US warned Pakistan not to play 'Russian roulette' with India

New York: The United States had a flaming big red warning for Islamabad after the Pakistan-supported 2008 Mumbai attacks which killed 166 people, including six Americans. In an interview to PBS broadcasting network, General James Jones, who was the National Security Adviser to president Barack Obama from January 2009 to October 2010, said the warning was conveyed to the Pakistani leadership several times after the terror attack. “I’ve said this in exactly those words, and I think my former colleagues at the NSC (National Security Council) and at the state department have done the same thing — is that you really don’t understand, or we don’t understand why you don’t understand that you’re playing Russian roulette here with your future because if there is another attack originating from Pakistan in India, you know, prime minister Singh isn’t going to be able to (hold back),” Jones said in response to questions. [caption id=“attachment_16927” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The US talked tough to Pakistan in the days after the November 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai. Reuters”]  [/caption] Russian roulette is a lethal high-risk game of chance in which participants place a single bullet in a revolver, spin the cylinder, place the muzzle against their head and pull the trigger. “We told the Pakistanis that we cannot hold back Dr Singh in the event of another terror attack on Indian soil from Pakistan,” added Jones, while praising the India prime minister for being “calm and patient” in trying to resolve highly sensitive issues in a more peaceful manner. According to Bob Woodward’s book, Obama’s War, less than a month after the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan’s spy agency chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha had admitted before the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that the Mumbai terror strikes had ISI links but claimed it was not an “authorised” operation but carried out by “rogue” elements. The CIA later received reliable intelligence that the ISI was directly involved in the training for Mumbai. Woodward’s book also talked about how America put Pakistan on notice to calm India from immediately attacking Pakistan. Then president George W Bush, during his meetings with his top aides, had said the terrorist attack on Mumbai was just like 9/11. Bush himself started a war in Iraq and Afghanistan in 9/11’s name, but held India to a different standard. Woodward wrote in his book of the days after 26/11: “President Bush called his national security team into the Oval Office as Mumbai sorted through the blood and rubble. ‘You guys get planning and do what you have to do to prevent a war between Pakistan and India,’ Bush told his aides. ‘The last thing we need right now is a war between two nuclear-power states.’"