As expected. Adding, "It would have been better if our [Pakistani] authorities had been alerted for local action." Perhaps the US has learned that "alerting" their Pakistani counterparts of planned strikes results in failed missions. Indeed, Rauf "escaped" from a Pakistani prison a year earlier; some have accused the Pakistani police of facilitating this escape. More on this story.
"Rashid Rauf was linked to al-Qaeda's number two Ayman al-Zawahiri," by Isambard Wilkinson for the Telegraph, November 24:
A British al-Qaeda suspect reportedly killed by a US missile strike in a Pakistani tribal area was linked to the group's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to officials.
Rashid Rauf and a Saudi militant called Abu Zubair al-Masri were among five killed in a missile attack in North Waziristan on Saturday.Rauf, a British national, was alleged to have been the mastermind of an al-Qaeda plot to blow up passenger aircraft in mid-air after they left London bound for the United States.[...]
Pakistan has officially protested to the United States that missile strikes violate its sovereign territory, although some officials say there was a tacit understanding between the two militaries to allow such action.[...]
"In fact, for some time now the US has totally by-passed our [intelligence] agencies," he [Pakistani authority] added.
A Pakistani intelligence official said that the US believed that Rauf was staying with a group connected to Zawahiri. Zawahiri is believed by American officials to operate from Pakistan's lawless, tribal border areas.[...]
Rehman reiterated her government's complaint that missile attacks, apparently launched from unmanned aircraft, are fanning anti- Americanism and Islamic extremism tearing at both Pakistan and Afghanistan.
"It would have been better if our authorities had been alerted for local action," said Ms Rehman. "Drone incursions create a strong backlash." Rauf, who is of Pakistani origin, has been on the run since last December, when he escaped from police escorting him back to jail after an extradition hearing in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad.
Britain was seeking his extradition ostensibly as a suspect in the 2002 killing of his uncle there, but Rauf had allegedly been in contact with a group in Britain planning to smuggle liquid explosives onto trans-Atlantic flights and also with a suspected al-Qaeda mastermind of the plot in Afghanistan.
Zawahiri and the big cheese himself have to be shaking in their boots these days. Martyrdom is aspirational in the abstract, but in the here and now...it sure can crimp the style of powerful men, addicted to the adulation of their followers and their wives.
Another one bites the dust...
Christopher Hamilton
The Right Opinion, for the Right Wing
Screw Pakistan. Their messed up Prime Minister Zardari had the nerve to go to the UN and state that the world should fight bigotry, when this moron appoints two misogynists as ministers in his cabinet. Mohammedans and their sick Islamic laws and rituals.
Here's an idea taken from WWII (sort of). Inform the Pak government that we intend to hit X at Y time. Note the radio activity, satellite photo recon and intel from within. See if they aid and abet the enemy.
My guess is that they will aid and abet. We then present this info to them formally and inform them that it is obvious that we can't trust this info with them and will be informing them after the fact in the future. Oh, the only way to correct the problem is for them to bring the guilty parties forward so we can take and prosecute them for aiding and abetting the enemy.
Boo-hoo, so those terrorist-loving, wife-beating, Mein-Qurampf-reading scumbags are outraged that a US strike dispatched one of their camel-molesting associates to hell (or to a place where he has already found out that there ain't 72 virgins at his disposal, to wait upon him while he is deflowered by those "boys like well-hidden pearls" for eternity; boys who aren't there either, by the way.)
Tough luck. If the Pakistani authorities, if there's anything or anyone in that country that can be considered an authority, are worried about such vermin getting killed, they should have tried to do something to prevent them from becoming terrorists in the first place. But islam wouldn't allow that, would it?
Martyrdom is aspirational in the abstract.
Not least when encouraged for others, like Muhammad used to do. When asked why he was so eager to send people to their death - eh, martyrdom - yet unwilling to go himself, he said, according to the Sirat, that the love of his people for him kept him from pursuing that honour.
Yeah, right...
If we cut the financial aid to Pakistan, perhaps they would sing a different tune..........
Islamabad gave up any claim to sovereignty by refusing to enter the tribal areas itself to clean out al Qaeda.
Are the British upset at this hit? Does it bother them that the man is dead instead of preparing to face a British court?