That could be arranged, yes (YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME UPDATE)

There's a spirited debate about the color of the Red Mosque in Islamabad--the site of quite a bit of unpleasantness earlier this year:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The new imam at Islamabad's oldest mosque, the scene of a July "massacre" of up to 1,000 female students by police commandos, yesterday told the first Friday prayer service since the mosque reopened that the building would be repainted red "with our own blood" if necessary.

At least 10,000 worshippers knelt in prayer at the Lal Majid, or Red Mosque, which was repainted yellow during an earlier attempt by authorities to patch bullet holes and reopen the mosque under government control.

Now wait just a cotton pickin' minute. "Up to 1000?" I had never heard that figure before--but it gets top billing in this article. Way way down we see the estimate explained:

Officials say 103 persons died in the assault, including 10 policemen.

But Mrs. Hassan, who ran the girls' seminary, told reporters she believes at least 1,000 girl students were killed, of about 17,000 students registered at the time.

A final-year student at the girls' school told the Supreme Court earlier that she personally witnessed the killing of about 400 boys and 250 girls in a single day and that she did not know what became of the bodies, the English-language Dawn newspaper reported.

After the fight the New York Times set the death toll at "at least 87". In late July the WaPo was still saying 100--and that's the figure I've heard without any dispute until today. Look, these people are obvious Islamist wackos who are sorting through the ground sniffing for the pleasantly sweet odor given off by the bodies of martyrs. Previously on JYB, I noted that they think Allah magically sticks food inside their cupboard every time they pray. Oh, and during the standoff they were the ones holding women and children hostage. And what the hell is this self-contradictory nonsense?

But politics were far from the minds of worshippers. When the service ended, they filed out of the mosque to an adjacent field where the girls' seminary, or madrassa, had been bulldozed, its basement chambers filled and buried under a layer of dirt and rocks, and where many of the girls' bodies are thought to remain buried.

A young boy found a broken piece of tile on the ground, bloodstains clearly visible, and brought it to a visiting reporter.

Thousands of men filled the field for a second service held by the new deputy imam, Amir Saddique, a nephew of the slain former leader.

Yeah, politics is nowhere near these people's minds. Hey, Mister Reporter, look at this clearly bloodstained tile with the martyr-fresh scent I conveniently found just now and brought to you!

The indicia of reliability

This is very strange because it's not a credulous wire service gimp or some stringer with strong local ties who believes these sorts of inflated, politicized claims and omits mentioning their Taliban and Al-Qaeda connections. It's longtime Wash Times foreign reporter Willis Witter. Do they, um, have people being held hostage or something?

UPDATE: Here's an interesting pair of witnesses in a report in Pakistan's Dawn--cited in Witter's article--from Oct. 2nd. Since the "final year student" is clearly the same, I wonder whether this Mrs. Hassan is the same person as well. If so, there's a tiny little bitty detail about her that might be just a skoonch relevant before you go inflating the body count tenfold...

Ms Ayesha, a final year student of Jamia Hafsa appearing before the court, claimed that she was a witness to the killing of 400 male and 250 female students on the very first day of the operation.

She said it was a mystery where the bodies of the dead had gone. Ms Ayesha said she did not know how many more people lost their lives till the completion of the operation.

...

The interior ministry’s National Crisis Management Cell Director-General Brig (retired) Javed Iqbal Cheema said that there were only 103 casualties in the entire operation.

He said as per information available in the register of Jamia Hafsa, 1,700 female students were registered in the seminary of which 1,526 were boarders.

Umme Hassaan, wife of the former chief cleric of Lal Masjid Maulana Abdul Aziz, who was present in the courtroom submitted before the bench that Javed Iqbal was giving details of three- year-old record of the Madressah.

She submitted that there were 450 female students present in the seminary when the operation against Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa was on its peak on July 9.

Ms Hassaan said she had seen 30 female students being killed on July 3 in one room of Dora-i-Hadith.

Umme Hassan doesn't really mean "Hassan's wife"--it means Mother of Hassan. But according to Dawn, she's also Maulana (Mullah) Abdul Aziz's wife!?!?

Again, that's right there in the Dawn report that Witter cites in the Washington Times article, so he saw it and chose not to include it. What the crap, dude?

(End update. Moving the rest of the post--not really related-- below the jump)

In other THEOCRACY ALERT news, (which by the way will be the title of a regular segment on the new Air America atheist talk show), it seems you can't get an inscription containing the word "God" on a flag that has flown over the U.S. Capitol.

I'm fine with some guidelines on what you can get inscribed on a U.S. Capitol flag. For example, oh, "WE SHALL PAINT IT RED WITH OUR OWN BLOOD!" is over the line.

But just allowing someone to get, say, "In honor of my grandfather, Marcel Larochelle, and his dedication and love of God, country and family" without eliminating "God" from the statement seems reasonable.