Pressure on Pakistan to get Osama by election -- TNR

I am sorry if this has been mentioned already, but my jaw dropped when I saw this article in The New Republic (not my favorite mag, but I do subscribe!) --

"July Surprise"
by John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman & Massoud Ansari

Excerpts:

This spring, the administration significantly increased its pressure on Pakistan to kill or capture Osama bin Laden, his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, or the Taliban's Mullah Mohammed Omar, all of whom are believed to be hiding in the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan. A succession of high-level American officials--from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet to Secretary of State Colin Powell to Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca to State Department counterterrorism chief Cofer Black to a top CIA South Asia official--have visited Pakistan in recent months to urge General Pervez Musharraf's government to do more in the war on terrorism.

Well, that doesn't sound TOO bad, but read on ...

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election.

Not only before the election, but at a particular time before the election:

But according to this ISI official, a White House aide told ul-Haq last spring that "it would be best if the arrest or killing of [any] HVT were announced on twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight July"--the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

(emphases mine!)

Now, I have always felt that people talking about an "October Surprise" capture of Osama Bin Laden were speaking mostly of tongue-in-cheek  ..... I really really never thought the Bush administration would go as far as to actually try to get Osama before the election for political purposes  .... I just REALLY REALLY never thought they could wrap their diabolical imaginations around anything so insidious.  But if this is true .. I have to say I feel dumb, dumbfounded, and just .... well, almost speechless!

<rhetorical question>
Is there ANYTHING this bunch will not do for political gain?
</rhetorical question>

It will be interesting to see if this does occur during the Democratic Convention, and, if so, if there is ANYONE who will not suspect them of engineering the whole thing.