The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden's deputy

[kpete]

THE OBSERVER
The drone, the CIA and a botched attempt to kill bin Laden's deputy

In the hunt for al-Qaeda, a missile attack on a mountain village killed women and children. The attack was precise, the intelligence was flawed, and the strained relation between Pakistan and the US has been pushed to breaking point


.........

Yet evidence emerging appeared to indicate that, though the technology that guided the missiles to their targets at 3am on Friday was faultless, the intelligence that had selected those targets was not. Even as American military and intelligence sources spoke of the possible death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the second-in-command of al-Qaeda and the man considered to be the brains behind the militant group's strategy, Pakistani officials said that there was no evidence any 'foreigners', shorthand locally for al-Qaeda fighters, were among the 18 victims, though they said that 'according to preliminary investigations there was foreign presence in the area'.

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'This is a big lie... Only our family members died in the attack,' said Shah Zaman, a jeweller who lost two sons and a daughter in the attack. 'They dropped bombs from planes and we were in no position to stop them... or to tell them we are innocent. I don't know . He was not at my home. No foreigner was at my home when the planes came and dropped bombs.' Haroon Rashid, a member of parliament who lives in a village near Damadola, told The Observer that he had seen a drone surveying the area hours before the attack.

.....

'The Americans are really not much closer to finding him than they were years ago,' said one intelligence analyst. 'They are hunting in an area that is about a thousand miles long and two hundred miles wide. That is a tough job by anyone's standards.' The carnage at Damadola indicates that the hunted is still a step ahead of the hunters.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,16937,1686918,00.html

[panader0]

1. CNN Poll: 68% say strikes wrong

Oh when will they ever learn?

[BuyingThyme]

2. Is that online someplace?

[panader0]

3. CNN.com

under politics I believe. sorry, I have no link.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Murderers who should be brought to trial.

Oh..but, I forgot, the perpetrators are "heroes" bravely protecting us from "terrorists" (aka: collateral damage - aka: civilians).