Saturday, January 14, 2006

No Village Left Behind...

Yet another unprovoked bombing kills innocent civilians. At the current rate, the US may manage to eventually kill more blameless victims than Saddam Hussein during his reign of terror .

Let's look at the latest attack. News organizations trumpeted the latest airstrike with headlines such as from Newsday, "Air strike slams into hideout of top-ranking al-Qaida leader" or from the Associated Press, "US may have killed al-Qaida's no. 2."

But we now learn that at least 17 people were killed, and guess who was not among them...?

Al-Zawahiri. Oops, so sorry.

Just last week, we noted a family of 12 Iraqis was killed in their home "150 miles north of Bagdad."

The Associated Press is now reporting that Pakistan is very upset with the US for killing Pakistanis from a village just inside their border.

Thousands of local tribesmen...demonstrated against the attack, claiming the victims were local villagers without terrorist links and had never hosted Ayman al-Zawahri.

CIA intelligence had believed al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's lieutenant was in Damadola, "four miles inside northwestern Pakistan."

"Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information," said a senior Pakistani intelligence official with direct knowledge of Pakistan's investigations into the attack.


Pakistan has never authorized the US military or the Afghanistani government to cross their national boundaries to hunt for al-Qaida leaders. And what makes this case so egregious is that they didn't just cross over, but unilaterally bombed a village based on faulty intelligence.

The Washington Post reports five weeping women were cursing the attackers; and one 17-year old male "said 24 of his family members were killed, including his parents."

Guess what folks...? This is not the way to win friends and influence in the Middle East.

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