The New Republic

It is very murky, Michael. I had hoped that the drone had hit its target and obliterated this vessel of hate. But maybe not. We will have to wait and see for confirmatory - or disconfirmatory - evidence to emerge.

- liberal reformer

August 10, 2009 at 11:32am

Evidence coming solely from The Weekly Standard blog is only slightly less believable than evidence coming from the ISI.

- wildboy

August 10, 2009 at 12:57pm

Mike,

A small favor please.

When you link to The Weakly Standard please alert us first. I had just taken a shower and now I have to take one all over again. I can go through a dozen bars of soap before the stench is gone. And by then the water is ice cold.

Oh, but I did notice that TWS has an advert from Lincoln motors and HP computers.

Here at TNR we're lucky if we see an ad for Mopeds or the Pony Express.

gw

- iambiguous

August 10, 2009 at 1:14pm

If he is not dead this should provide yet another example of why it is dangerous to for US to prosletize the significance of certain individuals in terrorist/sub-governmental military organizations. If anything, we should always downplay the importance of leaders of terrorists organizations even as we know and recognize their significance. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the poster child of how we inflated a person's influence by constantly going on about how significant he was.

- ndmackenzie

August 10, 2009 at 1:44pm

the weekly standard is gutless since it has no talkback.

- blackton

August 10, 2009 at 3:58pm

mackenzie is dead right on this. On this particular instance, the likelihood is that Baitullah is alive. The Talib/AQ types always report accurately on "martyrdom" of leaders--from their perspective, it's an honor and a recruiting tool. Moreover, Paki ministers have been consistently wrong in their claims, often announcing the death of the same guy three of four different times only to have them turn up again.

- Robert Powell

August 10, 2009 at 4:21pm