Obama defends use of drone strikes

The administration’s drone policy was a key part of last
week’s confirmation hearing for Obama’s CIA Director nominee John Brennan, who
is currently the White House’s chief counterterrorism adviser and an architect
of the drone policy.

{mosads}Brennan pledged to work with Congress to allow oversight of
the targeted killing program, after the White House told lawmakers it would
release the full legal papers ahead of Brennan’s confirmation hearing.

Senators like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said they had been
requesting those documents for more than a year.

“We have kept Congress fully informed of our efforts,” Obama
said Tuesday, downplaying the congressional criticisms.

“I recognize that in our democracy, no one should just take
my word for it that we’re doing things the right way,” he said. “So, in the months
ahead, I will continue to engage Congress to ensure not only that our
targeting, detention, and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our
laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent
to the American people and to the world.”

Obama said that al Qaeda was today “a shadow of its former
self.”

He noted that al Qaeda affiliates and other extremist groups
have emerged from the Arabian Peninsula to Africa, and that the threat these groups
pose is “evolving.”

But he said that instead of sending troops to countries like
Yemen, Libya and Somalia, the United States can help them provide for their own
security, as well as continue taking “direct action against those terrorists
who pose the gravest threat to Americans.”