The Obama Report

A second U.S. drone crashed Tuesday morning in the Seychelles, the Indian Ocean archipelago that serves as a base for anti-piracy operations, the Washington Post reported. The crash of the MQ-9 Reaper comes roughly two weeks after a U.S. drone went down in Iran.

"The cause of the incident is unknown and currently under investigation," the Air Force said in a statement.

Fox News notes:

The latest crash comes just hours after Defense Secretary Leon Panetta visited Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the base that houses troops assigned to a unit in the horn of Africa and is home to a fleet of drones assigned to fly over the horn of Africa and some areas in the Middle East. Seychelles is located to the southeast of that base, off the eastern coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean.

Second drone in two weeks. A mere coincidence?

During a joint press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister, Nuri al-Maliki, on Monday, President Obama said that the U.S. asked the Iranians to return the drone.

"We have asked for it back — we'll see how the Iranians respond," said the Diplomat par excellence.

But CNN reports that Iranian Defense Minister Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi says the drone no longer belongs to Washington.

"The U.S. spy plane is among the assets of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Vahidi told reporters Tuesday. "Our country will decide what to do with it."

And, according to CNN, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that the United States owes Iran an apology.

Truth be told, Mr. Obama is certainly no stranger to 'apologies'; in fact an argument can be made that 'apologies' are Obama's forte. Hence, Mr. Mehmanparast might be on to something!

Nevertheless, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the Liberal mainstream are desparately seeking to downplay the significance of the captured drone, although Russia and China are both vying to inspect the aircraft.

"It’s a little difficult to know just frankly how much they are going to be able to get from having obtained those parts. I don’t know the condition of those parts, I don’t know exactly what state they’re in," Panetta told reporters. "So it’s a little difficult to tell what they are going to be able to derive from what they have been able to get.”

And, according to CNN, Panetta said that while nobody expected the drone would be returned, the U.S. had to ask for it.

"Obviously our request for the return of the drone is an appropriate request that they give it back to us. I don’t expect that that will happen, but I think it’s important to make that request," he said.

Indeed, it is an appropriate request for a left-wing administration that believes in handing out endless supplies of carrots to the enemy.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, said that the right response would have been "to go in immediately after" the drone had gone down "and destroy it".

Cheney said the president had three options on his desk but rejected all of them. “They involved sending somebody in to try to recover it or, if you can’t do that, and admittedly that would be a difficult operation, he certainly could have gone in and destroyed it on the ground with an air strike,” he said.

“But he didn’t take any of the options. He asked nicely for them to return it. And they aren’t going to do that,” Cheney said...

Instead of returning the drone, Cheney said the Iranians will likely “send it back in pieces after they’ve gotten all the intelligence they can out of it.”

Indeed, and Obama, in all likelihood, will reward the Iranians for that selfless act......