Dr. Michael Scheuer - Missing Zawahiri

Dr. Michael Scheuer - the CIA guy who wrote "Imperial Hubris" - has written a fine tract on the US should be playing realpolitik Missing Zawahiri - A Portent of America’s Defeat, in the US Cavalry site "On Point" :

In a rational, historically aware country, U.S. leaders would have told Americans that the attack on Zawahiri was facilitated by U.S. intelligence officers and Special Forces who risked their lives to gather intelligence that seemed to fix Zawahiri in a specific place at a specific time. Because Washington’s most important duty is to protect Americans, they would have said, we acted on the best information available and, so to speak, let 'er rip. Unfortunately, we missed Zawahiri, but we killed four of his fighters and will keep trying to get him and bin Laden. As for the dead Pakistanis, they are foreigners not Americans and we have no responsibility to protect them. And, in any event, they were about to serve up sautéed goat steaks and curry to one of America’s most dangerous enemies. The lesson all Pakistanis should take from the incident is that we are not concerned with the lives of Zawahiri’s abettors, that they were lucky the village was not hit by B-52s, and that next time they may not be so fortunate.

Of course the indiscriminate use of airpower in counterinsurgency inevitably backfires, but straight hard talk like suggested would be better than the squirming denials and excuses. But they can't, becuase that might be insensitive.