US Sen. McCain urges shifting drone program to Pentagon
Drone strikes against suspected enemy combatants on foreign soil should be run by the US military and not the CIA, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain said on Sunday.
McCain made his remarks on CNN's "State of the Union" broadcast just days after it was disclosed that a drone strike in Pakistan in January mistakenly killed two Western hostages: an American and an Italian. "I think it was probably preventable, in that there was an obvious breakdown in intelligence. They didn't know that they were there," McCain said of the January drone strike. The Republican senator and 2008 failed presidential candidate predicted the incident will renew a debate within the Obama administration on how the drone program is run.
