Couldn't find this in the diaries; apologies if it's a repost.
Apparently the administration's after-the-fact pronouncements about how effective the January 13 (Friday the 13th, I might add) airstrike against suspected al Qaeda members in the mountainous region along the Pakistani-Afghan are apparently news to Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz.
The US has claimed that al Qaeda chemical weapons expert Midhat Mursi (a.k.a. Abu Khabab), Khalid Habib, aQ's chief of operations for Afghanistan/Pakistan, and Ubayda al Masri, its operations chief for the Afghan Konar province were in the vicinity when the airstrike took place and were the intended targets. US officials also claimed that as many as eight alQ-related foreigners were killed in the raid, but that their bodies were quickly spirited away by accomplices.
On CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer", Aziz called the report US report "bizarre" and said that "There is no evidence, as of half an hour ago, that there were any other people there" other than the 13 civilians confirmed killed.
It seemed odd to me that it was several days after the strike, and after rising Pakistani outrage, the US claims of partial success were made public. They seemed to be merely justifications put out afterward to help mitigate the PR damage caused by the high civilian casualties.
Portions of the PM's comments follow:
Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday ridiculed as "bizarre" a U.S. report that senior al Qaeda leaders were killed in a CIA attack on a home along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
"There is no evidence, as of half an hour ago, that there were any other people there," Aziz said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
"The area does see movement of people from across the border. But we have not found one body or one shred of evidence that these people were there." [...]
U.S. counterterrorism officials have said they believe the January 13 attack killed four to eight al Qaeda-affiliated "foreigners" attending a dinner meeting. Knowledgeable sources have said that their bodies were removed from the scene by comrades and buried elsewhere. (Full story)
Tens of thousands of Pakistanis have taken to the streets in cities nationwide to express outrage about the attack, which killed more than a dozen civilians, including women and children. [...]
U.S. officials have said the attack was intended to kill Osama bin Laden's No. 2 man, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
A counterterrorism official said Abu Khabab -- an al Qaeda operative who was named Midhat Mursi and also known as "the bombmaker" -- "was thought to have been in the vicinity" when the missiles struck the home in Damadola, Pakistan.
The U.S. network ABC News reported on its Web site that the attack killed Khabab, quoting "Pakistani authorities." However a number of Pakistani officials have told CNN they cannot confirm the ABC report.
Aziz said Sunday, "If you just reflect on what happened, first -- we heard that there was a dinner meeting with all the seniors -- I think that's a bizarre thought, because these people don't get together for dinner in a terrain or environment like that."
"Second, we heard that al-Zawahiri was there," Aziz said. "Now we are hearing about this person who's a chemicals weapons expert. We don't know who was there. We don't know when they came, if at all. But, if they were there, we will find out because our people are investigating, they are going through all the evidence available, and once we find out we'll share it with the world." [...]
Since the attack, U.S. intelligence analysts have been waiting for information about al-Zawahiri, and officials have said they expect to learn he was not killed in the attack.
Aziz said the United States launched the airstrike on Pakistani soil without having first consulted with the Pakistani government.
"We had no idea that this would take place," he said.
Aziz said the attack violated a U.S.-Pakistani agreement that calls for the countries to collaborate with each other before any such attack.
Last Sunday, U.S. politicians expressed regret over the killings, but said the airstrike was justified by the erroneous belief that a top al Qaeda leader was among the group. [...]
Aziz said none of the forces searching for bin Laden knows where he might be. "We and the rest of the world has no clue where he or his associates are," Aziz said. "He could be anywhere."
Does this seem to anyone else like grasping at straws by US officials trying to cover a botched operation based on bad intelligence. And does that entire line of reasoning sound suspiciously familiar?