Powell wanted to know where Pakistan stood—"with us or against us?" This was the stark vocabulary of the Bush administration, to friend and foe alike. But Musharraf’s inner coterie which met in Chaklala, where the joint staff headquarters is located, had already decided. They would go all the way with the US. Powell, therefore, needed recourse to neither threat nor persuasion. He was talking to someone already converted. One, moreover, his own master and not under the necessity of consulting a wider circle of opinion. Whatever its verbal commitment to democracy overseas, the US has always liked dealing with dictators in a crisis.