Sen.-elect Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Monday defended the Obama administration’s ordering of a special forces rescue mission team to Yemen, even though U.S. hostage Luke Somers was killed during the raid.
Cotton said the mission was worth the risk and that the soldiers involved had “behaved bravely and competently.”
{mosads}“And the raid just didn’t go well, and unfortunately Luke Somers was killed in the raid,” he said on MSNBC. “But any time we know where an American’s being held and we have a chance to rescue that American, I think our default position should be we go get our fellow citizens.”
Somers was killed when his captors realized that the rescue mission was taking place.
The operation was launched after al-Qaeda militants who were holding Somers said they intended to kill him by this weekend, if their demands were not met. The threats were likely made in response to an American-backed rescue effort in November aimed at freeing Somers that did not locate him, despite freeing eight other hostages.
Cotton made the comments as criticism of the raid mounts. Somers’ family has said that they believe the threats might not have been carried out, and Somers might be alive if the raid had never occurred.
Another hostage, South African Yolande Korkie, was also killed by militants during the raid. His family says he was hours away from being released.
The threat to Somers’ life was unusual. Al-Qaeda generally does not threaten to kill hostages. Instead, they ransom them for large sums — which has provided them with a growing source of financing in recent years.
But another extremist group, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has executed several hostages on video in recent months.