YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: And it looks like a pretty good bargain:

Six al-Qaida suspects were killed, including a top operative of Osama bin Laden, when their car was blasted with a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone in northwest Yemen, U.S. officials told NBC News on Monday.

U.S. OFFICIALS told NBC News that Ali Qaed Sinan al-Harthi, a senior al-Qaida member, was among the dead. According to NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski, the car had been observed by the drone — an unmanned aircraft — for a period of time before it was attacked on Sunday. Secondary explosions were seen after the missile hit the vehicle, indicating there were explosives inside the car. Officials said they don’t know what the explosives were or why they were in the vehicle.

I think there’s a lot more going on in Yemen than is making the news, and I suspect that the troops in Djibouti, about whom we’re not hearing a lot, are playing a role. (Here’s a thought: What if the whole Iraq thing is misdirection? I don’t think so, because the diplomatic costs are too high. But if it is misdirection, it’s working!)

UPDATE: CNN’s poll (lower right) asks if the U.S. was right to “execute the terror suspects without a trial.” The U.S. was “attacking enemies,” not “executing suspects,” in my opinion. But even phrased the way CNN did it, the answer is running at 73% “yes.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Some thoughts on what this means about the state of the Yemeni government, at Sheep Free zone.