Drone Strike Quotes

We now have an accepted practice of the President assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys. I think it’s sad.

While the story about the hunt for bin Laden has been exhaustively reported and the key sources and witnesses are in agreement about the main points of the narrative, of course, it's still possible that we could learn new details about the story that would add to the narrative.

No American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found guilty of a crime by a court.

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Killed not by a massive troop deployment but by a commando raid carried out by a few dozen highly trained men and helicopters.

The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice.

US government policies are continuing to do exactly the same thing [produce terrorism]. Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But of course it is just easier to terrorise people.

The United States is sending its most powerful drone to Libya. That’s a long trip for Joe Biden.

Obama's drone program, in fact, amounts to the largest unmanned aerial offensive ever conducted in military history: never have so few killed so many by remote control.

When the president went around the table to the country's national security leadership, Hillary was clear: We have to go get bin Laden. And our Special Operations Forces did just that.

This [U.S.] bombing in Libya. So what are we doing in Libya? We just dropped some bombs on someone who we found is a leader there, maybe we killed some group attending a leadership meeting. Does this mean the problem is going to go away? No. It means we're going to have worse guys.

When I asked the president [Barack Obama], can you kill an American on American soil, it should have been an easy answer. It's an easy question. It should have been a resounding and unequivocal no. The president's response, he hasn't killed anyone yet.

Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen - even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaida in a foreign land - is among the gravest that government leaders can face.

President Obama and a small team of senior national security officials were in the unusual position of acting as al-Awlaki's jury, judges, and de facto executioners.

I want to express our grieve and condolences to the families of two hostages: one American, Dr. Warren Weinstein and an Italian Giovanni LaPorto who were tragically killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation.

Iran has attacked oil fields and shot down a U.S. drone - all while we stood by.

The truth is that, in trying to get at terrorists who are in countries that either are unwilling or unable to capture those terrorists or disable them themselves, there are a lot of situations where the use of a drone is going to result in much fewer civilian casualties and much less collateral damage than if I send in a battalion of marines.

A drone strike is a terror weapon, we don't talk about it that way. It is; just imagine you are walking down the street and you don't know whether in 5 minutes there is going to be an explosion across the street from some place up in the sky that you can't see. Somebody will be killed, and whoever is around will be killed, maybe you'll be injured if you're there. That is a terror weapon. It terrorizes villages, regions, huge areas. It's the most massive terror campaign going on by a long shot.

Two days after the Boston marathon bombings, there was a drone strike in Yemen attacking a peaceful village, which killed a target who could very easily have been apprehended. But, of course, it is just easier to terrorise people. The drones are a terrorist weapon; they not only kill targets but also terrorise other people.