Okay, the Pentagon is having a REALLY hard time keeping their stories straight these days.
On the one hand, American bombs blew up scores of civilians the other day, causing a massacre that resulted in two tractor trailers full of body parts to be delivered to a provincial governor's office to prove that the strikes occurred. The Pentagon responded by claiming that it was the "terrorists" who did this, throwing grenades into houses in order to blame the atrocities on the United States.
Then, yesterday, in a moment of high weirdness, General Petraeus came out and said that Al Qaeda is No Longer Operating in Afghanistan.
Gee, do you think someone's lying here?
Yes, American bombs don't actually kill anybody. That's why we drop them. Only terrorists bombs actually kill people. Which is why we're trying to kill the terrorists. With bombs. Our bombs that don't kill anybody. Wow, that's hard to follow.
And then, General Petraeus actually said, out loud, that:
The head of U.S. Central Command said Sunday that Al Qaeda is no longer operating in Afghanistan, with its senior leadership having moved to the western region of Pakistan.
Gen. David Petraeus said affiliated groups have "enclaves and sanctuaries" in Afghanistan and that "tentacles of Al Qaeda" have touched countries throughout the Middle East and northern Africa. But he said the terrorist group has suffered" very significant losses" in recent months, and agreed with Afghan President Hamid Karzai's recent assessment that there is no Al Qaeda based in his country.
Still, he said he believes Usama bin Laden and his No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri remain in charge of the terrorist network.
So how can this possibly be true, when Obama is ratcheting up the "war" (if you can call bombing unarmed civilians a "war") in Afghanistan and today replacing the top commander there?
Does Petraeus simply not know what's going on? After all, the last part of HIS story doesn't jibe with what Pakistan President Zardari said recently in an interview:
Osama bin Laden "not alive": Zardari
"I've said before that he (Osama) -- I don't think he's alive," Zardari told NBC news channel in an interview when asked "where is Osama bin Laden?"
"I have a strong feeling and I have sole reason to believe that, because I've asked my counterparts in the American intelligence agencies and they haven't heard (from) him since seven years," he said.
Yet the American people were told that we'd heard from bin Laden back in March.
How embarrassing!
It almost makes you miss the Bush years, when you knew you were being lied to, and the story was simple, very simple, so everybody could remember it.
In another bit of interesting news, it turns out the Somali pirates have co-conspirators as far away as London, guiding them to their targets with intelligence:
<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/11/somali-pirates-london-intelligence Somali pirates guided by London intelligence team, report says].</p>
There's always more than meets the eye ...