Damnit, I wanted this one bad:

Ayman al-Zawahiri -- Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in the al Qaeda terrorist network -- was not killed in a CIA airstrike on a remote Pakistani village, according to a Pakistani intelligence official.

U.S. sources said al-Zawahiri was the target of Friday's strike and initially reported that he may have been among the 18 people killed.

The Pakistani intelligence official said it was not known whether al-Zawahiri was in the area.

Pakistan's Foreign Office said Saturday it had lodged a protest with the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan over the attack on the village of Damadola, near the Afghan border.

"Pakistan will also take up this matter in the next meeting of Tripartite Commission," a statement read. The group is made up of senior military and diplomatic representatives from coalition forces, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Associated Press quoted a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying "our investigations conclude that they (the CIA) acted on a false information."

Update: So we're dropping artillery rounds from airplanes now, huh?

Posted by: Ace at 11:00 AM | Comments (15)
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Can anyone tell me what kind of a bird this is?

Cute feller.
Quick, though. You only get a snapshot and he darts off.

Sure wish he'd stay and talk a while.

UPDATE: If you missed the chatter over the last couple days; some people around here have been trying to contact this guy. But hey, go ahead and insult me anyway. I have nothing better to do than sit around here getting smacked in the head by frenzied retards.

Posted by: LauraW. at 06:15 AM | Comments (166)
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Massive attack may have killed Al Qaeda #2 in Pakistan:

.S. officials told NBC News on Friday that American airstrikes in Pakistan overnight Thursday were aimed at the No. 2 man in the al-Qaida terror organization — Ayman al-Zawahri.

One official said intelligence indicated a strong possibility that Zawahri was in the Pakistani village at the time of the airstrike, but there is no confirmation that he was killed.

Pakistani officials say U.S. aircraft, apparently CIA Predator drones, fired as many as 10 missiles at the residential compound.

...

The CIA Predators carry as many as four Hellfire missiles. Only last month, the CIA used a Predator to kill the No. 3 man in al-Qaida in a similar Hellfire strike in Pakistan.

...

While some remains were reportedly recovered from the site of the attack, there was still no confirmation Friday night that Zawahri was among the dead. An intelligence official told NBC that it does have a sample of Zawahri's DNA.

Not Just Al-Zawahiri: Even if we missed him, we got others:

Eighteen people were killed, according to the villagers who said women and children were among the fatalities.

But Pakistani officials tell ABC News that five of those killed were high-level al Qaeda figures, and their bodies are now undergoing forensic tests for positive identification.

Thanks to BrewFan.

Posted by: Ace at 04:16 PM | Comments (68)
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Par for the course.

Posted by: Ace at 01:33 PM | Comments (16)
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According to The Age.

Allow me to distill it down for you:

1. We're doomed. We're going to run out of food.

2. Food production is also contributing to our demise.

Remember, things are always worse than you can possibly imagine.

Here's my favorite line from the article:

But the fact that plants produce methane does not mean that planting forests is a bad idea.

Yeah. Trees.
Those plants you can't eat.

Love how they ended on a positive note.

Posted by: LauraW. at 01:05 PM | Comments (47)
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"We've been scared for a long time," [a Sunni police academy recruit] said. "We've had enough."

Posted by: Ace at 10:44 AM | Comments (10)
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I'm trying to hash out the new design, and I wanted some opinions.

First of all, is the font used on this site pretty readable for most? I like it myself. I worry that a lot of people aren't actually seeing the font I chose (if your computer doesn't have it, you get some other font), but I guess I have no way to check that.

Slublog, I think, said he didn't like the gray-boxes for the comments. I can easily get rid of those. Should I? Is that an eyesore?

Slublog also noted that some people want to submit pics to a page so that readers can see what (some) commenters look like. I guess I'll do that.

Incidentally, if you haven't noticed, the "Headlines" now have a little number following them. That number indicates the number of comments made about that headline. You can click on that and comment on a headline, if you like.

This is what the new design looks like at the moment. There are bugs here and there. I guess I'm mainly asking about the font-- is that better for people? It seems readable, but I'm not sure I like it.

Posted by: Ace at 10:02 AM | Comments (79)
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He's the one who gave a guy 60 days for repeatedly raping a child, because he no longer believed that punishment was effective:

In the past few days... Cashman has been vilified by conservatives on TV and on blogs. On Fox News, Bill O'Reilly told viewers as video of Cashman rolled: "You may be looking at the worst judge in the USA." And several Vermont Republican lawmakers have demanded he resign or be impeached.

...

"As far as we're concerned, Cashman's district can hereby be considered a predator's sanctuary," wrote the Caledonian Record newspaper of St. Johnsbury. "As long as judges like Ed Cashman are allowed to sit on Vermont benches, children cannot be considered safe."

Cashman has been unswayed: "I am aware that the intensity of some public criticism may shorten my judicial career," he wrote in a memorandum this week. "To change my decision now, however, simply because of some negative sentiment, would be wrong."

...

"The solution to these concerns requires quick and effective treatment," the judge wrote. He also noted that Hulett tested at a borderline intelligence level, has the emotional maturity of a 12- to 14-year-old and did not understand why others were so upset by his actions.

Republican Gov. James Douglas said Thursday the judge should consider resigning. He condemned the 60-day sentence as insensitive to the victim and her family.

"When a grown man rapes a small child, justice is only served when the criminal is behind bars for a long time paying for his inexcusable crime," the governor said.

It's shocking that that even needs to be said.

Thanks to Link Mecca.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (25)
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Peter Beinart from TNR writes sensibly:

Why are MoveOn, Daily Kos, and so many other liberal activists so keen to find a primary challenger against Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman?

...

Lieberman's problem is that bloggers like Kos aren't very ideological either. Temperament defines them, too. It's just the opposite temperament. For Kos and the other Lieberman-haters, liberalism means confrontation, at least in the Bush era. In their view, politics should be guided by the spirit of war. If you don't want to crush conservatives, you are not a liberal.

So Lieberman-hatred is really all about style, right? Actually, no -- there's one final slice, and it's the most important of all. Behind Lieberman's obsession with national unity is his deep conviction that the United States is at war -- not just in Iraq, but around the world. The war on terrorism is his prism for viewing Bush. And it drains away his anger at the president's misdeeds, because they always pale in comparison to those of America's true enemy. When the Abu Ghraib revelations broke, Lieberman said America should apologize, but then added that 'those who were responsible for killing 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, never apologized.' . . .

Yet, if Lieberman's view is one-dimensional, so is that of his critics. If he only sees Bush through the prism of war, they only see the war through the prism of Bush -- which is why they can muster so little anger at America's jihadist enemies and so little enthusiasm when Iraqis risk their lives to vote. Kos and MoveOn have conveniently convinced themselves that the war on terrorism is a mere subset of the struggle against the GOP. Whatever brings Democrats closer to power, ipso facto, makes the United States safer. That would be nice if it were true -- but it's clearly not, because, sometimes, Bush is right, and because, to some degree, our safety depends on his success.

Emphasis mine. Is it just me, or is that absolutely perfect?

Posted by: Ace at 09:40 AM | Comments (34)
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... due to the scandals of the liberal government ruling now.

The Tories have a 12 point lead but there's always the chance that NDP voters will vote Liberal to prevent a conservative takeover.

Further, is this good news? Doesn't it suggest that the GOP is heading for disaster in November?

Posted by: Ace at 09:35 AM | Comments (28)
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