taliban leaders, do we know generally who is being targeted here, yogi? brennan didn t want to go into detail, but what do we know about those kill lists? it s a good question. to go back briefly to bob s point, it s not that the number of drone strikes have decreased but the rules about them havelessened and loosened considerably. you had john brenan yesterday talk about one of the more controversial aspects of this, which is the president s decision to order the deaths of american citizens abroad. there was an al qaeda propagandist who was killed in a drone strike. and his son, as well. exactly, and his son as well. and neither soft those were discussed in any way. there was no allusion to killing u.s. citizens but there was no discussion about killing a propagandist and his son who was in control of these types of terror attacks. u.s. officials have said they re very careful.
investigate proif deucer rob bringham and yogi drazen, national security correspondent for the national journal. good morning. good morning. good morning, chris. big picture, bob. in the ongoing fight against terror, how big a piece of the puzzle are these drone strikes? they have become an increasingly bigger piece of the drone strikes. if you look at the statistics prepared by the new american foundation, which probably has the best list, they talked about 50 or less than 50 attacks during the bush administration. since president obama has come into office, there s been more than 250, including about 12 this year. it s also expanded to somalia, yemen, et cetera. the u.s. believes that going after these gatherings of al qaeda or taliban or al qaeda or taliban leaders is very effecti effective. the question is whether the civilian death count, which is very uncertain, is worth the effort. and beyond the al qaeda or