Last week I spoke with a Pakistan expert who served in the Bush administration, and I asked him why Pakistan's 500,000-man army wasn't doing more to combat the Taliban, and whether there was a chance that Islamabad could be overrun. He was there was almost zero chance of that. The army would prefer not to get mired deeper in fighting a domestic insurgency and would wait until the last possible moment to intervene. But he said it would intervene effectively when the time came. Looks like we've reached that point.
--Michael Crowley