April 1, 2011 – According to a high-ranking CIA official speaking on the condition of anonymity, the Obama Administration has made a radical and top-secret change in policy regarding the Middle East. Given authority by an Executive Order signed on Thursday, the CIA is inserting specially-trained former US Army Rangers and Navy SEALs into Arab nations across the Middle East and North Africa.

These teams, part of “Operation Shinobi”, are tasked with the assassination of any leader of a government or military across that region who is found by the CIA, and with concurrence of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the finding, to have ordered attacks on civilians which have resulted in the death of 50 or more unarmed protesters, bystanders, or others.

Members of the Shinobi teams must meet certain requirement, both of standard and unusual killing techniques, with an emphasis on being able to kill their targets with minimum chance of being detected or identified as Americans.  Each member must pass tests including:

• Hitting 8 out of 10 head-sized targets at a distance of 2 kilometers with an Accuracy International AW338 rifle using a .338 caliber Lapua Magnum cartridge,
• Hitting 8 out of 10 head-sized targets at a distance of 200 meters while swimming, using a silenced VSS Vintorez rifle, a choice made due its small size and the likelihood that, if found, it would not be assume to be an American’s weapon
• Hitting 9 out of 10 head-sized targets with an ultra-light titanium-niobium alloy throwing star with points tipped with a concentrated extract of alpha-Amanitin, extracted from a hybrid Amanita mushroom specially bred for deadliness of toxin in a secret CIA lab and greenhouse located in the vicinity of Morgantown, West Virginia.

Each form of weapon, including the throwing stars, will be fitting with an ultra-miniature video camera which will capture the wounding or killing of the target based on CIA information that several Arab rulers have, much as Saddam Hussein did, trained “doubles” to be seen or heard in place of the actual leader.  The captured video will be used to determine whether the wounded or killed target was indeed the intended target so that a dictator cannot vanish with the world believing he is dead, having simply sacrificed someone with the bad luck to look like that dictator.

According to the CIA official present at the discussions, President Obama was initially hesitant to agree to this program, which was first brought to him by an unnamed group of high-ranking female CIA officers called “The Gals” in intelligence circles.  Prior to their meeting with President Obama and National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and clearly frustrated by much more than just this operation, the Secretary of State was being comforted by The Gals who were telling her that “at least the country is learning who should really have been our first ‘historic’ president.”

Upon implementation of Operation Shinobi, Moammar Gaddafi had already met the targeting criteria and, although we cannot confirm or even get a comment about operational specifics, it seems likely that Col. Gaddafi will soon find a dime-sized hole through his cerebrum or suffer an even more painful death if he does not soon agree to give up control of his nation. Leaders of Bahrain, though nominally allies of the US, might also have some concern.

Perhaps more interesting than the obvious risk to leaders of these nations is the implications for foreign military, police, and security force chiefs.  Particularly in Bahrain, where the US would be hesitant to assassinate a member of the ruling family, there would be far fewer qualms about the death of a nearly unknown but still powerful general.  When the first of these “I was just obeying orders” men collapses with a fatal wound from a gunshot that nobody heard, the rest will soon be weighing the risk of not obeying those orders versus the risk of obeying them, perhaps leading to a line of such men seeking asylum in neighboring countries.

As of the writing of this article, it remains unclear whether  the disclosure of the existence of Operation Shinobi is, from the administration’s point of view, an unwelcome leak or whether it is part of an intentional campaign to threaten various Arab (and, by extension in the future, non-Arab) tyrants against the use of violence against their own people.

Although the Obama Administration does not focus on cost savings in domestic federal spending, Barack Obama was in part convinced to go along with Operation Shinobi when he was told that a .338 Lapua Magnum cartridge made to long-range military sniper specifications costs less than $25, and that a successful operation – even if it takes two shots to kill the target – could thus save tens of millions of dollars in US military spending on ongoing operations to suppress the actions of someone like Gaddafi.  Obama then signed the secret Executive Order authorizing the operation before asking, “Hey, can we tax those bullets?”

A spokesman for Tea Party freshman member of Congress (and former Army infantry officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and is a Master Scuba Diver) Alan West (R-FL), when asked about West’s reaction to the operation, offered only “The Speaker of the House has been informed to expect Representative West to be occasionally unavailable for votes and out of cell phone range over the next two months.”