FIRST it was Hillary Clinton issuing a threat to Pakistan; this has been followed by an even more ominous threat to Pakistan from the US Attorney General Eric Holder. He stated that if Pakistan failed to take appropriate action against the Taliban, the US will. If the message is still unclear to anyone in Pakistan, this latest threat should leave absolutely no room for any doubt that the US now intends to target Pakistan far beyond the FATA region and certainly with more than just drones. That is why there is a big question mark over the whole Faisal Shahzad episode, including his real covert links and whether he was really a 'set up to trap Pakistan. After all, the TTP has categorically issued a statement that Shahzad is not linked to them nor have they had any contact with him. Now given how the Taliban and al Qaeda tend to claim acts of terror - failed or successful - as their own almost immediately they learn of them, there is no reason for them to disown Shahzad except that they really have no link with him. But that has not stopped the US from quickly moving to the conclusion they desire - that Shahzad was trained by the Pakistani Taliban The whole incident comes in the wake of the US desire to send more troops into Pakistan and to increase the drone attacks. Despite all this, the Pakistani leadership continues to maintain a strange silence rather than giving a strong response to these US threats. For a Pakistani it is not so much the threats that are disturbing as much as the official silence rather than a strong rebuttal. Why is the Pakistani leadership so hell-bent on giving in to all the pressures, threats and demands the US continues to make on us while still not fulfilling their own obligations - especially in terms of commitments on access to markets, money owed for services rendered through the Coalition Support Fund and so on? Perhaps the NRO-dependent government has too much to lose personally to defend Pakistan. And frankly, given the absurd statements emanating from the Foreign and Interior Ministers, in the absence of a resolve to counter the US threats, a silence may be the least damaging option. However, it is the military leaderships strange silence to these threats that is unnerving given how they are sworn to defend this country and the nation from all physical external threats. Yet we have seen no response to the drones that have been killing primarily Pakistani civilians, despite there now being a demonstrated capability to strike these down. In fact at one point we were informed that the drone attacks were done with the blessings of Pakistans civil and military leadership - and now the direct threats from US officials have been met with a stony response. Is the military only capable of taking action against its own tribal people now? This is the real shame of the whole Shahzad puzzle for us Pakistanis.