Dem Rep Slams ‘Insufficient’ Obama Admin: We Need a ‘Hostage Czar’

Thursday on MSNBC’s “NewNation,” while discussing the counter-terrorism operation against al Qaeda, in which American hostage Dr. Warren Weinstein was  accidentally killed by an airstrike, Rep. John Delaney (D-MD)  slammed the Obama administrations lack of a cohesive effort to track down Americans held overseas saying, “His country let him down.”

Delaney said, “Our efforts as a nation to identify our hostages that are held overseas is way insufficient. We need to be doing a much better job finding these people. It should be our absolute top priority. We saw specific examples where we had to get involved, where the resources of the government were coordinated as well as they should be to really bring to bear all of the capabilities and resources and talents and expertise the U.S. Government has. This needs to become a much bigger priority for our country. We cannot let Americans be held overseas and not be finding them. What happened here, there needs to be an investigation about what happened specifically around the events that caused Warren’s death. The key is we didn’t find him. We had several years to try to find him and we didn’t find him. We were involved in this tragic accident that resulted in his loss of life. His country let him down.”

He added, “I don’t think we should negotiate with terrorists. We have tremendous resources and tremendous capabilities in the country. We need to put them to work smarter to find these people. I’m really focusing on why we can’t find these people in an area where we are investing a tremendous amount of money, tremendous assets and lots of partners who need to be helping us in this effort. We have a lot of czars in government. We should have a hostage czar. Someone who wakes up every day and has complete access to all resources of the U.S. government to find Americans who are held hostage.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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