In case you’ve been living under a rock since… well… on Thursday (which might be a good thing if you’re a potential drone strike target), President Obama admitted that the US inadvertently killed two people during a drone strike in Pakistan. An American development expert and an Italian were the two hostage casualties.
Typical of big government, everybody is pointing fingers at each other or acting as if they’re not accountable. Horrible cross-agency communication appears to the getting the blame for the disastrous strike.
Member of the Armed Services Committee, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R., Calif.) said on Thursday, “Warren Weistein did not have to die… his death is further evidence of the failures of communication between government agencies tasked with recovering Americans in captivity and the fact that he’s dead, as a result, is absolutely traffic.”
Rep. Duncan also specifically identified the FBI as being incapable of leading hostage-rescue efforts.
FBI officials declined to comment.
After reading many mixed reports and knowing that the size of Al Qaeda Pakistan population isn’t very numerous, it was pretty likely that any cells targeted had a good chance of also housing the hostages. That makes me wonder whether or not it was a miscommunication or just collateral damage.
This is two lives we are talking about, but I’ve watched a few seasons of Homeland and read a ton of news… It could easily be the CIA operating business as usual and using the FBI’s hostage rescue incompetence and bad communication as a cop-out while getting their job done.