Well. There you have it folks. CNN 'expert' Ghorani (on the tail of Anderson Cooper) covering the tectonic shift in Egypt ... Remember. It is not about CNN. Not about Rudi Giuliani (who is advising Mubarak on how to proceed by raising, yes, you guessed it, Iran & Syria)... and not about America, ... But, something tickles me to say: it's partially about Israel!
"Hosni Mubarak will go....The decisive moment has passed. The army has signalled it will not instigate more rapid change. Sentimentality about the army being “with the people” aside, it is not clear why we should expect it to do anything other than help rebuild the regime, albeit with new constraints intended to curtail abuses by the internal security forces and curb the more rapacious behaviour of powerful figures in the former government and ruling National Democratic party and their business cronies.What the 470,000-strong army wants is not power, but stability. Senior officers have been telling interlocutors for several years they will uphold any constitutional government, even one headed by the Muslim Brotherhood. This suggests the army has been uneasy for a time with the prospect of a hereditary presidency, the worsening social and economic strains arising from the way in which the economy has been liberalised and privatised, and the deepening lack of legitimacy of the political order. All this has dissipated any political capital Mr Mubarak once had because of his air force career.The army’s desire for stability has several implications. First, it will prefer the recent democratic advances to continue, albeit in a controlled manner, to ensure an arrangement that will allow it to stay out of politics and off the streets. The appointment of an ex-general as prime minister may have been meant as a sop but the injection of ex-officers into the cabinet is unlikely to have been an army demand. There will be no return to military rule, not even a partial one.Second, the army will resist radical shifts in foreign policy, especially vis-à-vis Israel, not least because of the risk to US assistance..... The behind-the-scenes role that it is no doubt playing cannot but be prompted by a desire to prevent changes that might destabilise the cold peace with Israel and jeopardise the special relationship with the US military.Third, the army will seek to preserve its control over its own internal governance and protect its reputed economic “empire”...The army has a real interest in securing a gradual transition to the post-Mubarak era, and has reacted with remarkable precision and calm to rapidly unfolding events. The coming days will show whether it has read public opinion accurately or not. If the demonstrations prove to have been the start of a swell rather than a crest of popular protest, then it may find its hand is forced. It will then have to choose between implementing the government curfew and opening fire on protesters, or expediting the pace of Mr Mubarak’s departure..."
"... The Obama White House's short-notice Egypt troubleshooter, former U.S. Amb. to Egypt Frank G. Wisner, ... found his conversations with Egyptian officials no longer useful, after reports disclosed his efforts on behalf of the administration to persuade Hosni Mubarak to step down, ABC News reports ......."
sources close to the Saudi King Abd'allah, now in Morocco, convinced Mubarak to step down to avoid bloodbath during upcoming massive demonstrations on Friday. Abd'allah also offered Mubarak asylum in Saudi Arabia, ... No news whether Mubarak accepted offer.
"... As clashes continue in Cairo's Tahrir Square, Sec. of State Hillary Clinton condemned the onging violence in Egypt today. Sec. Clinton, encouraged Omar Suleiman, Egypt's newly appointed Vice President, to investigate the attacks against peaceful protesters and hold the perpetrators accountable.Earlier today, Soulieman released a statement that there will be no dialogue until protestors leave the streets. "They will go home once they have confidence that the government will take serious steps," State Dept. spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters this afternoon...."
Unnerved by the quickening collapse of Hosni Mubarak's regime, Israel is pressing the U.S. and other Western leaders to demand that any successor in Egypt preserve that country's peace accord with the Jewish state....
Egypt's transition to a new and still-uncertain leadership, Netanyahu told his parliament Wednesday, conceals a struggle between democratic and Islamist forces that could tip the balance of an increasingly hostile region more firmly against Israel. "There are two worlds, two opposites, two world views, one of the free world. The democratic. And one of the radical world. Which world view will win? It could be,"that there won't be a decisive end for a long while and there could be ongoing instability for many years." The prospect of prolonged uncertainty has led some Israeli officials to suggest that the country might be forced to significantly expand its army and defense spending, and to abandon what little efforts Netanyahu's government has made to restart peace negotiations with the Palestinians on creating their own state.
"It's very scary what's happening in Egypt, especially for Israel," said Adva Gilboa, a 33-year-old store manager in the town of Kiryat Tivon, reflecting the Israeli public's heightened fears for the survival of their state."Mubarak was good for Israel, maybe not for Egyptians."..."
"... Saudi-affiliated press followed the lead of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud's public support for the Mubarak regime and emphasized chaos and looting in the streets, some of which it blamed on the protesters. On Tuesday, the day an estimated quarter million Egyptians gathered in central Cairo to demand Mr. Mubarak's ouster, the main headline on the newspaper Asharq Al Awsat read, "Mubarak Responded to the Demands of the People."
As'ad AbuKhalil, a Lebanese professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus, and curator of the popular Angry Arab News Service blog, said a key trend in the region's media coverage was "the extent to which Saudi-owned media showed panic." "They try to deflect criticisms to their own oppressive government by drawing some imaginary lines between Gulf dictatorships and other dictatorships," Mr. AbuKhalil said...... Much of Lebanon's media celebrated the uprising, drawing parallels to its own Cedar Revolution in 2005. Yet Nayla Tueni, deputy general manager of Lebanon's pro-Western daily An-Nahar, penned a grave warning on democracy in the Arab world in a Monday editorial titled "Arab Change…Towards The Unknown."..... said in the editorial that the region's lack of experience with democracy and its dependence on foreign forces meant change often only comes with chaos and "bloodbaths." Hezbollah-sympathetic Al Akhbar pushed the U.S.-Israel angle and carried a special series of editorials with headlines like "And Thus, America Failed To Read Egypt" and "Israel Fears Clone Of The Iranian Regime In Egypt."
"Egypt’s uprising may ring the political death knell for a group of millionaires who helped shape the government during the past six years. Ahmed El Maghraby, a property developer and hotelier, and Ahmed Ezz, chairman of Ezz Steel, Egypt’s biggest producer of the metal, were among the businessmen ousted from cabinet and ruling party positions after President Hosni Mubarak turned to former military men for top posts as he clings to power. Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik, a former air force commander, said they were left out of the cabinet intentionally. “The involvement of businessmen in public service wasn’t 100 percent positive,” he told state-run television yesterday..... Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris described members of the previous cabinet as a “scapegoat” for Mubarak. “They were sacrificed,” he said by telephone yesterday. ...."
"... Gibbs clarifies that when the White House says the transition must begin now, "Now means yesterday." It does not, he said, mean September..."
"...Husni Mubarak has decidedto defy Barack Obama and to rally available police and population control forces against the mobs of revolutionaries. Rocks, bricks and mounted agents of the government are attacking the crowds....President Obama has engaged the policy and prestige of the United States on the side of the revolutionaries. Such commitment should not be withdrawn ...this poses a major dilemma for the Obama Administration because the Zionist friends of the president (both American and Israeli) are giving them conflicting guidance. The neocon Zionists simultaneously want to see their Jacobin dream of revolution come to fruition and also to see the continuation of the "cold peace" between Israel and Egypt. The Israelis seem to have a clearler vision. They want their allies in Egypt kept in power.Having gone this far the US has little choice but to remember its own revolutionary tradition, to stand by the men and women in thestreets and to tell the Egyptian Army that the time has come to choose its own future and that of Egypt. If the generals; Omar Suleiman, Tantawi and Shafik wish to stand by Mubarak, they will have made a fateful error. ..."
"...Steve Cook, and Egypt expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the army's passive behavior amid the thuggery Wednesday suggested complicity and a pretext for the regime to intervene to restore order and hold on to power. "It's clear that Mubarak, [Vice President Omar] Suleiman and the senior command are still in charge," Cook said by e-mail. "This may provide a pretext for the army to intervene, restore order, and reconstitute the political order."It was massive unrest that ultimately led to the Free Officers' coup in 1952, he noted, saying people were relieved when order was restored."If the army was the savior, Mubarak would be in Switzerland," Cook said. ..."
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has issued the following statements on the bloodshed in Tahrir square, condemning the violence but stopping short of holding the Egyptian government responsible for it:
The United States deplores and condemns the violence that is taking place in Egypt, and we are deeply concerned about attacks on the media and peaceful demonstrators. We repeat our strong call for restraint.
A number of associates of the deposed president may face similar sanctions, EU officials said.
".... A worker walking home from the hotel said: “You are not safe here.Everyone says he is here and so they are watching for people taking photographs.“I think he is there because otherwise in Cairo he will be killed.“The crowds will not get him in Sharm because the roads all the way from Cairo are heavily guarded by roadblocks. “There are not enough people here to cause him harm, and too many police.” A tourist shuttle bus driver claimed to have seen Mubarak’s entourage arrive on Wednesday, and that his official plane was at Sharm-el-Sheikh airport but nobody at the airport would confirm if this was true. A number of military aircraft were visible from the perimeter fence, but the airport is frequently used by the armed forces for operations and for public airshows.
“I’m really not good or comfortable at predicting past an environment-changing event. There are a lot of questions that have to close regarding Egypt before I’ll feel able to make anything but the most broad statements. This process might end up turning the people of Egypt and the general region even more virulently anti-American than they were before. Or it may take pressure off of the US by the US turning in time and (falsely) presenting itself as a supporter of democracy.
The US is going to have to develop and rationalize a policy toward the remaining colonial dictatorships of – after Egypt – Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE and others. What will the policy be and what will the rationalization be? As the colonial dictatorships are reaching a new equilibrium, we still have to see exactly what Iraq ends up looking like and what post-2011 agreement it can reach concerning its relationship with the United States. We have to see what government is going to form in Lebanon, what its policies will be and how it will relate to the United States.
If everything falls Iran’s way, the president of the US may have to go to Israel’s supporters and say, “We tried, but we can’t afford to try to keep the region safe for you any more. You’d better immediately take whatever deal the Palestinians are willing to offer, and if not, you’re going the way of Apartheid.” In that (for now unlikely) scenario, literally overnight the entire dispute between Iran and the US will dissolve.
If everything falls the US’ way, 2012 might look at lot like 2010. It does seem close to certain that Egypt will not be the stooge of the United States and Israel that it was, but how different is not clear yet. Who is going to be Egypt’s first post-Nasser charismatic leader? What will that person’s policies and ideas be? How will that person relate to the rest of the region? Mubarak was the best possible ruler for Egypt from a US/Zionist point of view, as right wing Zionists have said openly all along. The US is losing that. Between that and other changes going on in the region at the same time, I can’t guess what the US posture towards Iran will be after the dust settles. There are a whole lot of variables.One thing Iran does, is that it seems to appreciate the value of flexibility and of not making long term commitments based on short term considerations.”
Opponents and supporters of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fought in central Cairo ..... Mubarak supporters were members of the hated police forces in plain clothes. Some rode into the crowd on horses and camels and in horse-drawn carriages, wielding whips and sticks. People fought each other with fists, sticks and stones while troops surrounding the square made no attempt to intervene. Reuters correspondents saw dozens of injured. Many people fled in panic. The fighting broke out as international pressure grew on Mubarak to quit and his closest ally, the United States, told him bluntly "What is clear is my belief that an orderly transition must be meaningful, it must be peaceful and it must begin now,"
"... The crisis between the U.S. intelligence services and Hariri began with the 9/11 attacks. As one serving U.S. analysts said at the time, with the discovery of the hijackers’ Saudi identity, The Kingdom ordered Hariri and the rest of their agents into a “protective stance” in an effort to repair “Its shattered image” in Washington. The agency was shocked to find that their key asset was no longer talking to his American controllers and even when he did, he never gave anything of value regarding secret Arab conversations, sources said. The case was made worse when the agency thought of the huge monies they had spent on furthering their man’s political career in Lebanon. Former CIA official Larry Johnson said at the time, ‘”It’s another example of the incompetence of the agency in managing a source.” (Johnson, a good friend, was not a source for this piece by the way.)A former senior U.S. intelligence official agreed with Johnson: “It doesn’t take much to fool the CIA if you are averse to risk and you give your superiors the idea that you have this great source who makes you look good in your fitness reports.”Another source cited examples of the British MI-5 agency and the difficulties of MI-5 handlers admitting that an agent of their had been blown.Asked about counterintelligence analysis – why Hariri’s reports were not correlated and measured against other area reports, a former senior CIA official said, “At the agency we slip it into some compartment somewhere, give it a number, and ship it to the director himself and then whisper what it is and how the thing is so secret that asking any questions would pose risk to the source’s life.”This person said that there were instances where agents arranged meetings with Hariri and their superiors only to be told afterwards by their superiors not to talk to Hariri anymore yet nothing had an effect.After the Trade Center attacks, the Saudis began to agitate for Washington to receive Hariri and listen to his explanations of his pervious lack of cooperation. “The Saudis expected that Hariri would come to Washington (in 2002) and say, ‘Get the Syrians off my back and I will deal with Hisbullah and support the resettlement of the Palestinians in Lebanon.”It came too late. (at this juncture) When Hariri visited Washington, he saw no one of any importance, making clear he had lost his American employer. ......Perhaps the most telling judgment was made by a former senior analyst who concluded that the Hariri episode represented an attempt by the Saudis to use the CIA to direct and influence Middle East policy by means of “contaminated information from a hostile source.” .......
"... A special envoy dispatched to Egypt by President Barack Obama told Hosni Mubarak that the U.S. saw his presidency at an end and urged him not to seek another term in office while preparing for an orderly transition to real democracy in elections, American officials said Tuesday.
The message was delivered to Mubarak on Monday by Frank Wisner,....Wisner and Mubarak are friends and the officials said the two had a back-and-forth discussion in which each provided the other with their perspectives on developments. Wisner's message was disclosed as the Obama administration ramped up outreach to the hundreds of thousands determined to force their long-time leader out of power...
The moves signaled that after a week of carefully balancing support for protesters and its close ally of three decades, the U.S. has decided that continued backing for Mubarak as president was untenable..."
HANNITY: Do you think that the Israelis are going to have to strike — they are going to have to take action. … As you pointed out, El Baradei, you know, ran cover for the Iranians for all those years that he was with the IAEA. And, I just don’t think the Israelis have much longer to wait…they’re going to have to act in fairly short order.
BOLTON: I think that’s right. I don’t think there’s much time to act. And I think the fall of a Egyptian government committed to the peace agreement will almost certainly speed that timetable up.
"... it has tremendous wealth from its petroleum sales, enough to buy off any dissent with food and fuel subsidies. There are, however, quite a few reasons why Saudi Arabia is the next domino, according to Evans-Pritchard.
Youth unemployment (20-24 years old): 42% , Minority religious group: Shia 10%, Demographic diversity: One third of all residents foreign
This is of economic concern because the Shia, the most likely section of the population to revolt, happen to live right on top of the country's oil reserves..."
The WaPo failed to note that MANY qualified voices of dissent have spoken (and will in the next 2 days) against the 'tribunal' (aka. Le Cirque Du Freak).
I will post the presentations made by some of the dissenting voices at this Fuad Siniora bankrolled event!
"... I do think Mubarak has to go. He's lost what the Chinese would call the mandate of heaven. And the military, which is the last remaining important institution in Egypt will lose its legitimacy if it's killing Egyptians in the name of preserving Mubarak. So at the moment, I think he has to go. ..."
"Mubarak go away to Saudi or Bahrain" and "We don't want you, we don't want you," chanted men, women and children in a sea of people that began gathering from the early hours. The scenes in Tahrir (Liberation) Square, which has become a rallying point for protests over poverty, repression and corruption, were in sharp contrast to Friday when police beat, teargassed and sprayed water cannon on protesters...."
My friend Richard Sale is an award-winning journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist who has written forThe Washington Post and San Francisco Examiner. Most recently, he served as a special correspondent for UPI for 5 years. He is the author of Traitors and The Blackstone Rangers. He is currently Intelligence Correspondent for Middle East Times. He lives in Stamford, Connecticut.
"The history of our foreign policy in the Middle East are so ugly and twisted and so stolid and remorselessly ruthless that reviewing them is a real glimpise into genuine moral squalor.
Lebanon is an excellent example. U.S. policy there in 1982 was under the influence of the truculent hawk, Ariel Sharon. Israel was then supplying covert support to the main Christian group in Beirut, the right-wing Phalangist party, headed by Bashir Gemayel who had the face of a baby and the mind of wolverine. Sharon came to America asking that the Reagan people put up another $ 1- million to support Bashir. The Reagan people were deeply in thrall to Israeli views and, like Israel, they saw Lebanon as a “regional influence,” and like Casey thought that the PLO was the major threat to Israel and were delighted that Bashir also loathed the PLO.
The case was complicated. Elements in the CIA were opposed because Bashir was a homicidal thug. He had attacked a rival Christian group headed by Tony Frangieh, killing the man’s two-year old daughter, his wife and various staff members of the Frangieh home. In 1980, Bashir had come close to wiping out another Christian group headed by Camille Chamoun. Why would Washington want ties to such a man? We are all the slaves of pressing contingencies. The necessary has to get done. Bashir in the early 1980s come to Washington to work for a law firm and the CIA had recruited him there. But the Christian group, the Phalange was a force and we wanted a say in its operations and direction and Bashir, charming and effective seemed the way to have it. And given US influence, the scope of his information, Bashir’s importance grew to become indispensable. Beirut at that time was like the Balkans in 1914, teeming with so many spies, they tripped over each other. Bashir was a murderer, but he had political talents and he would say all the right things, speaking of the “new Lebanon” and impressing many who, like Bashir, had no idea of what it meant.
The Casey operation involving Bashir was complicated. I am speaking here from memory, but as I recall, the CIA station in Beirut couldn’t stomach Bashir whom they thought an abomination) so CIA chief Bill Casey ran the whole operating off the books, outside the normal, internal channels and secret channels using a staffer on the National Security Council who dealt directly with a Bashir aide in Beirut. It was all very neat and tidy. More and more Bashir began to be seen by Washington as a man who would “stabilize” Lebanon., especially by outfits like the CIA station in Tel Aviv. If Lebanon was allied with the US, it would derail the existing balance of power that then ran in favor of Iran, Syria and other states unfriendly to Israel and America. As relations with Bashir grew closer Casey and Reagan approved a more widespread overt op that involved another secret payment of $600,000. Then on Sept. 14, while going to speak at a Phalangist, gathering, a car bomb blew up a building which came down and killed Bashir.The agency was horrified - to have such a prominent asset assassinated meant a major disaster for its reach and authority. The Bashir killing brought a train of calamitous events in its wake, one of the most ugly as the Israelis letting Phalangist elements into PLO camps where the inmates were massacred along with dogs, cats and other animals. The bombing of the Marine barracks was quick to follow.
The bomb that killed Bashir had been installed by one Habib Chartouny 26, whose case officer was a captain in the Syrian service and Israeli efforts eventually came up with a Lt. Col. Mohammed G’aman also a Syrian intelligence officer in charge of Lebanese ops, as the mastermind of the plot. All of this could have resulted in a blood feud with Israel killing Syrian agents and vice versa, except for one Israeli intelligence chieftain, Maj. Gen Saguy, who had always felt a strong Lebanon-Israeli tie to be a mistake along with US support fo Bashir. Casey’s strategic vision had been that of a man with a box around his head. The CIA chief was left facing a major intelligence failure and a lot of missteps ( One thinks of Samuel Johnson’s quip, “All stupid people think they’re cunning.” In any case, the whole episode of clandestine support for Bashir was buried and kept quiet.
Bashir and Hariri Part 2 / Moral Squalor
The tale of Bashir seems an appropriate introduction to a world, like that of Lebanon, in which nothing really is at it seems. Rafik Hariri was, like Bashir, thought to be another example of a fruitful CIA recruitment. The original story claimed that Hariri was recruited in the 1980s by the CIA Chief of Station (COS) in Jedda, Saudi Arabia, Alan Fiers, when the Saudis offered Hariri to be the Saudi representative of the Murphy-Habib-Hariri team attempting to identify and deal with menacing regional problems.
Diplomat Richard Murphy had close contacts with Hariri and most sources think that Murphy passed Hariri onto Fiers. Fiers was reported to be a vain man who wasn’t likely to consider Hariri a plant by Saudi intelligence. Fiers was therefore active in displaying Hariri as an example of a perceptive agency recruitment. (My sources here are all former senior US intelligence officials who only spoke to me on condition of being allowed to remain anonymous.) But in summary, Hariri’s chief value would be to promptly pass on to the U.S. and his handlers relevant intelligence able to affect U.S. interests in the region. This meant Saudi diplomatic contacts with Syria and other major area players. ....... Following the (Taif) accord, the Saudis arranged for Hariri to become the Lebanese prime minster, even though Hariri for six years was a Saudi citizen and a subject of the Saudi king. (He remained a Saudi citizen until his death. ) By the time of his return to Lebanon, Hariri’s worth was reliably estimated by U.S. sources to be between four and five billion dollars. By a2004, it was estimated to be $10 billion. Said a former senior U.S. intelligence source, “The increase had resulted from the continuing flow of monies from Saudi Arabia in addition to the billions that he and his Lebanese partners have looted from the Lebanese economy.”
All the while some in the CIA assumed Hariri was their man, ignoring the fact that the Saudis were the directing force, and not realizing that all the while, the same Wahabi factions that funded Hiriri were also busy giving money to extremist Sunni groups whose aim was to reassert Sunni dominance of the eastern Mediterranean. And all the while Hariri advanced such interests portraying himself as a defender of the Sunnis against the Shia and different Christian communities in Lebanon. ...... In Syria, he used his Wahabi money to buy the cooperation of the Syrian branch of the Syrian Baath Party. To do this, Harari took the sons of such figures as Hikmat Shilabi, Abd al-Halim Khaddam and Mustafa Tlas as his “partners.” Before the death of then Syrian President Hafiz Assad, Hariri and his Saudi backers believed that the resultant unrest caused by the inexperience of Assad’s son, Bashar, meant that Khaddam could safely be made president overseeing the restoration of majority Sunni rule in Syria under Wahabi influence. ..." (To be continued)
"... Council on Foreign Relations Egypt expert Steven Cook put it plainly. "Wisner is known to be close to Mubarak," he said. It's exactly that history that concerns Egypt hands in Washington now that Wisner's has been given a new role in the center of Obama's policy. Before his stints on Enron's board of directors and as vice chairman of AIG, Wisner had a multi-decade career as a foreign service officer, with stints as ambassador in Zambia (‘79-‘82), Egypt (‘86-‘91), Philippines (‘91-‘92), India (‘94-‘97) and as undersecretary of defense for policy (‘93-‘94).
Since leaving AIG in 2009, Wisner has been active on Egypt policy and is said by several Egypt hands in Washington to have pushed to create a group of scholars and academics in Washington to advocate for strengthening ties to the Mubarak regime. ... Wisner's advocacy for reaching out to Mubarak was on display at a private and off-the-record meeting on Egyptian succession held last summer at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where Wisner made several pro-Mubarak arguments, according to two people who attended the session...... But Dunne said that since Wisner is "trusted and liked" by Mubarak and others he'll be meeting with, he's the perfect pseudo-envoy. "He's ... someone who could deliver a tough message if he's given one to deliver," she said. Wisner's father, Frank Wisner Sr., was the CIA agent portrayed in the film The Good Shepherd. Wisner is married to Christine de Ganay, former wife of Pal Sarkozy, the father of French president Nicolas Sarkozy."
"... After a month of protests, Mr Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia. ...The toppling of Mr Ben Ali after 23 years in power helped inspire the current anti-government protests in Egypt..."
"Like many people we’ve been glued to the news unfolding in Egypt and thinking of what we could do to help people on the ground. Over the weekend we came up with the idea of a speak-to-tweet service—the ability for anyone to tweet using just a voice connection.We worked with a small team of engineers from Twitter, Google and SayNow, a company we acquired last week, to make this idea a reality. It’s already live and anyone can tweet by simply leaving a voicemail on one of these international phone numbers (+16504194196 or +390662207294 or +97316199855) and the service will instantly tweet the message using the hashtag #egypt. No Internet connection is required. People can listen to the messages by dialing the same phone numbers or going to twitter.com/speak2tweet.We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there."
