Secret Report Ordered by Obama Identified Potential Uprisings

[alp227]

Source: The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President Obama ordered his advisers last August to produce a secret report on unrest in the Arab world, which concluded that without sweeping political changes, countries from Bahrain to Yemen were ripe for popular revolt, administration officials said Wednesday.

Mr. Obama’s order, known as a Presidential Study Directive, identified likely flashpoints, most notably Egypt, and solicited proposals for how the administration could push for political change in countries with autocratic rulers who are also valuable allies of the United States, these officials said.

The 18-page classified report, they said, grapples with a problem that has bedeviled the White House’s approach toward Egypt and other countries in recent days: how to balance American strategic interests and the desire to avert broader instability against the democratic demands of the protesters.

Administration officials did not say how the report related to intelligence analysis of the Middle East, which the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, acknowledged in testimony before Congress, needed to better identify “triggers” for uprisings in countries like Egypt.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/17/world/middleeast/17diplomacy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[lonestarnot]

1. Did he order up any directives for the U.S.?

[howaboutme]

3. You've read the Missouri Fusion Center report?

We're all suspect. This is old news but needs to be reminded.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/23/fusion-centers-expand-criteria-identify-militia-members/

Now they are also paying the Israelis ITRR to spy on us too.

http://www.workers.org/2010/us/frackers_0930/

[Matariki]

6. Bwahaha - if you hover over the link in that article for "Republican member of Congress"

You get an advert for Payday Loans. :rofl:

[Me.]

4. That Was My Thought

[JDPriestly]

2. So in Egypt, one military dictatorship has been replaced with another.

Very clever maneuver. Gotta' hand him that one. Very clever. The people of Egypt have just wasted a lot of time and energy, I fear.

[sofa king]

5. I think there's a chance they'll step out soon.

Before becoming our best buddies, the Egyptian military cozied up nice and tight with the Soviet Union, right around the time that the Soviet Army was effectively handed the USSR after Beria was deposed. Marshal Zhukov flatly turned the offer down (more than once, if I recall).

The Soviet military theory comes with surprisingly little political philosophy attached to it, considering how important political officers were within the Soviet Army. They, much like the U.S.'s armed forces, preferred to avoid overtly stepping into politics whenever they could.

Those same Soviets in turn trained the Egyptian military leadership, and the current generation has probably inherited a lot of that distaste for politics, and maybe even picked a little extra up from the United States, back when we were less evil.

It's also important to note that despite the money we funnel to them, some still rate Egypt's as a "ceremonial army," one that keeps a lot of its hardware in storage except for parade days (but you have to watch out for Egyptian parades, as Anwar Sadat learned the hard way), and avoids training because it's too expensive to maintain everything. They have learned several times in the past that they are neither a combat army (like the U.S. or the IDF), nor a police army (like Lybia), nor, really, a political army. They've been asked to do all those things, but they've largely failed at everything except looking good on parade. They are well aware of these limitations.