Rachel Maddow Has A Lot of Questions for the Obama Administration Following Its Admission to Killing Four Americans with Drones
On her show last night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow raised some interesting questions regarding the Obama administration’s Wednesday admission that it killed four American citizens in drone strikes since 2009, three of who “were not specifically targeted by the United States.”
First, Maddow addressed confirmation that Jude Kennan Mohammed, accused of being part of a terrorist cell, was killed by a drone strike—despite the FBI maintaining a “wanted” page for him.
“Did the FBI really not know that that guy had not been killed until the attorney general told Congress and the general public about it this afternoon?” Maddow inquired. “If they were looking for him but another agency of the U.S. government, presumably the CIA or maybe the military—some other part of the government knew that that guy had been killed by us in a drone strike—did those other parts of the U.S. government really not tell the FBI?”
Maddow also raised questions about the drone strike victims who “were not specifically targeted by the United States,” who include Jude Kennan Mohammed, 16-year old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, and Samir Khan, the founder of Inspire magazine.
“With the government basically admitting that only one of these four Americans was killed on purpose as part of specific targeting, doesn’t that mean the government today admitted that the other three Americans were essentially killed by accident?” Maddow said. “And if they were killed by accident, if those were mistakes, do their families get some sort of recourse for that?”
Maddow also questioned the timing of these revelations, noting that President Obama is set to give a major national security speech later today.
“Why didn’t the government admit to these things before today? Why did they admit to them today? And why was it the attorney general who made the admission?” Maddow asked.
The inquisitive host wondered on live television whether these unanswered questions mean Obama’s drone program really won’t be changing, “but the justification for things will be changing.”
