Page 128 - Drone Program News Today

In. you were listening to the president there. i mean he rarely talks about the drone program, and he brought it up again just now at odni. in watching him yesterday, you know acknowledging this the phraseology was precisely, i take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations including the one that inadvertently took the lives of warren and giovanni. to me, this seems like a very significant moment for the president. do you agree? >> well its very significant in the fact he wante...

The drone program controversial and abroad. especially in the india and pakistan region. the president takes full responsibility for the deaths of the two hostages. the white house also had to explain why it took until thursday to publicly disclose the killings which happened in january. we have jim acosta with that part of the story. >> reporter: john president obama says he authorized the disclosure of the operation as soon as his national security team was southerncertain these were the hos...

Intel, but president obama trialed to move the drone program from the cia to the department of defense. does this january drone mistake, does that only add more fuel to the goal? if that were to happen what difference would that make? >> it might. the cia has been pretty good about resisting that transition and hanging onto the authorities that it has to operate the drones. we should remember that president obama has embraced this program as a central pillar of his counterterrorism operations bu...

Becoming a less important component, because there is a belief politically were not going to do boots on the ground. a lot of resources are moving more towards the smaller teams, the drone program, and also the air force. so this is a policy thats really been shaped by the politics. >> peter, to the legacy that the president is leaving, do you think the general consensus in the white house is whatever we lead is basically whats going to remain intact for the next president, whether its a republi...

Americans have been killed by u.s. drone strikes. besides the three we learned about today, four in 2011. jude kenan mohammad, who died in a signature strike in pakistan. samir khan, accused of editing al qaedas english language magazine "inspire" killed in yemen. killed alongside him the most famous example, radical cleric, anwar al awlaki. the fourth, awlakis 16-year-old son killed just two weeks after his father. of the seven americans in total, awlaki was the only one intentionally specifica...

Or al qaeda in the arabian peninsula. the loud argument against drones now growing as a result of the number of civilian casualties. talk about the future of the drone program, joining us bob bear our cnn intelligence and security analyst, former cia operative, joining us from irvine, california. and in new york retired lieutenant colonel james reese, cnn global affairs delta force commander. courage colonel reese how critical are the drones to the anti-terror effort? >> good afternoon. theyre v...

Bystanders in the process. joining us now is missy ryan. shes a pentagon reporter for "the washington post." thank force being here tonight. >> thank you. were talking about drones were talking about basically the trigger being pulled thousands of miles away. it opens up to seems to me a pretty huge possibilities and margin for error if were going to have a drone program that targets targets thousands of miles away, do we have to accept the feature that american may be killed? >> the drone opera...

House republican ways of pursuing this administration and showing they were politically anti-obama. i think they proved that point and then some by making eric holder their focus and it raises a historical question here that people will battle about for years, rev, which is this is the first time in american history that an attorney general has ever been held in contempt by a congress and ultimately historians will have to look at that and decide does that say more about this particular congress...

Country going too far. while i think the reaction at this point is in the early stages its not necessarily going to break down along partisan lines. senator mccain has been a staunch defender of this drone program and of the use of american military force in the war on terrorism overall. so i think if you listen closely to what he decides to say about this tragedy and whether or not this is something that ultimately served the national security interests of the united states even if it did resul...

Here. so i think what the administration is doing is right. theyre going to launch a review both of what happened in this incident and then seeing whether there need to be further changes to the program. its something that ought to be looked at internally and ought to be subject to public debate as is happening now. >> and to your point, matt, in may of 2013 the president addressed the drone program and said, as you indicated, that before any strike is taken, there must be near certainty that no...