Drone Attacks and the White House

For the first time, the Whitehouse has accepted that during the recent drone strikes, carried out in Yemen and Pakistan, killed four American citizens among the dead victims.

Attorney General Eric Holder in a letter to the congress leaders accepted that the classified information about the drone attacks was correct. He also confirmed that he would be providing a new US doctrine for approving such attacks in the future.

The attorney general explained in his letter that the target of the attacks was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American Citizen. He explained that Anwar was working for Al Qaida as the Chief of operations, and he took part in planning for blowing the airplanes. Holder also explained that the other three American citizens who were killed were not parts of the target.

As per the estimates provided by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, as many as 347 people have been killed in Yemen and between 2500-3500 more were killed in Pakistan due to drone attacks.

There are expectations that President Obama will be responding to the concerns that were arisen due to these attacks and unjustified killings. It is expected that soon he will be announcing a new plan at the National Defense University in Washington on how further the attacks and killings will be justified. Holder also explained in his letter that the president will be speaking to the public on this topic.

Holder explained that president Obama has approved a new policy which explains the rules and protocols on how the sanctions of such killings would be carried out against terrorism by the US government. He also explained that the specific documents containing this policy would be kept confidential, and only the relevant congress members will be briefed.

Jay Carney, the spokesman of the White House also mentioned in the press that president Obama is expected to mention how he plans to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and also to explain why the previous plans on closing down the facility has failed.

Concerns are being raised about how the Obama administration has not succeeded in correctly dealing with some issues such as the Tea Party Activists targeting by the IRS. At this point, the Administration is expected to reduce some of the concerns by more openly discussing the drone attacks and detention facility issues with the congress.

As per the White House spokesman, the speech by Obama this Thursday will cover new policy on how to handle terrorist activities, which will include Intelligence agencies, military and other efforts. As per them, president Obama will focus on the new threats that have emerged after the Al-Qaida being weakened recently. The focus of the speech will be the procedures and standards on how exactly the future decisions would be made against terrorism.

As far as the critics are concerned, an open discussion about the drone attacks would probably not answer all their questions but on the other hand, the White House will be focusing on the justification that the actual drone attacks were reduced compared to before and that the new policies would reduce the unjustified killings.

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