Saturday's Navy SEAL raid in Yemen — which resulted in the death of an 8-year-old American girl and a U.S. naval officer — had previously been rejected by former President Barack Obama, The Guardian reports. President Trump approved of the raid in his first military strike as commander-in-chief:
[Colonel John] Thomas said he did not know why the prior administration did not authorize the operation, but said the Obama administration had effectively exercised a "pocket veto" over it.
A former official said the operation had been reviewed several times, but the underlying intelligence was not judged strong enough to justify the risks, and the case was left to the incoming Trump administration to make its own judgment. [The Guardian]
Yemeni officials say at least 10 women and children were also killed, including the 8-year-old daughter of U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula who was himself slain a 2011 drone strike. Read more about how things went wrong here.