WHERE THE WAR ENDS (continued) [via mc]:

U.S. plans Al Qaeda offensive: Sources say military is mapping operation to strike inside Pakistan (Christine Spolar, January 28, 2004, Chicago Tribune)

The Bush administration, deeply concerned about recent assassination attempts against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and a resurgence of Taliban forces in neighboring Afghanistan, is preparing a U.S. military offensive that would reach inside Pakistan with the goal of destroying Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network, military sources said.

U.S. Central Command is assembling a team of military intelligence officers that would be posted in Pakistan ahead of the operation, according to sources familiar with details of the plan and internal military communications. The sources spoke on the condition they not be identified.

As now envisioned, the offensive would involve Special Operations forces, Army Rangers and Army ground troops, sources said. A Navy aircraft carrier would be deployed in the Arabian Sea.

Referred to in internal Pentagon messages as the "spring offensive," the operation would be driven by certain undisclosed events in Pakistan and across the region, sources said. A source familiar with details of the plan said this is "not like a contingency plan for North Korea, something that sits on a shelf. This planning is like planning for Iraq. They want this plan to be executable, now." [...]

An offensive into Pakistan to pursue Al Qaeda would be in keeping with President Bush's vow to strike wherever and whenever the United States feels threatened and to pursue terrorist elements to the end.

"The best way to defend America . . . is to stay on the offensive and find these killers, one by one," Bush said last week. "We're going to stay on the hunt, which requires good intelligence, good cooperation, good participation with friends and allies around the world." [...]

Sources said the plan against Al Qaeda would be driven by events in the region rather than set deadlines and that delays could occur. But military sources said the push for this spring appeared to be triggered by the assassination attempts on Musharraf, both of which came in December, and, to some extent, the capture of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Hussein was captured after eight months of an intense military and intelligence effort on the ground in Iraq. Pentagon and administration officials, buoyed by that success, believe a similar determined effort could work in Pakistan and lead to the capture or killing of bin Laden, said sources familiar with the planning.

Thousands of U.S. forces would be involved, as well as Pakistani troops, planners said. Some of the 10,600 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan would be shifted to the border region as part of regular troop movements; some would be deployed within Pakistan.

"Before we were constrained by the border. Musharraf did not want that. Now we are told we're going into Pakistan with Musharraf's help," a well-placed military source said.

(1) President Bush understands that the war ends in Western Pakistan.

(2) Al Qaeda is its own worst enemy: President Musharraf feared his own extremists enough to restrain us instead of them, but theu bombed him into changing his mind.

(3) The Democrats have been harping on how they support going after al Qaeda but not war in Iraq--now what do they say when the war shifts back to a full scale assault on al Qaeda?

(4) Anyone who thought the Administration had been chastened by the difficulties of the post-war situations in Afghanistan and Iraq was just kidding themself.