mubarak has to go. immediately. the first step if we need to get out of this mess and it s total mess, security is terrible, it s a total chaos situation. first step he has to go. traditionally in egypt, have always been friends with the u.s. friends with europe and our country. richard haass, first of all, is he right, mubarak has to go and secondly, what is the fine ball ans of people in the country? richard haass, first of all, is he right? mubarak has to go and secondly, what is the fine ball and the white house needs to strike? i think mubarak has to go. he s lost with the chinese would call the mandate of heaven and the military, the last remaining important institution in egypt will lose its legitimacy if it s killing egyptians in the name of preserving mubarak. the united states, we have to be careful here. we can t simply walk away from a close ally of 30 years. we can t send a message that as soon as people come out in the
sadat assassination. sure. look at what we ve done for 50 years or more and continue to do the same thing with saudi arabia in terms of supporting a regime which is not exactly democratic but is critical to our national interest. we don t have luxury of only picking places where there are people who conform to our human rights and democratic impulses. right. the egyptian crisis continues to reverberate around the world s financial markets. moody s has downgraded egypt s government bond ratings and changed outlook from stable to negative citing political risk. and crude oil prices climbed today as investors worry the country s unrest could possibly spread elsewhere. while egypt ranks just 21st among the world s oil producers, it controls the suez canal and the sumed pipeline. while the obama administration has had no discussions about cutting off aid to egypt, it is a key factor. financial aid from the u.s. last year was $1.55 billion overall,
revolution. for a very long time, america was willing to support a man that kept egypt stable. you could not have the two great the two great empires, the persian empire, the egyptian empire who were literally the anchors of that world and have been for 5,000, 4,000 years. you cannot have them both going over to islamic extremists. it worked. it did work. egypt was part of the coalition that got saddam hussein out of kuwait. they joined desert storm, egypt formed a peace with israel, the foundation stone for what stability there is in the middle east. egypt was a stalwart pillar against terrorism, against al qaeda. for those people to say the united states has made a mistake for 30 years, the answer is no. also to say walk away from him in two seconds, we need to re-examine. some of the wikileaks documents show they ve been trying. they ve been trying. erin s coming up.
tock atocracies. we did lead off to you, saying you spoke to the largest employer there. what did you get out of them? very interesting. the largest company thisin this country and dominates the egyptian symptom exchange, that company is oriskom. the ceo of the company said only 5,000 of those employees are at work. around the whole country. in other words, it is not just cairo where you re seeing people simply stop business as usual, stop going to work. those 5,000 people are on the chemical side of this business. they account for 70% of it. economically, i guess in some sense it s not completely a zero. you really have people simply not going to work.
particularly if there s violence in the street, can america continue to provide aid to egypt military and other places in egypt. on human rights issues it s not the normal left/right divide. you have people on the far left and the far right who are, if this continues, will be more critical of the administration. youian tell how serious this issue is by the fact that peace seems to have broken out in washington. not in the streets of egypt but in washington. boehner, mccain, everybody seems to be sholdz shoulder to should the president so far. we should not be threatening to cut off aid. the army is the critical institution here. we have got to maintain good relations with them. i think we also need to be careful in our call for immediate elections. egypt has not really had the openness politically and one of the things we should have learned over the last few years to go from 0 to 60 if i may use a car metaphor, to go from a heavy authoritarian system to elections overnight is ofte