Objective Troy

 "Awlaki and Obama would be linked forever, the first American deliberately killed by his own government without a court's         judgment, and the president who gave the order."

Who was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American imam, and why did his life and eventual death by drone launch more death and destruction?  And how did US president Obama play a role in shifting the post 9/11 Bush strategy to one of targeted anti-Muslim militant drone strikes?  Only a seasoned reporter could tackle this dark story, taking us from the militant's birth in New Mexico to a Fulbright Scholar from Yemen, through his teenage years, to the post 9/11 time when he gained press as a Muslim leader preaching reason, to his final moments.  Targeted by guidance  systems some 8500 miles distant, al-Awlaki might have felt his time had come - although he and six other men on the ground ran for their two trucks that day out in the desert, the first glint of inbound metal clear in the sky,  there was nowhere to run.