Lost in the shuffle of the violence in Iraq and the August 6 PDB debate, is this little nugget.

The U.S. military pulled back Saturday from an earlier prediction that Osama bin Laden would be captured this year, even while preparing its largest force to date for operations along the Pakistani border where the al-Qaida chief is suspected to be hiding.

Catching bin Laden and other top fugitives remains a priority of the expanding American operation in Afghanistan, a spokesman said, but the growing mission is "not about just one or two people," a spokesman said.

"We remain committed to catching these guys. It's pretty much ... just about everything that we do here," Lt. Col. Matthew Beevers said.

But he declined to make any new predictions of when the fugitives might be behind bars.

Well, there are two ways we can look at this:

1) They were never really close to getting him, and this rhetorical retreat was made clearly, but at a time when the public's attention was on other things. Or, just as possible,

2) They are playing the expectations game. Because Bush is essentially unable to campaign on either 9/11 or Iraq for the time being, they think the payoff from capturing bin Laden would be greater if the expectation was that they weren't likely to nab him.

Of course, there's always option 3, being that you're one of those tinfoil cranks who thinks they have bin Laden essentially cornered, ready to be captured at the most politically opportune moment. Not that they essentially waited to trot out Jose Padilla at just the right moment in 2002, but that's another matter.

Anyway, Happy Easter everybody! If I could find those Onion Easter cards, I'd post them here. I will make my triumphant post-Lent return to Instapundit and Kausfiles at some point today or tomorrow.