A portion of a photo of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki from his Facebook memorial page.
After the US killed AQAP propagandist Samir Khan in a drone strike, the State Department made two calls to his family to express condolences. Doing so was probably the only way they could maintain the fiction his death was an accident, while still boasting about having killed Anwar al-Awlaki in the same strike. Nevertheless, the right wing has predictably gone apeshit over the apology.
Perhaps it’s because the US has seen no propaganda value in boasting about killing an American teenager. Perhaps they want to avoid similar bitching from the right.
But State appears to be adopting a different approach in the case of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, the 16-year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki we killed last week. With Abdulrahman, State is feigning ignorance. (h/t JL)
We are aware of media reports that Abdulrahman al-Awlaki has been killed; however, we have not received confirmation of his death from the government of Yemen.
You see, the folks at State apparently don’t read the WaPo, much less FaceBook, and instead have to rely on getting this information from the Yemeni government we’ve surely instructed not to tell us this information. As a result, they have no way of knowing whether they’ve “accidentally” killed an American citizen too young to vote or even enlist without his dead father’s permission.
But hey! Their feigned ignorance means never having to say they’re sorry.