DNA

[godfry n. glad]

oooOkay... I'll try for all three.

It's just a matter of a recent report on the death of an al Qeada operative in Pakistan.

This article puzzles me.

This is the final paragraph, after a lot of speculation as to the cause of the explosion that killed him:

re: al Qeada operative death

Pakistani officials said Rabia's death had been confirmed by DNA tests. But the Dawn newspaper, citing officials, said Saturday that his body had been retrieved by associates from outside Pakistan.

DNA tests.

I'm assuming that this is because the body is unidentifiable otherwise, right?

Don't DNA tests have to match something else? Something provided and known to have come from the person as a sample? Is the CIA now collecting swabs of every potential al Qaeda operative in the world? By what was this "200%" surety established?

And the body was claimed? "By associates from outside Pakistan"? Man, talk about knowing you're being followed. I would assume that whomever it was that retrieved the body is being tightly monitored.

How do they know it was a DNA match?

[Ari]

I don't know about this case but in others they have the DNA of the persons family and they compare it to the collected DNA, kind of like a paternity test that you see on Montel or other crap daytime shows.