So in order to get rid of Mubarak, we must keep Mubarak.

[PhillySane]

CNN
Speaking in a videolink from New York, Frank Wisner said the Egyptian president should stay in office, at least for now, to help push through crucial political changes.
"We need to get a national consensus around the preconditions for the next step forward," Wisner said. "The president must stay in office in order to steer those changes through."
Without defining how long the Egyptian president should stay, Wisner said: "I therefore believe that President Mubarak's continued leadership is critical. It's his opportunity to write his own legacy." Wisner warned that protesters on the streets of Cairo might end up cheated of real political change without real reform leading to free and fair elections and an end to the repressive political structures Hosni Mubarak put in place.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/02/05/egypt.us/index.html?hpt=T1

Just love that doublespeak!!!

[tekisui]

1. Double plus good double thought.

[PhillySane]

5. Hasn't he already written that legacy?

edit
typo

[ProSense]

2. No, that is not

the U.S. position, as Senator Kerry explained on MTP.

[PhillySane]

19. Kerry has been on this better than

the admin from the git go.

[grahamhgreen]

42. That is exactly what i take this to mean: Kerry, "i think that can be enhanced significantly if pres

president mubarak were to state even more clearly what the process of transition will be"

[PhillySane]

43. The process

is for him to transition his ass out the front door.

[derby378]

3. When a fox steals your chickens...

...do you put the fox in charge of the henhouse while you rush off to get a new guard dog for the farm? I don't think so.

[PhillySane]

7. What?

Not sure I get the analogy there.

[derby378]

14. Put simply, Mubarak should leave office, and leave immediately

His little friend Suleiman, "Dr. Agony," should follow right behind him.

[Kablooie]

20. Dick Cheney has a guest house in back all set up for him.

So they can go out hunting together and Cheney can blow his face off.

[PhillySane]

22. That's okay,

Hosni's got some prime digs over here. No thanks, Dick.

[PhillySane]

21. I'll second that!

:)

[corpseratemedia]

26. yes, see it worked with the banks so...

:eyes:

[QC]

41. But who knows better than the fox the ins and outs of your henhouse?

Or something.

[blogslut]

4. The State Department kicked Wisner to the curb

BTW

[PhillySane]

44. should have never picked him up off the curb to begin with

[hfojvt]

6. here's a long distance dedication from Mubarak to Obama

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZk_HnE-cdU

[PhillySane]

8. Rock the Casbah!!!!!

Dig it.

(for your listening pleasure)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn1Ca8izXto

[Chan790]

9. Shovelin' that shit with both hands, eh Frank?

Seriously, how do people think this way?

I'm starting to think the only way Mubarak is leaving office is in a casket. Mostly because people like Wisner can't undermine the revolution fast enough.

[dipsydoodle]

10. Wisner is both a personal friend of Mubarak

and CIA.

Odd that none of your media mentioned either of those subjects.

[PhillySane]

58. Wisner has business dealings in Egypt too

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/revealed-us-envoys-business-link-to-egypt-2206329.html

[Newest Reality]

11. Choco rations are up!

You can't not think that this doesn't have anything that isn't vitally important to those who don't consider what could or couldn't happen if they didn't do that, either way.

[ixion]

12. "might end up cheated of real political change"... read:

Might end up with a government other than one friendly to Pax Americana. That is 'real change' equals 'no real change at all'

Just like someone else I know who talk about 'change'.

[Catherina]

13. US govt having a hard time understanding the determination behind NO

thinking a few crumbs of cake here and there will work because they're so used to hoodwinking their own citizenry.

Too bad this time. Get used to it. Egypt belongs to Egyptians, not to DC. Rec'd

[PhillySane]

16. Amen!

They'll just try to dismantle this thing one little piece at a time. The people are not having it!

[LoZoccolo]

15. To prevent the flu virus, you need to be injected with it.

To prevent murder, the police carry guns.

It may very well be that Frank Wisner's ideas aren't the best, but there are superficial ironies all over the place; pointing out this one doesn't really tell us what is bad about the idea.

[PhillySane]

17. This is the guy Obama picked

to deliver his message to Mubarak! Was that very well thought out?

[LoZoccolo]

27. I think in some ways, yes.

It's a veiled way of forcing his hand and controlling the choices he's been given: "you wouldn't want to tarnish your legacy by not doing what the people want, would you?" Wisner is, after all, a diplomat; this requires a skill of which the workings are not immediately apparent.

[PhillySane]

29. His legacy, as far as the Egyptian people are concerned...

is way past tarnished. There is no way he can polish this thing up in the least little bit, except, to walk out and say, Adios.

[Chan790]

25. Make a habit of leaving your valuables with catburglers to prevent looters from stealing them?

The law of inertia is the issue here. If nothing changes, nothing changes. An object in motion, remains in motion until acted upon by an outside force, an object at rest remains at rest.

You can't leave the repressive fuck who broke the system and stole from the people in charge of fixing the system and rooting out corruption...not if you want anything to change. Wisner's opinion is not about a prosperous future for Egypt, change or addressing the causes of the revolution though, it's about placating DC and Tel Aviv.

Not surprisingly, they don't let murderers become cops either.

[LoZoccolo]

28. Of course not, but that's why Wisner makes it clear that everybody's watching.

The last thing you want in Egypt is a vacuum until September. I wonder how many people here, who were against the second war against Iraq, made the argument that at least Saddam kept other people from warring to keep control, and then are not afraid of a vacuum in Egypt.

[PhillySane]

30. This is an entirely different situation.

There was no uprising in Iraq. We invaded and caused the vacuum in the first place. Nobody asked us in.

The Egyptian people are trying to overthrow THEIR ruthless dictator. And instead of assisting them, we are trying to gently ease a shift of power that doesn't really include them right now. They are being told to wait their turn. And they are saying, "FUCK THAT!"

[Bragi]

57. +++ Yep. /nt

[BOG PERSON]

18. HANG MUBARAK BESIDE HIS FAMILY + CRONIES

TEAR OFF THE LEECHES OF THE NDP-MILITARY APPARATUS

[earth mom]

23. Do they really think the people will stand for this b.s.?! nt

[xchrom]

24. i saw that -- it was pretty embarasing -- and then they had to trot out the 'explainers'. nt

[villager]

31. Didn't that work with destroying the village to save it?

During our earlier foreign policy success in Vietnam?

[PhillySane]

32. Yea

we are just foreign policy whiz kids.

[riverwalker]

33. SELF-DELETED BY MEMBER

This message was self-deleted by riverwalker.

[PhillySane]

36. Brilliant move

by the admin, I'd say. Pick someone you have to backstep away from. They're getting pretty good at moonwalking these days.

[Obamanaut]

34. No one is getting rid of anyone. In the not too distant future Mubarak

will be in the US.

There will be closed door meetings in the WH, with photo ops to follow on the WH lawn.

Mubarak will be given a couple billion dollars, and a new Gulfstream and an apology for the inconvenience of having to come all this way to get the jet.

Then, billions as usual. Nothing will change.

The President will announce a plan to live up to his campaign promise to double foreign aid to $50 billion by 2012. Egypt's poor, and the poor of the other recipients will see little, if any, of this.

[PhillySane]

37. A couple billion?

That's chump change to Mubarak. He's already worth 70 bil.

[Obamanaut]

38. Foreign aid to Egypt has been around $2.3 billion for awhile. I would

imagine that a good portion of that has gone into his personal accounts.

In the line of thinking that has been posted here re the wealthy in the US, "When is enough, enough?" I wouldn't think anyone would turn down a $2 billion gift.

[PhillySane]

39. I KNOW I WOULDN'T!

But, I haven't been a successful, repressive, puppet dictator for the last 30 years either.

[riverwalker]

35. interesting factoid

Frank Wisner's father, also named Frank Wisner was a diplomat that encouraged an uprising in eastern europe, it failed, and they were slaughtered. He later blew his brains out with a shotgun.

[grahamhgreen]

40. Nailed it. Tired of the equivocating of this administration.

[IDemo]

45. "We need to get a national consensus around the preconditions for the next step forward,"

I believe there is already a consensus:

[PhillySane]

46. Wisner is talking about a US national consensus

You are absolutely right. I believe the people of Egypt already have one.

[PhillySane]

47. In honor of Ronny: Mr. Mubarak, tear down this mall!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/02/04/133501837/why-egypts-military-cares-about-home-appliances

(the Egyptian military is also involved in the development of shopping malls)

[PhillySane]

49. While we're at it, let's put a Chili's in there!

http://www.uncoverage.net/2011/02/president-mubarak-will-leave-egypt-with-70-billion-fortune/

[PhillySane]

50. Hosni, Rodeo Drive is calling!

http://activerain.com/blogsview/2121021/o-k-mr-mubarak-i-m-ready-if-you-need-to-sell-some-of-that-beverly-hills-property

[Catherina]

48. Me too. Egypt too. the doublespeak isn't fooling anyone over there. n/t

[PhillySane]

56. Obama says we can't tell Mubarak when to go

But aren't we the one who encouraged him to stay for the last 30 years? Who better than us to tell him when to go?

He's worried about anti-US sentiment. Would it not promote pro-US sentiment if we clearly said Mubarak should go now?

[kenny blankenship]

51. Clarification: We must make an ORDERLY TRANSITION to Mubarak

from Mubarak with the invaluable assistance of Mubarak.

Mubarak himself must be kept on, so that we may, in the fullness of time, transition to-or rather, begin the transition to- Mubarak's head of Secret Police, a trusted henchman and chosen successor, so that we may begin to put the repressive horrors and blatant corruption of the Mubarak regime behind us. Who better than a corrupt NY Fed Governor to run the US Treasury? By the same token, who better than Mubarak could you find to understand the intricacies of Mubarak's criminal empire?

Mubarak? We're lucky to have him on board!

[PhillySane]

52. Yes

The Egyptian government must transition, orderly, to the government that the government must transition to, so that order is kept and the Egyptian people do not descend into chaos, which of course hasn't happened yet, and this is to, of course, benefit the Egyptian people. Right? Right.

[Uncle Joe]

53. France; to the 13 colonies, in order for crucial political reforms to take hold

King George must stay in charge to form a national consensus around the preconditions for the next step forward.

We believe King George's continued "leadership" is critical.

Thanks for the thread, PhillySane.

[PhillySane]

54. Vive la Status Quo!

[Hydra]

55. Is it 1984 yet? n/t