President Obama just admitted that the US inadvertently killed an American and an Italian aid worker in Pakistan, presumably by drone strike. What the media is not talking about is the two other Americans who were intentionally killed around the same time. These Americans had no due process, no trial, no conviction.
President Obama just admitted that the US inadvertently killed an American and an Italian aid worker in Pakistan, presumably by drone strike. What the media is not talking about is the two other Americans who were intentionally killed around the same time. These Americans had no due process, no trial, no conviction.
President Obama just admitted that the US inadvertently killed an American and an Italian aid worker in Pakistan, presumably by drone strike. What the media is not talking about is the two other Americans who were intentionally killed around the same time. These Americans had no due process, no trial, no conviction.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Ron Paul Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams, who is the co-host, and he's also the executive director of the Institute for Peace and Prosperity.
Daniel, good to have you with us today.
Thank you, sir.
Well, good.
I have a subject which is something that just came up, matter of fact, just hours ago, and that has to do with the drone attack that didn't go exactly the way it should have gone or the way they wanted to.
And some Americans got killed.
Can you update us on that?
Sure, this was a drone strike that apparently occurred in January.
The U.S. sent a drone over to attack what they believed was an al-Qaeda compound in Pakistan.
Two aid workers were killed in the strike, however, unintentionally.
Dr. Warren Weinstein, who was a contractor with USAID, and Giovanni Laporto, who was an Italian aid worker.
They were in the compound when the strike happened.
And so that's what all the attention is on this news today, is that these two were killed unintentionally.
But weren't there a few others killed too?
Yeah, there were some others, but it's also interesting.
Why did he get on the air or like an emergency press conference and announce this?
That happened in January.
Do you think he just found it out today?
No, I think he knew about it, but the press got hold of it and he felt like he had to come forth.
But no, there were other people killed, but you won't read about it in the media, I'm quite sure, because there were two Americans who had joined Al-Qaeda.
So they're automatically very, very bad people, and nobody knows the circumstances.
But anyway, being an American citizen means nothing in this day and age of no law and order.
So they were literally assassinated.
This was a target assassination of new Americans because they were doing something that we didn't want him to do.
But I think that doing this is very dangerous.
When the president would sort of ask about this, or no, he brought it up in the speech.
I watched his speech this morning and he said, we follow the guidelines of counterterrorism.
I was just wondering, so the guidelines say he can assassinate American citizens.
Where do these guidelines come from?
That's the funniest part of it, but not funny, isn't the word, the most ironic part of his statement today, that he, you know, he admitted that Americans had been killed in addition to these two that were inadvertently killed.
But he said, it's okay because we're following our counterterrorism guidelines.
But as you say, who made those guidelines?
It wasn't the Constitution.
It was the Obama administration itself who determined that they were allowed to kill Americans if they saw fit.
And it probably was not endorsed by any law, even though that would be weak compared to the Constitution.
But unfortunately, this will probably go unnoticed.
But you know, one thing about the statement by the president this morning that was a little bit annoying to me because, you know, I like to give him a little credibility when I think he's going, you know, slightly in the right direction on occasion.
But, you know, I thought it was so disingenuous because he talked about the wonderful nature of the American people and the American government, mostly the American government.
We are wonderful.
We're a democracy.
We love freedom.
We're fair.
And it's only in America that we'll come clean and tell you all the story about what's happening.
But over in the Middle East, the Muslims, they never tell us anything that is true.
So it is amazing to me that he all of a sudden thinks that this is coming clean.
What do you think?
Do you think it's about time we put a little pressure on the president?
Maybe in the ordinary media, why doesn't he release those 28 pages about the study on what went on at 9-11?
That seems like it could be an appropriate question.
That would be transparency, absolutely.
Yeah.
But, you know, he talks about it, you know, this is sort of a platitude, I think.
You know, when this news came out, he said, I take all responsibility for this.
But what does that mean?
You know, it doesn't seem to have any meaning.
And if you talk about from 2004 to 2015, and many of those years were certainly not under his presidency, but he saw dozens, if not hundreds, of U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan.
And of course, it is tragic when Americans are killed.
And even though those two are probably bad guys, they weren't killed in the right way.
They were not given a trial.
But what about the hundreds and hundreds of innocent Pakistanis who were also collateral damaged and were killed?
So what does it mean to take responsibility?
To me, it doesn't mean a thing.
To me, it's still heartache no matter what, because I don't believe that we should be hitting anybody with drones under the conditions we have today.
And yet they go by all the time, and the CIA is involved.
We're changing regimes all the time.
But there was a little bit of CIA operation most likely involved in all these strikes.
But what about, you know, not too long ago, we did something about USAID and the Ebola crisis.
And people are very interested in the scams that go on, especially under USAID.
Do you think there might be a little bit of money involved with the USAID and what got us involved over there in an organization that seems to fail everything it does?
Yeah, absolutely.
You wonder what he was doing over there for USAID, how much money was being spent, whether it was helpful at all, and what was the point of the whole operation.
That part also won't be discovered.
So when they're arrested or captured by the so-called enemy, they captured aid workers who were over there doing the Lord's work, and they couldn't possibly have been stirring up trouble.
Anyway, this is an important item that showed up in the news today, and it'll be around for a little bit.
But I wish they would get down to the bottom of foreign policy.
Are drone strikes important and necessary?
Should we be doing it?
And should we condone, even if it's by ignorance and ignoring it, the fact that the president still is arguing the case that he is allowed to use target assassinations of American citizens?
Rather serious stuff.
Anyway, I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in today to the Liberty Report.