I've put together a summary of the current information we have on the Damadola attack. I'm disappointed that not much has happened since I checked in this morning. If something was known for certain, I'm sure the information (good or bad) would have been leaked from "senior government officials." Information like that is too good to keep secret for long. But as of 7:30 PM EST, nothing. Perhaps everyone was watching the Redskins game.
Here follows a blogosphere and MSM:
Nothing new to report from CT Blog. Scared Monkeys links to a Reuters report of Pakistani officials saying Al-Zawahiri was away when the strike hit. Away? What? Did he step out to the local 7-11 to get some late night munchies? Powerline's report is dated yesterday. So's LGF's.
Slow, slow, slow....now much more with the MSM:
The Washington Post has skins coverage, nothing on Al Qaeda on its front page. The NY Times has no new coverage, but reports this descriptive detail that may or may not be true:
After the rally dispersed, 800 to 900 men went on a rampage and attacked the offices of two nongovernmental organizations in the town, according to the local Pakistani reporter. People in the crowd looted computers from an American-financed aid organization called BEST and then torched the compound. The office of an Italian aid group, Intersos, was smashed and looted before the authorities intervened.
On Saturday, the Pakistani security official described some of the intelligence surrounding the airstrike. He said that a dinner at which Mr. Zawahiri was expected had been planned for Thursday night. A local cleric, Maulavi Liaqat, was at the dinner, but he left around midnight, the official said.
After the airstrike, Mr. Liaqat was again at the scene, and he had the bodies of the Arab militants pulled from the rubble and taken away, the security official said. A second cleric, Maulavi Atta Muhammad, took away the Pakistani militants, he said.
AP reports that FBI experts are headed to the region to perform the DNA testing:
Survivors in Damadola denied militants were in their hamlet, but there were news reports quoting unidentified Pakistani officials as saying up to 11 extremists were believed among the dead.
A Pakistani intelligence officer told The Associated Press some bodies were taken away for DNA tests. He did not say who would do the tests, but a law enforcement official in Washington said the FBI expected to conduct DNA tests to determine victims' identities, although Pakistan had not yet formally requested them.
BBC News puts the "innocent women and children were killed meme" at the core of its report.
CNN last updated its report since 4:44 EST, and has no new information. It simply summarizes other news sources who are reporting from Pakistani sources:
The Associated Press quoted a senior Pakistani intelligence official as saying "our investigations conclude that they (the CIA) acted on a false information."
Reuters also quoted a senior Pakistani official as saying: "Al-Zawahri was not there at the time of the attack."
The Pentagon and the White House declined to comment on initial reports of the airstrike on Friday.
Friday morning's strike killed eight men, five women and five children, Pakistani intelligence sources told CNN. Three homes were targeted.
It's hard to blame the blogosphere for being "slow" since I'm sure there aren't many blogging resources in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. MSM has much more money/human assets to go deep into the region. However, it doesn't appear that any of those assets were used. Instead, you have a bunch of reports in Islamabad calling up their official contacts and getting the usual semi-BS information.
The MSM has failed to provide any coherent reporting on the Damadola attack. With a reliance on Pakistani sources and local stringers, the MSM-generated news stream is both unreliable and confusing. There's little objective reporting or clarification of the "women and children killed" reports (which are common enough after these types of attacks, and often unfounded). It's all just uncritical retelling of the local Islamists' take on the story. Unbelievable.
This is very frustrating, because unlike civilized countries where bloggers can provide first-hand information that local MSM would never provide, Damadola has to be in one of the most remote, settled regions on earth. We have to rely on a stream of Pakistani officials leaking whatever comes to mind, and responding incoherently to the chaos on the ground.
This story could have been much more.
Damadola: another total MSM failure.
