Guess Who Didn't Come to Dinner

Reports of Ayman al-Zawahiri's demise were greatly exaggerated:

Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader was invited to a dinner marking an Islamic festival on the night of the devastating U.S. missile strike in a Pakistani border village, but did not show up, Pakistani intelligence officials said Sunday.

Ayman al-Zawahiri sent some of his aides instead, and investigators are trying to establish if any of them were among the at least 17 people killed in the attack.

If the intelligence was rock solid and we had a legitimate shot to hit Zawahiri, and we took steps to minimize other civilian casualties, I don't have a problem with it. What I have a problem with is the news media breathlessly reporting, as they have dozens of times before, that we killed a senior-level al Qaeda official, without any proof that the mission was successful. Once again, CNN and others gulped whole this story that "al Qaeda's number two has been killed," only to find out later that it wasn't true. In fact, this looks to ONLY have hit Pakistani civilians, mostly women and children; even Zawahiri's emissaries who went to the dinner in his place may have been spared. I'd appreciate facts instead of truthiness.

Meanwhile, this has stirred up a hornet's nest in Pakistan, and the White House can't blame it on Newsweek this time:

Thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets Sunday to rage for a second day against a purported U.S. attack on a border village, chanting "Death to America" and demanding U.S. troops leave neighboring Afghanistan, as more details emerged about the airstrike...

With the government's alliance in the U.S.-led war on international terror groups already unpopular in this Muslim country, the deaths of at least 17 people in Friday's attack have stoked widespread anger.

Some 10,000 people demonstrated in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city, chanting "Death to America" and "Stop bombing against innocent people." Hundreds also rallied in Islamabad, Lahore, Multan and Peshawar, burning U.S. flags.

James Risen had an interesting comment on Blitzer, backed up by Evan Bayh, that in most of these cases the Pakistani government knows about these strikes in advance. They may not know the exact time and place, but they know of their imminence. It becomes a major problem if Pakistan's President Gen. Musharraf gets caught lying to his people about this, and a full-scale revolt ensues, which is entirely possible.

P.S. I read the first few chapters of Risen's book State of War this weekend. Really good reporting.