stability brought with it a new kind of disorder, chaos and dangers. a reality now playing out in iraq and cross the region. in egypt, the jubilation of 2011 tahrir square protests which ended the 40-year reign of mubar mubarak, a return of authoritative means of dealing with citizens of the country. the new president, al sissi, led the coup to topple the civilian government led by mohamed morsi. on saturday, an egyptian court confirmed death sentences against the leader of the now-banned muslim brotherhood and 182 supporters of the group in a mass trial. and today, a judge sent three al jazeera journalists to jail handing down two serve-yeven-ye sentence and one ten-year sentence for aiding the brotherhood. three were held in cages throughout the trial and the
strong ties between the pentagon and egyptian army, little doubt washington s strongest support is for the generals. let me stop you there. that, to me, is what s so interesting about this entire conversation. obviously the american government was allied with mu baric for years. millions of dollars in aid. if you were to say to me egyptians are angry because the u.s. government is too closely aligned with the egyptian military or closely aligned with mubar mubarak, i understand. the notion that america of all cases, prosecuting a global war against terror, jihadis, extremists of all islamic varieties across the world for ten years, people would think they were in bed with the muslim brotherhood. i would not believe you. i mean, look, while morsi was in power, there was a relationship, of course, with the obama administration and the muslim brotherhood. we saw hamid morsi deal well in the eyes of the united states with israel s assault on gaza in november and he was hailed for
it s a 34 member cabinet sworn in on tuesday made up of entirely the liberal side of the political spectrum there. the muslim brotherhood refusing to participate in what it calls an illegitimate government. the latest in a string of power shifts since 2011 when 18 days of protest ended a nearly 30 year regime in egypt. of course this has been all over the middle east. mubar mubarak resigned. soon after, eventually elected a muslim brotherhood candidate. mohamed morsi as president. but frustrated by a deteriorating security situation, thousands pushed for change. for the second time in 2 1/2 years, the army ousted egypt s leader. this week, deputy secretary of state bill burns met with interim leaders. becoming the first top level u.s. official to visit egypt since the military took power. he has pointedly avoided calling the situation an official coup. speaking in jordan on wednesday,
up ousting mubarak from power, there was a broad perception, my understanding from my reporting, there was a broad perception the u.s. was slow to back protesters that essentially stood with mubar mubarak. what is the perperception, now, about where u.s. is in this particular standoff? reporter: if you were to ask those in tahrir square, those that have been campaigning against president morsi, there is no mistake about it. the united states has once again stood with the wrong leader in this equation. for the past year, many people have been criticizing how the united states has systemically warmed up to the muslim brotherhood. more so in recent days, ahead of this big protest. on sunday the united states ambassador here in cairo, ann paterson, made some very controversial remarks that angered a lot of egyptian local media saying that the protests were not necessarily going to amount to anything. in fact, many people interpreted
so i think the president is going to have to lay out some arguments about what he s going to do. and i think for governor romney, one particular chance for him is to make the case to link what we do abroad with what s going on at home. and to make the argument the biggest national security challenge facial the united states is not iran, is not libya, not china, it s us. and what we need to do is get our economy right. i have spoken to governor romney a couple times on this issue. i have spoken to his surrogates on this specific issue and that is mubarak. mitt romney has been critical of the arab spring how the u.s. handled it. generally says the president isn t standing close enough with aural lie. i said specifically do you believe he made a mistake with mubar mubarak. they never answer the question. do you get the sense that the president might not have pushed the door? my own view, we made a mistake in pushing mubarak. you do think i do think so. the i think the trends wer