Another glorious CIA success

Update: Maybe we need to go with the title without the sarcastic inflection. Looks like we got Al Qaida’s #1 bombmaking expert, Abu Khabab al-Masri[*1] . My apologies to the CIA . . . this time.

Original Post, Saturday, Jan. 14, 8:23 am . . .
Turns out we didn’t whack Al-Zawahiri after all. From the USA Today: Al-Qaeda No. 2 wasn’t on site during U.S. attack, officials say[*2]

Two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Saturday that the CIA had acted on incorrect information, and al-Zawahri was not in the village of Damadola when it came under attack. Al-Zawahri is ranked No. 2 in the al-Qaeda terror network, second only to Osama bin Laden.

“Their information was wrong, and our investigations conclude that they acted on a false information,” said a senior intelligence official. His account was confirmed by a senior government official, who said al-Zawahri “was not there.”

Why oh why do we tolerate this fetid cesspool of incompetent spooks to fester? There’s an old saying, from World War II, or maybe earlier:

One hundred “atta-boy’s” are cancelled out by one “aw, shit.”

The CIA seems prone to very public, very damaging mistakes. I’m just a guy with a computer in the middle of the country, but it seems to me that we have other organizations (NSA, DIA, etc.) which seem somewhat more competent at what they do. At least, the mistakes they make are not nearly as public. Also, those other agencies don’t seem to be in a perpetual state of war with the elected government of the U.S. Let’s transfer intelligence operations from the incompetent CIA to these other organizations, and shut the doors down at Langley.