Today the White House has issued a bad news, good news report on the fight against terrorism. In belief that the compounds targeted were Al Qaeda strongholds with no hostages present, the U.S. military launched drone strikes.  Unfortunately and tragically, that is where the bad news comes in. CNN’s Jeremy Diamond provides the details:

The White House announced Thursday that a U.S. counterterrorism operation targeting an al Qaeda compound in January accidentally killed two innocent hostages, including one American.
The White House also disclosed Thursday that two Americans, both al-Qaeda operatives, were also killed in U.S. counterterrorism operations in the same region.

Dr. Warren Weinstein was the American tragically killed in the drone strikes.

Susanna Kim at ABC News reports that Weinstein had worked for many years with the Peace Corp and was working on community projects in Pakistan at the time of his capture:

Dr. Warren Weinstein was taken hostage in 2011 when he was a USAID contract worker in Lahore, Pakistan, who was helping Pakistani families escape poverty, according to President Obama. Gunmen stormed his apartment and took him captive before he was traded to al Qaeda.
Today, the White House said Weinstein and another hostage, Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian national, were killed during an American government’s counterterrorism operation this past January. President Obama called him a humanitarian who “devoted his life” to help people across Africa and South Asia.

Several times Al Qaeda released statements laying out demands to be met prior to his release, and even forced Dr. Weinstein to issue statements of his own:

In 2012, Weinstein pleaded with President Obama to comply with the terrorists’ demands, saying, “My life is in your hands, Mr. President,” he said. “If you accept the demands, I live. If you don’t accept the demands, then I die.”
“I’ve done a lot of service for my country, and I would hope that my country will now look after me and take care of me and meet the demands of the mujahedeen,” he added.

“I tell the captive soldiers of al Qaeda and the Taliban and our female prisoners held in the prisons of the crusaders and their collaborators, ‘We have not forgotten you and in order to free you we have taken hostage the Jewish American Warren Weinstein,'” al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri said in a 30-minute statement months after Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.

Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian student studying in London, travelled to Pakistan’s Punjab region to work as a humanitarian aid worker.

The Guardian’s Matthew Taylor and Lizzie Davies interviewed friends of Lo Porto’s in December 2013:

After graduating from the peace and conflict studies course at London Met in 2010, Lo Porto, an experienced aid worker, joined short-term projects in the Central African Republic and Haiti before travelling to Pakistan to help rebuild an area hit by severe flooding.
According to friends, he fell in love with the region and worked to improve water supplies and sanitation in the Punjab, returning again at the beginning of 2012

Newman last heard from Lo Porto when he got in touch shortly after arriving in Pakistan. “He told me: ‘I’m happy to be back in Asia and Pakistan, I do love the people, the culture and the food of this part of the world’,” said Newman. “Pakistan was his real love and he felt he had done a good job there establishing positive relations with the local population and staff. He was so delighted to be back.”

Two aid workers, American and Italian, with a heart to serve that took them into regions that are filled with chaos, strife, and are homes to terrorists. It is tragic that they paid with their lives. It is even more tragic that they were caught in the drone cross fire while our U.S. forces were going after terrorists.

The Hill’s Ben Kamisar reports that the White House issued a statement regarding the deaths of Dr. Weinstein and Giovanni Lo Porto:

It is with tremendous sorrow that we recently concluded that a U.S. Government counterterrorism operation in January killed two innocent hostages held by al-Qa’ida. Our hearts go out to the families of Dr. Warren Weinstein, an American held by al-Qa’ida since 2011, and Giovanni Lo Porto, an Italian national who had been an al-Qa’ida hostage since 2012. Analysis of all available information has led the Intelligence Community to judge with high confidence that the operation accidentally killed both hostages. The operation targeted an al-Qa’ida-associated compound, where we had no reason to believe either hostage was present, located in the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan. No words can fully express our regret over this terrible tragedy.

We also believe two other Americans were recently killed in U.S. Government counterterrorism operations in the same region. We have concluded that Ahmed Farouq, an American who was an al-Qa’ida leader, was killed in the same operation that resulted in the deaths of Dr. Weinstein and Mr. Lo Porto. We have also concluded that Adam Gadahn, an American who became a prominent member of al-Qa’ida, was killed in January, likely in a separate U.S. Government counterterrorism operation. While both Farouq and Gadahn were al-Qa’ida members, neither was specifically targeted, and we did not have information indicating their presence at the sites of these operations.

You can read the entire statement here. Obama also spoke at a news conference and took ‘full responsibility’ for the events in January that killed two hostages and obliterated two terrorists.

https://youtu.be/P5w_2sllOZ8

The good news is that the terrorist weasels Adam Gadahn and Al Qaeda leader Ahmed Farouq were vaporized during those two military operations, even though no one seemed to realize that they were there. In the coming days, I’m sure there will be many questions asked about this operation that killed two innocent hostages.

The good news is we have reason to cheer that two Al Qaeda operatives are no longer living and will never again have the ability to inflict their terror and pain around the world. We can only hope that the deaths of these terrorists will eventually bring some small measure of peace to the Weinstein and Lo Porto families.