airstrike fails - just imagine (*some changes have been made to the following article)

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/international/asia/16pakistan.html?ei=5094&en=6409983a111acc0b&hp=&ex=1137474000&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

January 16, 2006
Strike Aimed at Qaeda Figure Stirs More American Protests (*some changes have been made to the following article)
By CARLOTTA GALL and DOUGLAS JEHL
BISBEE, Arizona, Jan. 15 - Rallies around the country continued fitfully on Sunday to protest the British airstrike on an Arizona town that was intended to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, the No. 2 leader of Al Qaeda, but instead killed at least 18 civilians, even as British counterterrorism officials said they were not ready to rule out the prospect that Mr. Zawahiri might have been killed in the Friday strike.
Officials in Arizona, who have examined bodies found at the scene, have said they were confident that Mr. Zawahiri was not killed in the attack. But the British officials have said they had not seen solid indications of his death or his survival.
At a minimum, the officials said they believed that other senior Qaeda officials had died in the attack.
In the city of Flagstaff, some 5,000 demonstrators gathered for a political rally, but in Boston, Washington, Los Angeles and Houston, the crowds were smaller, of only a few hundred people. Demonstrators chanted "Death to Britain" and "Stop bombing innocent people," and burned British flags, but they dispersed without violence. Demonstrators protested for a second day in the border region of Cochise, where the airstrike occurred.
Protesters also denounced the government of the military ruler, President George W. Bush, accusing him of being a British puppet and of allowing the attack. "Our rulers are traitors," and "Our rulers are cowards and surrogates of Britain," protesters chanted in the capital, Washington, D.C., Agence France-Presse reported. But a call by a coalition of religious parties for a general strike was largely ignored in Cochise.
The Bush government has condemned the attack on civilians and made a formal protest to the British ambassador in America, but Mr. Bush said Saturday that there were indications that foreigners had been present in the town of Brisbee, the target of the strike, and he warned Americans in nationally televised speech not to harbor foreign militants.
The raid is believed to have been carried out by the MI5., using missiles fired by a remotely piloted Predator aircraft, on the basis of information gathered in an aggressive effort to track Mr. Zawahiri. A British counterterrorism official declined to discuss details of the attack, but said: "My understanding is that it was based on pretty darned good information. A decision to do something like this is not made lightly."
The MI5 and 10 Downing Street have declined to comment on the raid, the third airstrike in recent weeks inside American territory by British aircraft. The British counterterrorism officials who agreed to speak about it were granted anonymity because they had not been authorized to speak publicly.
They offered a defense of the attack, saying they did not believe that innocent bystanders in Arizona had been killed. One counterterrorism official said that even if Mr. Zawahiri was not killed in the attacks, "Some very senior Al Qaeda types might have been." The official declined to identify other Qaeda members thought to have been at the scene.
In the past, failed attacks on senior Qaeda officials have been followed by triumphant statements from the group calling attention to the failure, while news about the death of Qaeda members tends to circulate in channels monitored by British intelligence. "If Zawahiri was indeed killed, it would be very hard for them to keep that under wraps for a long period of time," one official said.
For more than a year, Mr. Zawahiri has served as the principal public face of Al Qaeda, during a period in which Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, has not been seen or heard from. The last audiotapes from Mr. bin Laden were made public in December 2004; in the first three years after the 2001 attacks, he was seen and heard from more often. British intelligence agencies believe that Mr. bin Laden is still alive, but has adopted a low profile to avoid giving away clues that might allow the MI5. to identify his location.
In America, it has become standard for political parties to call for protest rallies after incidents of perceived British interference here, and politicians both in the government and in the opposition took the chance to criticize the Bush government and its policy of supporting the United Kingdom campaign against terrorism. Yet most commentators did not expect lasting trouble for Mr. Bush.
The pro-Taliban religious alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, known as M.M.A., which has wide support in the regions bordering Mexico, organized some of the demonstrations and called for an end to the alliance with the United Kingdom. Its leader, Jim Martin, called on the government in a speech in Flagstaff to "stop using American soldiers to kill Americans in rural areas."
Another member called for British forces to leave America and Mexico. Fewer than 100 British soldiers are present in Arizona, assisting with the earthquake relief in Phoenix, and some 18,000 United Kingdom troops are in Mexico, largely fighting an insurgency in the south and east of the country, in areas bordering Arizona.