Breathless and Wrong: all in one sentence

I am briefly breaking my self-enforced silence and blogging break to ask who the Washington Post’s Dana Priest is referring to in the following sentence:

“U.S. military teams and intelligence agencies are deeply involved in secret joint operations with Yemeni troops who in the past six weeks have killed scores of people, among them six of 15 top leaders of a regional al-Qaeda affiliate, according to senior administration officials.” (My Emphasis)

C’mon really. Who are these people? Not Nasir al-Wahayshi. Not Said al-Shihri. Not Qasimal-Raymi. Not Ibrahim al-Rubaysh. Not ‘Adil al-‘Abab. Not Muhammad al-Rashad. Not ‘Aidhal-Shabwani. Not Hizam Mujali. Not Muhammad al-‘Umda. Not Anwar al-‘Awlaqi. Do I need to keep going?

So who exactly has been killed? And how does the US know the hierarchy of the top 15 members of AQAP?

I remain fairly skeptical of this misleading report (it makes it seem as if the US and Yemen are doing an excellent job of picking off the organization’s leadership, when in fact the leadership remains intact) as I am of a number of reports that have been put out lately by what appears to be a migratory pack of “Yemen experts.”

But my frustrations and arguments will have to wait for another post. It is back to the well of silence for another day or so.