Is Zawahiri Gettin' Jiggy Wit' bin Laden's Virgins?

According to some reliable reports, Osama bin Laden went home to Allah a month ago in a way not exactly befitting an Islamic warrior of his imagined calibre. Part of the grounds for this allegation's credibility is that OBL hasn't been seen or heard from for over a year, and his XO, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has been the propaganda face of al Qaeda ever since.

If this story is correct, the alleged new al Qaeda chieftain may have learned too late the value of obscurity:

An airstrike in a remote Pakistani tribal area killed at least 17 people, and a senior Pakistani official said Saturday the target was a suspected al-Qaida hideout that may have been frequented by high-level operatives, possibly the #2 leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Citing unnamed American intelligence officials, U.S. networks reported that it was a CIA strike and that al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's lieutenant, could have been at a targeted compound in the Bajur area or about to arrive.

There was no confirmation from either the Pakistani or U.S. government, but a senior Pakistani government official told The Associated Press that "there is 50-50 chance that some al-Qaida personality was at the home" that was hit early Friday in the border village of Damadola, about 125 miles northwest of the capital Islamabad.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Saturday that he had heard that the al-Qaida figure may have been al-Zawahiri and that the information would be clearer later Saturday.

"A senior Pakistani intelligence official" told the AP that bodies were removed from the rubble in order to perform DNA tests that would presumably determine whether one of them was Zawahiri. This is assuming that we have DNA samples from the Z-man with which to draw comparisons. So it shouldn't be long before it is known one way or another whether bin Laden will have to put a glass to the stall of his golden shower to hear his former underling enjoying the seventy-two virgins of which his faulty kidneys robbed him.

Of course, from this blurblet one gets the impression that nobody was supposed to know at all:

The [senior Pakistani intelligence] official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to media.

Another leak of classified information. Now our intel bureaucracy has our allies doing it. Perhaps this "senior Pakistani" etc., is an al Qaeda plant? Perhaps to cover a(nother) Zawahiri getaway by letting slip "without authorization" that he "may have been killed"?

Hey, if this was a CIA operation, can it really ever be ruled out? Given who the CIA establishment considers to be its true "enemy," can we ever take public disclosures like this one at anything remotely close to face value?

Hopefully Zawahiri is mountain goat chow. But either way I'd keep a look out for predator drones if I were running the Secret Service. As the possibly not-so-dearly departed may now attest, if he could, you never know when, or where, one of those things is going to strike.