Number 3, Number 3, Number 3, Number 3...

If this guy was what they claim him to be, I'll shed no tears, but the refrain is what we have heard many, many times before.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The operational commander of al-Qaida and a top-five official in the terrorist organization was killed Wednesday or early Thursday by a CIA missile attack on a safehouse in Pakistan, officials have told NBC News.

Pakistani sources said that Hamza Rabia was one of five men killed at a safehouse located in the village of Asorai, in western Pakistan, near the town of Mirali.

Local residents said that the men were killed by an unknown number of missiles fired by an unmanned Predator aircraft. The witnesses said that missile remnants carrying U.S. markings remain in the area. They also said they had heard six explosions, but it is uncertain how many of these were the result of missile attacks and how many may have been the result of the missiles detonating explosives inside the safehouse.

U.S. officials have said that Rabia succeeded Abu Faraj as operations chief. Rabia was brought into al-Qaida by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's No. 2. Like al-Zawahiri, Rabia is an Egyptian. U.S. officials have described him recently as "top-five al-Qaida" and, as one US official said Friday, "killing him would be indeed a very big deal."

What a truly hate now is that based on their past acts I only half believe this and believe that succeeding days will clarify that much of this information is wrong -- and it will be clarified in a small paragraph about 15 pages after the initial headline.

Verification is necessary for everything assoctiated with Bush.