Tracking the Red Mosque conflict.

#1:

Three militants were killed overnight and several militants and soldiers were wounded in a morning clash. A wounded man was found in a basement bathroom in the evening, Arshad said.

Occasional explosions rang out from the fortified mosque-school complex as troops destroyed booby-traps and mines.

Nine members of the security forces were killed and 29 wounded in “Operation Silence”, the codename for the assault carried out by 164 commandos.

Heavy security was still in place around the compound with reporters kept back. But a curfew in the neighbourhood for more than a week was lifted for a few hours in the afternoon.

[snip]

After the complex was secured, soldiers began to comb the debris and Arshad said they had found 73 bodies. The military had earlier estimated more than 50 militants had been killed.

Asked if any women or children were among the dead, he said nine of the bodies had been burned beyond recognition. Earlier, he said he had no reports of women or children killed.

The search was going on, he said. Article

#2:

After more than 30 hours of fighting against heavily-armed followers of two radical cleric brothers that ran the complex, troops took control of the site mid-Wednesday after eradicating the last pockets of resistance.

With scores or even hundreds of religious students still unaccounted for, the death toll was expected to climb during the search of the seminary’s dozens of rooms, corridors and basement that were fortified in recent weeks.

Talking to the Aaj private television channel, a close associate of President Pervez Musharraf, Industry Minister Jehangir Khan Tareen, said there were between 150 and 250 bodies at the site. Article

#3:

The Pakistan government has decided to remove the building of rebel girls’ seminary Jamia Hafsa and all illegal structures in the Lal Masjid compound which were established on illegally occupied state land, sources here say.

The sources said it had been decided before the operation that except the Lal Masjid all other structures including the residences of Maulana Abdul Aziz and Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi would be demolished.

A senior official of the local administration, who did not want to be named, said the government had decided to bring the Lal Masjid to its original size. However, he did not say exactly how long it would take to raze the illegal structures. Article

#4:

Pakistan’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered the government to delay the burial of rebel cleric Abdul Rashid Ghazi in Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Pakistan until the arrival of his relatives from Islamabad. Article

Following the twisted skeins.

As Iraq continues to disintegrate, and our top generals and in-country ambassador predict that U.S. troops will need to die there for decades in order to prevent a full-scale regional bloodbath, it is important to recall the reasons why we got into this mess. The marker of what will go down in history as “Bush’s folly” is that this idiot of a president invaded a country that had absolutely nothing to do with terrorists attacks on the United States on 9/11 or threatening America with WMD while coddling the military junta in Pakistan, which was guilty on both counts. Article

Related — no other way to slice it than as a vivid demonstration of the abject and total failure of the woebegone G. Walker administration, in both form and substance, in both word and deed, in both assessment and activity, in both policy and execution.

U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded al-Qaida has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since just before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, The Associated Press has learned.

The conclusion suggests that the network that launched the most devastating terror attack on the United States has been able to regroup along the Afghan-Pakistani border despite nearly six years of bombings, war and other tactics aimed at crippling it.

[snip]

Counterterrorism analysts produced the document, titled “Al-Qaida better positioned to strike the West.” The document focuses on the terror group’s safe haven in Pakistan and makes a range of observations about the threat posed to the United States and its allies, officials said.

[snip]

John Kringen, who heads the CIA’s analysis directorate, echoed the concerns about al-Qaida’s resurgence during testimony and conversations with reporters at a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.

“They seem to be fairly well settled into the safe haven and the ungoverned spaces of Pakistan,” Kringen testified. “We see more training. We see more money. We see more communications. We see that activity rising.”

The threat assessment comes as the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies prepare a National Intelligence Estimate focusing on threats to the United States. A senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity while the high-level analysis was being finalized, said the document has been in the works for roughly two years.

[snip]

The new threat assessment puts particular focus on Pakistan, as did Kringen. Article

More:

Bush has repeatedly tried to cast the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq as part of the struggle against worldwide terrorism.

But many of the government’s own counterterrorism analysts say the Iraq war has fueled anti-Western militancy and served as recruitment aid for bin Laden and like-minded Islamic extremists.

Over the last two weeks, Bush has cited the violence in Iraq perpetrated by a group calling itself al Qaida in Iraq. But that group wasn’t present in Iraq before the March 2003 U.S. invasion, and there is no evidence it is under the control of bin Laden or his lieutenants.

Paul Pillar, a former top CIA official, said in an interview that al Qaida has seen “a partial strengthening of their position in South Asia.”

That doesn’t mean the group has fully reverted to its former strength, he said. “That’s not the same as saying we’re back to the way things were before September 11, 2001,” Pillar said.

The intelligence analysts also stated in their congressional testimony – more bluntly than officials have before – that bin Laden and his closest aides are in Pakistan, ensconced in that country’s rugged tribal areas bordering Pakistan.

“They continue to maintain active connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders hiding in Pakistan to affiliates throughout the Middle East, North and East Africa, and Europe,” Thomas Fingar, deputy director for analysis in McConnell’s office, said in written testimony prepared beforehand. Article