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DERA ISMAIL KHAN , Pakistan -- The Pakistani army's latest offensive against the Taliban in South Waziristan , probably the country's most significant anti-terror operation since 2001, so far has failed to convince residents of the frontier area that the state is finally determined to wipe out the Islamic extremists.

Tribesmen from the Mehsud clan who are flooding out to escape the fighting in the lawless region that borders Afghanistan , guardedly tell of dreadful subjugation by Taliban extremists and their al Qaida allies, who control the area.

The evacuees also remain unconvinced that the army has turned against militants. None of the roughly dozen people interviewed by McClatchy reported seeing any ground troops in the war zone.

Even the anti- Taliban militia, made up of the few Mehsuds willing to stand up to the extremists, aren't sure whether they can have faith in the army, even though their militia is quietly supported by the state.

"The government has used the people like toilet paper, used them and thrown them away," thundered the spiritual leader and founder of the anti-Taliban Mehsud militia, Maulvi Sher Mohammad, in an interview.

The Mehsud tribesmen have been forced to abandon their homes for the third or fourth time since 2004 to escape periodic army operations against the Taliban , only to see the authorities cut peace deals and to discover upon their return that their area was under even tighter extremist control. The Pakistani Taliban is based in the part of South Waziristan that's occupied by the Mehsuds.

A deep, corrosive cynicism persists even though Pakistan carried out a successful operation earlier this year that largely eliminated the Taliban from the Swat valley. The early indications of the South Waziristan ground offensive, launched on Oct. 17 , are that it's more serious than anything the army has undertaken in the past.

Nevertheless, interviews suggest that Pakistan remains a long way from winning the hearts and minds of the people of South Waziristan , although doing so is essential to clearing this rugged area of Islamic extremists, Afghan insurgents and al Qaida commanders, who've all made it their sanctuary.

Many of the refugees from South Waziristan also claim that the homes of ordinary people are being bombed and that civilians are dying in an intense and indiscriminate aerial bombardment, further eroding their support for the operation.

Mohammad, a burly cleric who lives behind high compound walls in the town of Dera Ismail Khan on the edge of South Waziristan , guarded by gun-toting young men, said that he wouldn't ask his fellow tribesmen to rise up yet.

The army is hoping that a traditional militia from the tribe, known as a lashkar, will fight alongside it. Mohammad's outfit, known as the " Abdullah Group " after former Guantanamo Bay prison camp inmate Abdullah Mehsud, is the state's best hope.

"We cannot fight alongside the army because my people do not yet know whether the army and the Taliban are friends or enemies," said Mohammad. "When we see the army crush them (the Taliban ), then we'll believe."

Three times in the past, the army has agreed to a ceasefire and peace terms with the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan . Each time, the Taliban took bloody revenge on those who'd sided with the state.

Mehsuds remember bitterly how in 2005, following such a deal, a Pakistani army general literally embraced the then- Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, and called him "a soldier of peace." A U.S. missile strike killed the militant leader in August.

The army complains that it was never before given a solid political mandate to rout the Taliban until this year, and that Pakistani public opinion previously didn't favor fighting a movement that claimed it was acting in the name of Islam.

Critics allege that the military, especially its Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, saw strategic benefit in having Taliban guard Pakistan's northwestern border.

Few of the South Waziristan refugees interviewed by McClatchy were willing to candidly speak about the Taliban , out of fear that they'll have to go back to face the militants.

"It is 100 percent wrong to say that the Mehsud are in favor of the Taliban ," said a teacher, who asked for his name not to be used and who left his home in the Ladha area of South Waziristan . "We only 'support' the Taliban when we're there (in South Waziristan ) to save our lives and our property."

The leadership and foot soldiers of the Taliban are dominated by the Mehsud tribe, whose home territory occupies around half of South Waziristan . The army offensive is confined to that part of South Waziristan occupied by the Mehsud tribe Under Baitullah, the traditional tribal leaders of the Mehsuds were systematically butchered or driven out of South Waziristan , removing a rival source of authority.

Baitullah also turned the Pakistani Taliban from a group that fought "infidel" international forces in Afghanistan to a movement at war with its own Muslim homeland, a twist of jihadist logic that came straight from al Qaida .

Many Mehsuds said they'd support an operation if they thought it was real. Instead, some of them said that the country's army acts intermittently against the Taliban just to keep U.S. aid flowing.

"This fight (in South Waziristan ) is for American dollars. The government always has some deal with the Taliban . It is ordinary people who suffer," said student Zahidullah Mehsud, who thought he was around 19 years old, as he lined up at a registration center for those displaced by the operation. "This is all an ISI game."

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)

MORE FROM MCCLATCHY

Pakistan presses offensive, but not against Afghan Taliban

Pakistan launches crucial assault on militant stronghold

To smooth Pakistan's feathers, Kerry clarifies aid bill

Suicide bomber kills 41 as U.S.- Pakistan relations fray

Terrorist attack in Pakistan shows how vulnerable it is

Read McClatchy's in-depth coverage of Afghanistan and Pakistan

Check out McClatchy's politics blog: Planet Washington

HONOLULU – Mike Weidenbach has walked across the historic teakwood decks and through the metal hallways of the USS Missouri countless times in the past decade. But he recently realized how massive the aging battleship is from a new perspective — underneath.
"I touched the bottom of the ship," gushed Weidenbach, curator of the iconic World War II vessel that now serves as a memorial and museum.
The "Mighty Mo" — the last battleship built by the United States — is spending three months in dry dock at Pearl Harbor undergoing $18 million in maintenance and preservation.
"I want it to be here forever," Weidenbach said Thursday. "I want to die knowing we took care of the ship the best we were able.
"For me as curator, this is our primary artifact, so it's not like a normal Navy ship that has a life span of decades," he said. "This is supposed to be like the U.S. Constitution. It's supposed to be hundreds of years."
Weidenbach visited the ship at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and said it was challenging to capture the size and scope of the 887-foot vessel in a photograph.
"It was overwhelming," he said. "It's bigger than you can see. I've seen it above the waterline for 10 years, and I knew it was massive. But when you see the other half of it ... gosh."
The 65-year-old warship, now called the Battleship Missouri Memorial, is best known for hosting the formal surrender of Japan in 1945.
Four tugboats guided the Missouri two miles from its historic spot on Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor to dry dock on Wednesday. It has been moored for the past 11 years in Pearl Harbor, where a Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, plunged the United States into World War II.
The 54,889-ton vessel now sits on 310 wooden blocks. The hull will be sandblasted and painted, besides preservation work on top. The ship is scheduled to return to Battleship Row on Jan. 7.
BAE Systems Ship Repair has been contracted for the work. Roger Kubischta, the company's president and general manager, said there's a tremendous amount of marine growth stuck to the hull that will need to be removed before it can be sandblasted and painted.
"There's corrosion in spots of the hull, but for the most part, the hull is mostly intact," Kubischta said.
In all, eight square miles of the boat's surface need to be preserved.
Kubischta said a major challenge will be to tent the entire 1,050-foot dock to prevent dust from leaving the area. The enclosure will need to be airtight with ventilation and air blowers.
Three hundred to 400 people will be working on the project almost around the clock. Ninety percent of the work force is from Hawaii, Kubischta said.
The Missouri was last in dry dock in 1992, just after it was decommissioned for the second and last time. It's been moored at Pearl Harbor for the past decade after local supporters beat out groups in Washington state, San Francisco and Long Beach, Calif., for the right to host the memorial.
The USS Missouri Memorial Association now operates the ship. More than 400,000 visitors tour the vessel each year and interest seems to be growing. The ship had a record 49,856 visitors in July.
The "Mighty Mo" was launched in 1944 and fought in the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. It was decommissioned in 1955 but revived in the 1980s, after which it fired some of the first shots of the Gulf War in 1991.

Its home now is just a few hundred yards from the USS Arizona, a battleship that was sunk by the Japanese with more than 1,100 sailors and Marines on board during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Japan surrendered on Sept. 2, 1945, during a ceremony in Tokyo Bay. Gen. Douglas MacArthur signed for the Allied powers, while Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Chester Nimitz, signed for the U.S.

Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu, Chief of the Army General Staff, signed for Japan.

Copies of the surrender documents are on display today on the deck where they were signed.

Weidenbach said the Arizona and Missouri are connected in history.

"The war started and it was a great tragedy with the Arizona, and it ended in peace on the Missouri," he said.

___

On the Net:

http://www.ussmissouri.org/discover

MOUNTAIN VIEW, California (Reuters) –
Searching for stocks of water on the moon, NASA crashed two spacecraft into an eternally dark lunar crater on Friday, hoping to splash ice into the light where instruments could assess it.

A two-ton empty rocket stage hit the dark Cabeus crater near the moon's south pole at about 4:31 a.m. PDT (7:31 a.m. EDT) and a second craft crashed four minutes later.

A camera on the following spacecraft did not capture an image of the impact as hoped, but scientists said they were confident that the explosive hit took place as planned.

"We didn't see a big splashy plume like we wanted to see," said Michael Bicay, director of science at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center.

Bicay said an infrared camera showed changes that suggested an explosion.

Other instruments on the second craft, a lunar orbiter and telescopes on earth captured data that could show in days whether there was ice on the moon, and the explosion of the second craft was caught by the orbiting and earth-based observers, he and other scientists said.

Three studies released last month found clear evidence of water on the moon, welcome and surprising news for further space exploration, since water can be turned into fuel.

But the skein of water bound with dust that was disclosed then was extremely thin. "It's not enough to be of any economic importance," said NASA Lunar Science Institute Director David Morrison.

Hidden in the crater near the pole, out of sunlight, could be concentrations of 2 percent to 3 percent ice in the lunar soil that would be usable. "You're going into a place where the sun hasn't shined for a billion years," Morrison said.

Hundreds of space enthusiasts in parkas and sleeping bags gathered in the early morning to watch the impact on a big outdoor screen at the Ames Research Center, housed on an old dirigible field in Silicon Valley.

Video from the trailing spacecraft gave the sense of a silent crash fast approaching as craters edged with light grew on the screen. When the signal abruptly stopped, the sign the trailing spacecraft had also hit the surface, cheers erupted.

NASA scientists were to give their first interpretation of data at a news conference later on Friday morning.

(Editing by David Storey)