Zoo Station

Patrix points to a Rediff story that explains how close India and Pakistan came to a nuclear confrontation during the Kargil war. Without getting into too many details, Nawaz Sharif was absolutely clueless about what Gen. Musharraf and the army were up to. He was stunned to hear from President Clinton that the Pakistani army had actually tipped a long-range missile with a nuclear weapon to stall an Indian counter-attack. I had heard about this particular episode back in 2002 when someone alerted me to a excellent report written by Bruce Riedel, a special assistant to Clinton, who was present at the meetings at Blair House. Read the full report authored by Riedel to get a hang of how scary the situation truly was and how little we the people knew. And how clueless Nawaz Sharif was about the gravity of the situation. All he seemed to really know was that a coup was probably imminent, and for that reason, he had brought his wife and children along to Washington. Just in case.