The alleged use of special operations troops in the raid could signal a shift away from the controversial U.S.tactic of relying on long-range missile assaults to take out terrorist targets.

VOA: standard.2009.09.15

Paul Pillar,a former senior CIA intelligence officer now with Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, favors a shift away from direct combat operations to a concentration on training Afghanistan's army and police, and economic development.

VOA: standard.2009.10.15

"But I do think that in general we have seen a shift from, for lack of a better term, professionalized terrorist operations to those that are conducted by not exactly amateurs, but folks with less training and less capability generally, technical capability."

VOA: standard.2010.05.05