Surprise! Zawahiri NOT hit by airstrike

The BBC reports that the CIA bombing of a mountain village in Pakistan did not hit the Osama's "Number Two" Zawahiri (see ECH's diary yesterday for the initial report). Also, it notes the human toll of the raid.

The deputy leader of al-Qaeda was not in a Pakistani village near the Afghan border which was hit in an apparent missile attack, Pakistan officials say.

So, the reporting yesterday was more wishful thinking, and of course the fact that the speculation Zawahiri was dead was false will not get the play that the original speculation did. Zawahiri wasn't in the coal mine, after all. Oops. But it gets worse:

The unnamed officials said the attack - in which at least 18 people were killed - was based on "false information".

And it continues to get worse below:

At least those 18 people were "number twelve" or "number 314"?

Reporters who reached Damadola spoke of three houses hundreds of metres apart that had been destroyed.

Shah Zaman said he lost two of his sons and a daughter. "I ran out and saw planes. I ran toward a nearby mountain with my wife. When we were running we heard three more explosions. I saw my home being hit.

"I don't know who carried out this attack and why. We were needlessly attacked. We are law-abiding people."

At this point, I'm wondering if CNN and all the news agencies that breathlessly repeated the Zawahiri speculation are even paying attention any more. As long as the ruse that there is a "War on Terror" being waged is perpetuated, then things like domestic wiretapping will be countenanced by a substantial proportion of Americans. But the media is so intent on maintaining that overarching frame that no matter what they report on any other story, they support the Administration by maintaining the basic underlying fear.

Regardless of what you think about the importance of going after the remnants of the old al Qaeda network, it almost seems as if the real objective is to create new networks out of the disaffected Iraqis, relatives of renditioned and tortured prisoners, and grieving villagers in a host of countries.

And the media treat this as a Stratego game, breathlessly pretending that what's going on is in some way still getting revenge for 9/11 when it has been literally years since the basic rules of the game were transformed by Bush's launching a discredited invasion of the wrong country. It is completely ridiculous. And complicit. And criminal.