Pakistani intelligence officials said the reported target, al-Qaida No. 2 leader Ayman al-Zawahri, had been invited to the attacked village for a dinner marking a Muslim festival on the night of the missile strike but he failed to show up.
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.
We all know that Pakistan is not the most uniformly enthusiastic partner in the war. Pakistani intelligence is downright fond of the Taliban, in fact.
So if we relied on Pakistani intelligence for the targetting information, does anybody really think it was beyond their intel people to sucker us into striking after they warned Zawahiri to stay away?
And then make sure some innocents were there to be hit? Really, given how we lawyer up our targetting, does anybody really think we would have struck at Zawahri if we thought he was surrounded by innocent civilians? We Would not have done it so we clearly did not know innocent civilians were at the target site.
Third, after sucking us in to strike, keeping Zawahri away, and setting up some civilians to be killed by us, how hard would it be for the Pakistani intel people to instigate some spontaneous demonstrations against our presence in Afghanistan?
I don't like to think of myself as overly suspicious, but this just stinks of a setup job by Pakistani intelligence. Pervez Musharraf should be very worried.
UPDATE: Via Instapundit, Confederate Yankee argues for the explanation that we did indeed get some terrorists--just not the big guy--and that this is just another game of "you killed puppies and children" that the enemy peddles and our media magnifies. It is certainly the simpler explanation.
