President Barack Obama did not need to apologize for the drone strikes that inadvertently killed an American and an Italian held hostage by al-Qaida, former assistant secretary of defense Richard Perle says.
"While the president was certainly right to express regret and condolences, I don't believe an apology is called for," Perle said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
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"We're in a war against people who are trying to kill us. It's entirely appropriate that we take military action against them.
"Unfortunately, we don't always hit exactly the target we're aiming at. It's regrettable, but I don't believe apologies are called for."
The president said he took "full responsibility" for the January counterterror missions and offered his "grief and condolences" to the families of the hostages.
"Based on the intelligence that we had obtained at the time, including hundreds of hours of surveillance, we believed that this was an al-Qaida compound, that no civilians were present and that capturing these terrorists was not possible," Obama said at the White House.
"And we do believe that the operation did take out dangerous members of al-Qaida."
Perle, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, also served as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.