Obama Irate as Defiant Mubarak Leaves US Policy Out on a Limb

[Turborama]

Before a speech at Northern Michigan University in Marquette on Thursday, President Barack Obama told his audience, "We are witnessing history unfold." But after the Egyptian president refused to step down, Obama convened his national security team.

Mubarak kept Egypt and much of the world glued to their televisions for hours today amid reports that the military might take charge or that Omar Suleiman -- the recently appointed vice president, longtime intelligence chief and familiar partner of Americans and Israelis -- would assume control ahead of free elections later this year.

Instead, Mubarak said that after three decades in office he would yield some of his powers to Suleiman, who went on television shortly afterward to portray Mubarak's continuing rule as the logical step toward democracy and elections scheduled for the fall. Mubarak spoke vaguely of constitutional amendments, leaving it unclear which powers he would keep and which Suleiman would assume.

The crowds were furious, and they weren't the only ones.

"The Egyptian people have been told that there was a transition of authority, but it is not yet clear that this transition is immediate, meaningful or sufficient," President Obama said in statement tonight. "The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy, and they have not yet seized that opportunity."

More: http://www.aolnews.com/2011/02/10/a-defiant-mubarak-leaves-us-policy-out-on-a-limb/

Fareed Zakaria said just now on CNN that he's never heard an American president react this strongly to a dictatorship just before it fell - referring to Reagan's statements on the Philippines' revolution and Clinton's statements on Indonesia's.

[Hutzpa]

1. Flexing his $75 billion muscle. n/t

[Turborama]

2. Who is? n/t

[Hutzpa]

3. Who else but Mubarak

He is worth $75 billion.

[Turborama]

5. Of course! Just woke up and am having my 1st coffee.

Was thinking it could have also been Obama flexing his $billions of international aid muscle.

There are lots of numbers floating around about Mubarak's wealth. If that figure is true, he is essentially the richest man in the world.

[BlueCheese]

4. Apparently adjectives come in threes.

"immediate, meaningful or sufficient", or "credible, concrete and unequivocal"

[undeterred]

6. Obama doesn't get irate.

[Robb]

8. Any opportunity for the Angry Black Man Headline, I guess.

The MSM, of course, not the OP.

[undeterred]

10. I'd love it if he'd get irate over poor people losing their funding for heating bills

but since he's cutting it himself I guess there's not much chance of that.

[BOG PERSON]

7. im' kind of glad things turned out this way

because it basically makes impossible the "peaceful, orderly transition" to Suleiman or some other lapdog. in other words, the US can not be very sure now how to manage what's left of the Mubarakist-military regime because Mubarak himself appears to have gone rogue and increasingly the buffer between the People and the Army, that is the civilian government, is imploding.

[Peace Patriot]

9. I guess Mubarak is unhappy with his retirement package and CIA protection from prosecution,

unlike that 'happy camper,' Alvaro Uribe, the Bush Cartel tool who ran Colombia as a criminal enterprise--drug trafficking, vast domestic spying, bribery, fraudulent elections, and the murders of thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, political leftists and peasant farmers, by the Colombia military ($7 BILLION in U.S. military aid) and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads, in addition to the displacement of 5 million peasant farmers, by state terror (lands given to Uribe's cronies and the protected drug lords). Uribe got rewarded for all this with cushy academic sinecures at Georgetown and Harvard, and appointment to a prestigious international legal commission.

But that ain't all he got. All the main death squad witnesses were extradited to the U.S. on mere drug trafficking charges--out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections--and these witnesses were "buried" in the U.S. federal prison system, by complete sealing of their cases (an unusual procedure) in U.S. federal court in Washington DC--AND, after U.S. ambassador Wm. Brownfield, the FBI, the DOJ, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons and Federal court judges arranged all of this, the CIA arranged the flight from justice of the chief spying witness against Uribe in Colombia and instant asylum granted to her in the U.S. client state of Panama--also out of reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections.

Mubarak, with his bloody record, needs similar guarantees. Like Uribe, he probably can name names on U.S./Bush Junta crimes--in the case of Egypt, "rendition" and torture (at least). He surely has bargaining chips. He may have documentation. That's what this song and dance is likely all about. Where will he get asylum, a cushy, even "distinguished" retirement from U.S. lackey-hood and immunity from prosecution at the Hague, in Egypt and elsewhere. Uribe--after getting all that he got from the U.S.--then requested something he called "sovereign immunity" from any court cases filed against him in the U.S. and even from giving depositions (--one had been filed by survivors of Colombian death squads, and a deposition served on Uribe which he ignored). He figures he has royal prerogatives here as an ex-lackey of the Empire.

Maybe Mubarak has heard about all this and wants the same--a nice townhouse in Georgetown, prestigious teaching positions and appointments to this and that, and the CIA taking care of any prosecution problems. In any case, after 30 years as a U.S./Israel tool, he likely feels, a) well-informed about who did what, and b) deserving of a better deal than whatever the U.S. has offered.

I am skeptical about Obama being surprised by Mubarak's announcement that he is hanging on by tooth and claw. Obama is surely privy to these negotiations--although we can never be sure these days. But even given worries that there are powers within and behind our government who have their own foreign policy and can overrule Obama, I think it's very unlikely that he doesn't know how the negotiation is going--what the real U.S. terms are (what was offered, what was refused, what's negotiable, what kind of mood Mubarak is in, what he had for breakfast, where his billions are stashed, etc). The U.S. went on nuclear alert the last time control of the Suez Canal came under threat (late 1950s). It is a VERY IMPORTANT matter to the U.S. corporate/war machine who rules Egypt.

Furthermore, Mubarak is a U.S. dependent. He can't go anywhere safely without a U.S. okay. It's not likely--though possible, I guess--that he would piss off his protector by failing to alert them to an unexpected move. It's possible, as I said, that he feels hunkered down in a safe spot, where he is, for the moment--still in the seat of power, protected by the Egyptian military. But they seem to have their own agenda and that leaves the U.S. as the only guarantor of his safe exit. He really can't afford to alienate the U.S., if he is thinking straight. More likely, Obama knew what Mubarak was going to do and Obama--or whoever alleged that Obama was "surprised"--was doing so for diplomatic purposes.

[Robb]

11. I'm with you on the "Obama being surprised" bit.

I'd like to think that if I wasn't surprised by Mubarak, the President wasn't either.

That said, I don't think he needs US protection in the least. Careful neglect is more than adequate; he has enormously powerful friends in his own corner of the globe, to say nothing of whatever dirt he's accumulated on them in three decades.