battlefield, basically. you had the police and the protesters going at it. the police firing tear gas at the people. today, the same amount of people and the same amount of protest. it s a cheerful air to it. there s a lot of respect between the protesters and the military member that is are here. if we pan to the side, there s a corridor they have made and it s respected. it was unthinkable yet when the police, not the military were trying to control the situation. the police are a hated institution. there are a lot of police officers that the people refer to as thugs. a lot of people have been subject to police brutality. clearly, the military has a much different standing. you were asking whether or not this is a warning to the
armored vehicles rumbled through cairo s streets, the top military officials were huddled at, of all places, the pentagon. it is hard to ignore the fact this wasn t going on. it wasn t ignored. they cut short meetings with the pentagon officials. not before they urged the egyptian counter parts to handle them peacefully. the key that is important is to exercise your strength and do so on our part and on the part of the egyptian military. reporter: the u.s. has leverage with its ally. every other year, up to 10,000 american troops train with egyptian soldiers, the largest military exercise in the region. the u.s. gives egypt over $1 billion a year in assistance. it s outfitted with helicopters,
know, a while back that are very high-end or have been made a long time ago. you can see the protests really are of the moment, ad hoc protests. the signs you see are small. they are handwritten. they are not colored. this is something that looks like a spontaneous demonstration. it s far different than we saw yesterday. yesterday, the area you are looking at now was a battlefield. people were slugging it out with the security forces. police were using tear gas. now, you have a much different crowd of protesters and the military out here instead of police. come out here and speak their minds. all right. frederick, senior cnn correspondent showing us the scene in cairo. really appreciate fred s
military. i think that the government brought the military in here to calm down the situation because they felt it was the only way to diffuse the situation because the police force here in egypt was such a lightning rod insighting people more and more. they were saying they were fed up with being pushed around by police. they were beating back the police officers yesterday. it was a very, very ugly scene with tear gas flying and rubber bullets flying. today, a much, much different sort of scene. it s interesting to see whether or not a peaceful protest could be more dangerous to mubarak than riots in the street. clearly, that, you know, it s dangerous criminals on the street that public work is not being kept. clearly, they are people who want to voice their opinions. we are having a little bit of
television camera as if it s going to make their voices heard. for now, it does. look how many turned out here. the tanks were there. the military is on the streets. the question is, is this a show of force? what is it there for? fred plight joins us live from cairo. he has been watching the developments this day. fred, tell us, what is your impression as you look out on this scene. reporter: my impression is this is one of the times i have seen demonstrations where people are happy to see tanks in their streets. clearly, they greeted the milita military. as you look at the scene playing out close to our office, this demonstration moved further down. people are mingling with the soldiers. if you look at that area that i m talking about now, yesterday at this time, that was a