The Obama administration is considering a drone strike against a U.S. citizen suspected of being a member of al Qaeda and planning terrorist attacks against the United States. However, the president is struggling with the legal implications under his administration's new policies to carry out drone strikes, according to the Associated Press.
The identity of the target, or the country where he's hiding, has not been released, but the CIA is already watching the suspect with their fleet of spy drones. The CIA, however, can't carry out an attack because President Obama last year decided that only the Pentagon could kill an American suspected of terrorism. Moreover, the country where the target is residing right now doesn't allow American military operations on its soil.
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Two anonymous U.S. officials who spoke to the AP described him as a "facilitator" directly responsible for killing Americans overseas, and planning more attacks with improvised explosive devices. The Department of Defense has recommended the killing of the suspect, who is hiding in a "well guarded," "fairly remote location," the AP reports.
This is the first test for Obama's new policies on drones, which raised the standards required to approve the death of an American citizen with a drone strike — and without due process.
Since 2009, American unmanned airplanes have killed four U.S. citizens, including Anwar al-Awlaki, a cleric accused of being a propagandist for al Qaeda who was killed in September of 2011 in Yemen.
According to Attorney General Eric Holder, the other three "were not specifically targeted by the United States," he wrote in a letter to Congress. al-Awklaki's teenage son, Abdulrahman, was killed on Oct. 14, 2011, with another separate drone strike.
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