I'm seeing a lot of stories that say we have Ayman al-Zawahri surrounded and then this story, from Agence France-Presse, suggesting that Zawahiri may have escaped:

Pakistani troops who saw a heavily-guarded "foreigner" flee a siege near the Afghan border in a bullet-proof landcruiser are certain he was not Osama bin Laden, a senior security official said.

But the level and sophistication of resistance put up by scores of heavily armed fighters as he escaped made them conclude it could be the Al-Qaeda chief's number two, the official said.

"The Frontier Corps troops who saw this foreigner said they were certain it was not bin Laden, but they speculated it could be Ayman al-Zawahiri," the official, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

"The way he was whisked away, the way fighters sprang from nowhere, that made us believe that if it was not bin Laden, and we're sure it was not, that it was his deputy.

"We can't think of another Al-Qaeda leader who could have such high protocol and such sophisticated tight defence." ....

The well-protected "foreigner" who escaped Tuesday could well have slipped the net of Pakistani forces, who are still pounding the area with mortars and helicopter gunships, the official said....

I can't believe Pervez Musharraf actually wants Zawahiri captured. His siege, however, even if Zawahiri escapes (or was never there in the first place), serves the Bush campaign well, coinciding as it does with the anniversary week of the start of the Iraq war (Iraq = al-Qaeda) and the foreign-policy attacks on Kerry (plus, by happenstance, Madrid and Zapatero's election). Surely the Bush campaign had a lot to do with the timing of this raid. ("What you've got is everything -- and I mean everything -- being run by the political arm. Everything -- and I mean everything -- is being run by the Mayberry Machiavellis." --John DiIulio to Ron Suskind.)