CIA Director John Brennan, left, and National Security Agency Director Michael Rogers listen to remarks by President Obama on Friday at the headquarters of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
Washington Post: U.S. government’s refusal to discuss drone attacks comes under fire
The vehicles were separated only by several car lengths when the missile struck.
The main target of the CIA drone strike in April last year was a Toyota carrying 11 armed men suspected of being part of an al-Qaeda plot to attack a military outpost in central Yemen. But the shrapnel also sprayed a truck traveling a few dozen yards ahead, killing or wounding nine laborers on an early morning commute.
The Yemeni government soon acknowledged that civilians had been killed in an operation it did not attribute to the United States, and human rights researchers were able to reconstruct the incident from witness accounts. But the U.S. government has yet to admit that the strike ever occurred.
That policy of silence is under renewed pressure after President Obama’s extraordinary admission Thursday that the United States had accidentally killed two Western hostages, including a U.S. citizen, in a January counterterrorism strike on a gathering of suspected al-Qaeda militants in Pakistan.
WNU Editor: As long as the Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. Congress/Senate refuse to bring this issue up .... a public debate on drone strikes is not going to happen. My prediction .... this "silence" will continue long after President Obama is out of office, and it will arise only if there is a Republican President and A Democrat controlled House of Representatives or Senate.
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