Nasir Ngoy; his brother-in-law, Ali Al-Homsi, and his sister, Nadia Al-Homesi, were all killed a year later, the newspaper reported. Other members of al-Awlaki’s family also died under mysterious circumstances, the newspaper said. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)
In an interview with “New Day” on MSNBC, Vice President Joe Biden said that while President Obama has been briefed about drone strikes against Yemenis in the past, he has not been briefed on the latest in a string of recent strikes, even though they may be his and the U.S. government’s deadliest in more than a decade of war.
“The president has never seen that specific case — that specific strike that killed a young man here who was an operational terrorist that we had tracked for some time,” Biden said.”And I really don’t understand how that decision was made.”
Pentagon officials told The Washington Post last week that there had been no strike targeted at Nasser al-Awlalla.
“They are not disclosing any specific operational targets” in the al-Awlaki killing,” a senior defense official said, adding that the administration has yet to get a response from the president on whether he would authorize a further U.S. attack in Yemen if the strike’s circumstances changed.
President Obama’s critics have raised eyebrows about the administration’s refusal to provide more information about the killings, and have accused Obama of failing to do his responsibility as commander in chief of protecting the U.S. citizens.
During a news conference in Washington on Tuesday, Obama defended his administration’s decision to kill an American citizen abroad. When a reporter raised questions about whether he had any objection to a strike, Obama replied, “Our counterterrorism teams are looking at a lot of different things.” Obama told “New Day,” “The president has repeatedly said that if we did believe that we had a situation where we needed to take out an operational planner or planners who may be involved in plotting attacks against the United States, we’d do so, and there is no operational planning in Yemen that would make that decision for me.”
“If the circumstances change or if a specific attack becomes necessary, he will authorize it when it’s appropriate,” Obama said.
Last week, a pair of Yemeni brothers who had been recruited to the Yemeni branch of terror group al-Qaida