Regret Over a Drone’s Deadly Damage - NYT Editorial
Regret Over a Drone’s Deadly Damage Friday April 24 th , 2015 at 2:41 PM 1 Share For years, the Obama administration has kept its drone strikes shrouded in great secrecy, knowing that what have been described as precision attacks on terrorist targets have also killed innocent civilians. So it was important to see candor and remorse from President Obama in his apology for the killing of two Al Qaeda hostages, an American and an Italian, in a drone strike near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in January. “It is a cruel and bitter truth that in the fog of war generally and our fight against terrorists specifically, mistakes — sometimes deadly mistakes — can occur,” President Obama said on Thursday. “One of the things that makes us exceptional is our willingness to confront squarely our imperfections and to learn from our mistakes.” The deaths of Warren Weinstein , an American development expert, and Giovanni Lo Porto , an Italian aid worker, wer