congratulations on the book a best seller. you say this could have been a military coup. bloodless coup. tell us about that. the military is the one that wanted mumbarak out. he was 82 years old. he wanted his son to take his place. they wanted save the regime which was dominated by the military. he wouldn t leave. there was a showdown for really weeks between the military and mumbarak. when these demonstrators started, and i won t speculate who started them or why. but they certainly gave the military the strength to have the showdown with mumbarak. when mumbarak refused to leave last night, this morning they woke up and they forced him out of office. apparently flew him to scharmel and put him on ice. they saved the regime. bill: are you talking about guys walking in with machine guns saying because, as you know, doctor, mumbarak has his own guard which is separate from the military. he has got guys with guns
can. now people all over the arab world, they have a feeling that this will soon spill over to other countries of the region. the question is, they just don t know which one is mexico. shepard: i would be surprised if they were sleeping very soundly tonight in aman or rehad. have you been able to see any of the nile state tv we have been watching dismay as they come out and say nobody has been injured and how great mumbarak is and all the rest. what are they saying now? actually nile tv is pretty since i haven t been watching it since the declaration, but nile tv has been supporting mumbarak, like you said, for the past three weeks and all of a sudden they changed their tone about 10 minutes before the speech given by suleiman that mumbarak was going to step down. shepard: all right. adnan you have been evaluable to
he is the israeli defense minister to brief president obama on this issue. and he said tonight that it was not up to foreigners to decide egypt s future. egypt had to decide its future. and earlier in the day, netanyahu the prime minister said his only hope was that egypt would honor the peace treaty that it signed with israel no matter who replaced put mumbarak. so we are beginning to see people scramble to understand the meaning of this. i think you have got it right, shep. i think what we have seen is a transfer of power, a stepping aside, rather than a stepping down because egypt could not afford tore the speaker of the parliament to take over the presidency, which is what what happens constitutionally had mumbarak resigned.
and if they tilt against mumbarak, and for the people, how far should they lean or should they bring in the military or shouldn t they? bill: all day today as you know and everybody watching the military all day it was mumbarak is going to announce is he out of there. the army is going to take over. that s what it was reports on the wire and all over the place. mumbarak says you know what? blank you, i m not doing that i m going to hand over some power to omar suleiman, who is just mumbarak light. and, you know protests can do you know. what. bill: anger is going to build all night tonight. then tomorrow on friday the mullahs are going to whip them up. and the army can t, they cannot go against their own people and they won t. they have thus far not gone against it incidentally, one point, bill. i think the problem was he didn t hand over more power to suleiman tonight. in essence, sounded like he was
[. shepard: don t despair, don t give up, don t give up is what the speaker is saying right now. just a moment ago as a new speaker replaced what we believe to be an imam. the new speaker said do not think that mumbarak will leave peacefully. he will not leave this country peacefully. then, speaking to the young people in the audience, mostly students, told them get educated, and lead the revolution. anyone who thinks this problem ended with the speech by put hosni mubarak today is decidedly wrong. the egyptian ambassador, we are scheduled to speak with in a short time, the ambassador to the united states from egypt had said earlier that the president now hosni mubarak is no longer the president, that omar suleiman, the vice president, former security chief, is the de facto president.