President Barack Obama on Friday promised to be more forthcoming with the American public on his administration’s campaign of lethal drone strikes amid criticism over the targeting of suspected US terrorism suspects abroad.
Obama, under pressure from the left and right to allow greater scrutiny of the secret decision-making process for killing Americans overseas, vowed to work with Congress to craft a “mechanism” to be more open about how the drone war is conducted.
“What I think is absolutely true is it’s not sufficient for citizens to just take my word for it that we’re doing the right thing,” Obama said in an online video question-and-answer session sponsored by Google.
Asked whether the US government could target a citizen on American soil, Obama appeared to rule that out.
“There has never been a drone used on an American citizen on American soil,” he said. “We respect and have a whole bunch of safeguards in terms of how we conduct counterterrorism operations outside of the United States. The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside the United States.”
The issue moved to the forefront last week when Obama yielded to congressional demands and in a policy reversal provided access for House of Representatives and Senate intelligence committees to a classified legal opinion on killing US terrorism suspects with drone strikes abroad.
