AS the misnamed war on terror has brought home to the people of this region and beyond, Britain is never found wanting in toeing the American line, unquestionably. It was precisely for his studious pursuit of the policies that George W. adopted, that Tony Blair was termed as his poodle by his own people. In a similar fashion, the Pakistan authorities ought to take serious exception to the present UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown who has been haranguing them for their failure to capture Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri who, according to the Western propagandists, are presently hiding in the unruly region of FATA, most probably in South Waziristan. Suddenly, a couple of days before President Obama's address that his publicists have pre-judged as "historic" and in which he is going to reveal the answer he and his top-heavy Afghan review team have found to General McChrystal's demand for 44,000 additional troops and the chaos the anti-terrorism war has caused all around, Mr Brown thundered, "If we are putting our strategy into place, Pakistan has to show that it can take on Al-Qaeda." The imperialist streak lingers on though the hollowness of the command comes out clearly in the loss of foreign possessions and global clout. Forgetting that it was the Americans that let, according to their own Senate report, the feared Osama slip away from his pulverised Tora Bora mountain hideout, Mr Brown remarked, "We have got to ask ourselves why, eight years after September 11, nobody has been able to spot or detain or get close to Osama bin Laden...(and) Zawahiri...we have got to ask the Pakistan authorities and security services, army and politicians to join us in the major effort the world is committing resources to, not only to isolate Al-Qaeda, but to break them in Pakistan." Mr Brown should be listening to Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox who counselled the international community to give Pakistan a lot of help because it "does not really have the capabilities for the sort of anti-terrorist measures that we want". Mr Brown has told President Zardari on telephone that he would press the point when Prime Minister Gilani meets him next Thursday. Mr Gilani should confront him not only with the bin Laden escape but also ask him the reasons for the US forces not to have targeted Baitullah Mehsud on several earlier occasions when the Pakistani intelligence had tipped them about his whereabouts. The way Pakistani armed forces have made gains against militants in the past few months should shame their British counterparts in Afghanistan who have been engaged in trying to save their skins for eight years now.