Obama Reflects On The Controversial Decision To Expand Drone Strikes | Morning Edition | NPR
President Obama reflected in his NPR interview on the controversial decision to expand drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa.
"I'm the first one to admit that we didn't get it all right on day one," he said. "There were times where, for example with respect to drones, that I had kind of stop the system for a second, and say you know what, we're getting too comfortable with our ability to take kinetic strikes around the world without having enough process to avoid consistently the kinds of civilian casualties that can end up actually hurting us in the war against radicalization."
The administration acknowledged in July that drone strikes in countries where the U.S. has not been engaged in ground combat have killed up to 116 civilians since Obama took office.
The president told NPR he was confident his administration had built the "guardrails" needed to "set up a whole series of processes to guard against government overreach, to reform some practices that I thought over time would threaten civil liberties."
• Read "Obama Warns Trump Against Relying On Executive Power" at http://www.npr.org/2016/12/16/5058600...
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