Four not Two
by digby
Why am I seeing headlines all day about the US admitting to killing two Americans in drones strikes back in January? It was four Americans:
President Barack Obama announced Thursday that a U.S. counterterrorism operation targeting an al Qaeda compound in January accidentally killed two innocent hostages, including one American.
Multiple U.S. officials told CNN the hostages, Warren Weinstein, an American, and Italian national Giovanni Lo Porto, were killed by a U.S. military drone that targeted the al Qaeda compound.
"As president and as commander in chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni," Obama said Thursday morning in the White House briefing room, where he apologized on behalf of the U.S. government.
The White House also disclosed Thursday that two Americans, both al Qaeda operatives, were also killed in U.S. counterterrorism operations in the same region.
Al Qaeda leader Ahmed Farouq, who was an American citizen and deputy emir of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, was also killed in the operation that killed the two innocent hostages.
Adam Gadahn, another American in the senior ranks of al Qaeda, was also killed by U.S. forces in the region, "likely in a separate" counterterrorism operation, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement Thursday.
It's terrible that the two hostages were killed, obviously. But it's probably important to note that they were killed in the process of purposefully targeting and killing another American. Something which we did to yet another American in a separate strike.
I guess this is all just normal stuff now. If your government wants to kill you when you're abroad they can do it and nobody will raise a stink. If they accidentally kill you then there's a problem. Good to know.
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