Obama Blindsided by Drone Concerns

Americans don't want to be assassinated? Seriously?

President Barack Obama tried Thursday to offer a simple assurance: He isn't claiming the power to have drones kill an American not "engaged in combat" on U.S. soil.

The statement, delivered in the form of a 43-word letter from Attorney General Eric Holder to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), seemed intended to provide the unequivocal declaration Paul and his supporters were demanding when he mounted a nearly 13-hour, old-fashioned filibuster on the Senate floor Wednesday.

"We really had success," Paul told POLITICO in an interview Thursday afternoon. "We got the president to respond, and the answer we finally got from the president was, I think, the answer we had been looking for all along."

Comments

[Ted Levy]

Unfortunately, Obama went on to further clarify, "Of course, as commander in chief during a time of continued war on terror, I get to decide who I feel is "engaged in combat" and what I consider constitutes "combat" entirely by myself."