Federal law.

We can argue the wisdom of tying ourselves into legal knots, but the
legality of the system is beyond question.