In essence, this is what happened in the Bajaur area in northwest Pakistan on Friday. “Pakistani officials on Saturday angrily condemned a purported CIA airstrike meant to target al-Qaida’s No. 2 man, saying he wasn’t there and ‘innocent civilians’ were among at least 17 men, women and children killed in a village near the Afghan border,” reports the Associated Press. “Counterterrorism officials in Washington declined to comment on U.S. media reports that CIA-operated drone aircraft fired missiles Friday at a residential compound in Damadola trying to hit Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenant whose videos have made him the face and voice of al-Qaida.”

Of course, since Ayman al-Zawahri is not in Pakistan—and may in fact be dead, as his boss is dead—the CIA attack served only to kill innocent Pakistanis and further outrage Muslims, who understand very well that the United States is engaged in a Crusade against Islam and Muslim lives can be had at discount price. As well, the significance that the attack took place on Eid ul-Fitr, an Islamic holiday that marks the end of Ramadan, is likely not lost on Muslims around the world.

In order to spread around the blame, the Washington Post, quoting a “source,” said Pakistani intelligence was involved in the attack. Moreover, the so-called source (probably a neocon in the Pentagon) said “that Zawahiri got out of the building before it was hit,” in other words the dead Pakistanis, including the women and children, have nobody to blame but themselves.

Bloomberg reports:

Zawahiri was known to use safe houses in a Pakistani area attacked by U.S. forces yesterday, and U.S. intelligence indicated he might be in the location or headed there, ABC reported. Five of those killed in the attack were high-level al- Qaeda figures and their bodies are undergoing forensic tests for identification, ABC said citing unidentified Pakistani officials.

Of course, we can’t believe anything we hear about al-Zawahiri or “al-Qaeda,” since the Straussian neocons in the Pentagon, the CIA, and their Pakistani intelligence friends make things up as they go along. Recall al-Zawahiri was supposedly killed by Pakistani mercenaries as he was riding in an ambulance after being wounded by an American bomb after airstrikes on a complex of caves near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, on December 3, 2001 (the attack allegedly killed al-Zawahiri’s wife, Azza, and their three children). And then, in May of 2004, al-Zawahiri was supposedly surrounded by the Pakistani military in a tribal area of Pakistan bordering the Afghan mountains. Although we are told a large number of “hardcore” “al-Qaeda” fighters were killed in the attack, al-Zawahiri escaped the dragnet just as the fighting commenced (another ruthless and mercurial al-Qaedaite, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, also has the uncanny ability to elude capture). Thus, not unlike Orwell’s Emmanuel Goldstein, both al-Zarqawi and al-Zawahiri live another day to serve as bogeymen (and, like Goldstein, we are never sure they actually exist).

It’s my guess al-Zarqawi will live on in infamy for a very long time, or as long as he is useful to the Straussian neocons. In the meantime, more Muslims will die—and thousands may soon die in Iran if the neocons and the Zionists in Israel have their way—because, as the Washington Post and Bloomberg remind us, Muslim lives are cheap and, besides, they deserve whatever horrible fate they receive for serving dinner to Ayman al-Zawahri on Eid ul-Fitr.