Rand Paul: ‘I do think that there is a valuable use for drones’

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Monday that President Obama was “trying to do the right thing” with respect to the recently disclosed overseas operation that mistakenly killed two hostages, and that Mr. Paul does see a valuable use for drones.

“I do think that there is a valuable use for drones,” Mr. Paul said Monday on “Fox and Friends.” “And as much as I’m seen as [an] opponent of drones, I think in military and in warfare they do have some value.”

Mr. Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate, famously took to the Senate floor in March 2013 to filibuster the nomination of CIA Director John O. Brennan, pressing the administration on whether it thought it was legal to target American terror suspects on U.S. soil and bringing to the forefront the administration’s use of drones.

“I think this is a difficult situation,” Mr. Paul said Monday.

Mr. Obama disclosed last week that a January drone strike on an al Qaeda compound mistakenly killed American aid worker Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto.

“You have hostages being held there, some of them American — you also have the people holding the hostages, some of them are American,” Mr. Paul said. “I’ve been an opponent of using drones about people not involved in combat. However, if you’re holding hostages, you kind of are involved in combat.”

The counterterrorism operation also killed Ahmed Farouq, an American who was an al Qaeda leader. Adam Gadahn, an American who joined al Qaeda, was also killed in January, likely in a separate counterterrorism operation, though neither was specifically targeted, the White House said.

“If there’s a kidnapping in New York, the police don’t have to have a warrant to go in — you see what I mean?” Mr. Paul said. “So you really don’t get due process or anything like that if you’re in a war zone. So these people were in a war zone and probably got what was coming to ’em — the captors. Unfortunately, some innocent people lost their lives — the hostages.”

“The world is so partisan — I tend not to want to blame the president for the loss of life here,” he said. “I think he was trying to do the right thing.”