a tank is looking on the scene. protestors are everywhere. then from the top of your screen, you see that vehicle. they re just mowing down protestors right there. they don t seem to care if they hit anyone. soldiers aren t doing anything. the protestors catch up to the vehicle, start rocking it back and forth. looks like they may have pulled the driver out. hard to tell. eventually they succeed in turning over the entire vehicle. let s just watch. we don t know what happens next. the same can be said for egypt itself. we don t know what will happen next. neither does washington, the white house. the question is should they have been better prepared? would they have been? jackson diehl wrote a column in the washington post titled the egypt warnings obama ignored. last april they went a letter to secretary of state clinton saying
the war on terror, and yet as we know, we can talk about it later, we know that this is a regime that gave us both zawahiri and the psychopath muhammad atta on 9/11. they re used to lying. ivan watson, the protests actually expanded in a way again today. it s at the gates of power right now, right? that s right. it s a test of wills that s going on. the battle is furious. what we saw last night were groups of protestors who moved out of tahrir square, moved up right to the gates of the egyptian parliament and camped out there overnight. they are maintaining their vigil now. they are conducting a sit-in, and their argument is that the egyptian parliament they re saying is fraj lent. the elections of last november
hard and they ve been better at it in the last few days than in the beginning. fouad, it is interesting, the bush administration, as you mentioned, had this sort of policy of i think it was name and shame was sort of the nickname for it. i think condoleezza rice made a very open statement at cairo university during the bush administration criticizing the regime, saying they needed to be more open. the obama administration took a different tact of privately saying the same things but publicly not naming or blaming, right? we re so many light years from that famous speech that barack obama gave in egypt, his outreach to the islamic world in june of 2009. it was full of promise. but i think soon people in egypt and beyond egypt, in syria, lebanon and iran, in the summer of 2009, they soon took measure, they took the measure of president obama and they realized that he is a realist, quote unquote, a realist, that he s not interested in the spread of freedom. because it was associated w
game. and the obama administration, and i hate to just i want to respond to something that david said. my respect and affection for david is unlimited. he s worked with as many presidents as henry viii had in wives. some would say with equal results. and i m very differential to him on matters of policy. but we must understand the bargain we made with someone like hosni mubarak. yes, he helped us in retail ways, but the terror he unleashed on us indirectly, and the kind of egypt he made and manufactured and the blowback that came our way from egypt is enormous. a thesis has been made, the road to 9/11 led through the prisons of egypt. the torture chambers, the prisons that gave us many, many members of al qaeda. al qaeda had a saudi prince here and a saudi head, ie osama bin laden and much of the leadership, much of the men who committed terror were the product of egyptian society and the pathologies and injustices.
realist, quote unquote, that he s not interested in the spread of freedom. because it was associated with george w. bush, had a bad name, and the obama administration, and i hate to just i want to respond to something that david said. my respect and affection for david is unlimited. he s worked with as many presidents as henry viii had in wives. some would say with equal results. and i m very differential to him on matters of policy. but we must understand the bargain we made with someone like hosni mubarak. yes, he helped us in retail ways, but the terror he unleashed on us indirectly, and the blowback that came our way is enormous. a thesis has been made, the road to 9/11 led through the prisons of egypt. the torture chambers, the prisons that gave us many, many members of al qaeda. al qaeda had a saudi prince here