UPDATE 160, Thursday, Feb. 10, 10:30 a.m. EST (Siddhartha Mahanta): It's day 17 of the anti-Mubarak full court press.
- Egyptian labor unions continue their nationwide strikes. Al Jazeera reports that thousands of doctors, lawyers, artists, and public transport workers marched through central Cairo and into Tahrir Square today. But its reporters also note that the marches "are more of an economic nature," and don’t necessarily suggest that the unions have merged their demonstrations with that of the political protestors. Meanwhlie, the Ministry of Interior has launched an investigation into the senior officer gave orders fire on protesters back on January 28.
- Josh Rogin has the latest scoop from the homefront on the conflicting messages the White House and State Department have been sending. The key point of contention: the role of Vice President Omar Suleiman in the reform process. Foggy Bottom and the White House have agreed on three core principles: non-violence, respect for universal rights, and the need for political change. But "[t]he State Department is advocating a hosted dinner, where the power still resides with the incumbents," the New America Foundation's Steve Clemons told Rogin. "That's not good enough for the White House."
- Via Democarcy Now, listen to the The Independent's veteran Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, on how Washington has failed the protestors. "When the democrats came onto the streets of Cairo and wanted what Obama had advertised to them, it was Obama who clenched his fist and Hillary Clinton who said that it’s a stable regime. Only now, when they realize that perhaps Mubarak is going to go, mainly because the army want to get rid of him," he says.
- And The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler does an exhaustive fact check on Obama administration's statements on Egypt.
UPDATE 161, Thursday, Feb. 10, 11:00 a.m. EST/6:00 p.m. Cairo: Egypt's prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, has told the BBC that Mubarak may step down. "This could be the day that changes everything," according to Al Jazeera. There was a meeting of Egypt's Higher Army Council today and Mubarak did not attend.
UPDATE 162, Thursday, Feb. 10, 11:05 a.m. EST/6:05 p.m Cairo: Things are moving quickly. Al Jazeera says CIA chief Leon Panetta has said there is a "strong indication" Mubarak will step down tonight. NBC News is running with the story, saying that Mubarak will definitely step down. UPDATE: A CIA spokesman now tells Politico: "Panetta was relaying news reports that emerged just as hearing began not speaking about independent CIA information."UPDATE 163, Thursday, Feb. 10, 11:20 a.m. EST/6:20 p.m. Cairo: It turns out, via Sultan al Qassemi, that the BBC was talking to Hossam Badrawi, the Secretary General of Egypt's ruling party, the NDP, not to Prime Minister Ahmed Shafik. He told the BBC that "I don't know" where Mubarak is right now. For what it's worth, Egypt's information minister says it's all just a rumor and Mubarak will not step down. NBC, meanwhile, says it has two sources, including the military, and confirmation that Mubarak will speak tonight.
UPDATE 164, Thursday, Feb. 10, 12:15 p.m. EST/7:15 p.m. Cairo: VP Omar Suleiman, of lack-of-squeamishness-about-torture fame, is meeting with Mubarak now, state television channel Nile TV claims. And the BBC reports that opposition leaders believe Mubarak's message to the country has been pre-recorded to give the ruler time to flee in advance of the speech.
UPDATE 165, Thursday, Feb. 10, 12:30 p.m. EST/7:30 p.m. Cairo: Mubarak is reportedly scheduled to speak around 2:30 p.m. EST/9:30 p.m. Cairo today. Also, check out this WikiLeaks cable. It recounts a meeting Richard Posner, a top State Department official, had with Egyptian human rights activists in January 2010. Key quote: Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights Executive Director Hossam Bahgat... "asserted that many Egyptians believe the [government of Egypt] has interpreted the current administration's relative 'silence' on human rights and political issues as a signal of support." You can bet that supporting famed torturer Omar Suleiman to succeed Mubarak won't do much to dispel that perception.
UPDATE 166, Thursday, Feb. 10, 1:15 p.m. EST/8:15 p.m. Cairo: Fox News is reporting Mubarak will step down and hand power to a "military council." Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell quotes opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei: "There is no credibility in either Mubarak or Suleiman or anybody who is associated with that regime."
UPDATE 167, Thursday, Feb. 10, 2:08 p.m. EST/9:08 p.m. Cairo (Siddhartha Mahanta): President Obama just spoke about the events in Egypt, and directed his message at the Egyptian youth. "We're watching history," he said, adding that the Egyptian people are looking for "irreversible change" and that the US will support an orderly transition to democracy.
UPDATE 168, Thursday, Feb. 10, 3:41 p.m. EST/10:41 p.m. Cairo (Siddhartha Mahanta): Via Al Jazeera: Reuters is reporting that sources in the Middle East say that Mubarak will not announce his resignation and will, instead, lift emergency law. Smart money says that's not going to do it for the protestors.
UPDATE 169, Thursday, Feb. 10, 4:17 p.m. EST/11:17 p.m. Cairo (Siddhartha Mahanta): Mubarak didn’t make history with his speech. And he isn’t going anywhere. Addressing the nation's youth just now, he promised not to "relent to penalize" those responsible for the violence that racked Tahrir square. "My heart went out and I felt the pain as you did. I tell you, that my response to your voice and message and your demands is a commitment that cannot be waived," he said. Continuing to affirm his lifelong commitment to defending his country, he made clear he "remains adamant to shoulder" his presidential responsibilty and stay in office till September's elections. He did promise to amend the constitution, in an indication that some reforms might be on the way that scrap the 30-year state of emergency. But he also railed on foreign interlocuters and their attempt to shape events in Egypt. The mood in Tahrir Square took an immediate turn for the worse, with furious protestors hurling their shoes during the address.
UPDATE 170, Thursday, Feb. 10, 5:45 p.m. EST/11:45 p.m. Cairo: Foreign Policy's Marc Lynch has a great take on what he calls "the worst speech ever." "It's hard to exaggerate how bad Hosni Mubarak's speech today was for Egypt." Lynch says Mubarak's address and VP Omar Suleiman's followup means "Things could get ugly tonight—and if things don't explode now, then the crowds tomorrow will be absolutely massive. Whatever happens, for better or for worse, the prospects of an orderly, negotiated transition led by Omar Suleiman have just plummeted sharply." Speaking of Omar Suleiman, we've just published an explainer about who Omar Suleiman is. Read it: Who is Omar Suleiman?
Who Is Omar Suleiman?
| Thu Feb. 10, 2011 2:35 PM PST
He's a spy: Prior to becoming Mubarak's official No. 2, Suleiman, was for nearly two decades, the head of Egypt's intelligence service, the famed (and feared) Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID).
He's a torturer: As the New Yorker's Jane Mayer noted in her book The Dark Side (read it!), Suleiman managed the Egyptian end of Clinton- and Bush-era "extraordinary renditions," in which people whom the US suspected of torture were flown to Egypt ("rendered") and tortured. (Stephen Grey's Ghost Plane and Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctrine also feature material on Suleiman's role in torture.) As noted in Mother Jones' Egypt explainer, Mayer quoted Edward Walker, the former US ambassador to Egypt, who described Suleiman as "not squeamish." MoJo's Jim Ridgeway has more on Suleiman's role in torture.
He's a close ally of the US: Because of his work on rendition and other intelligence-related cooperation, Suleiman may have an even better relationship with American officials than Mubarak did. "Suave, sophisticated, and fluent in English, he has served for years as the main conduit between the United States and Mubarak," Mayer wrote last month. A 2006 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks notes, "our intelligence collaboration with Omar Soliman... is now probably the most successful element of the relationship" between the US and the government of Egypt.
This makes any succession that puts Suleiman in power a win for the intelligence community.
He was trained by communists: Paging Glenn Beck! Suleiman received his initial military training in Egypt, but he finished up at Moscow's Frunze Military Academy—in what was then the Soviet Union.
He's fought Arabs and Israelis: The 73-year-old Suleiman is a veteran of Egypt's 1967 and 1973 (Yom Kippur) wars with Israel and the 1962 civil war in Yemen.
He's the Muslim Brotherhood's worst nightmare: Suleiman's intelligence forces don't just interrogate people who are rendered to them by the US. They also go after internal dissidents—especially Islamists. Reuters says he was "the mastermind behind the fragmentation of Islamist groups who led the uprising against the state in the 1990s."
He helped get the phony "intelligence" that led to the Iraq war: One of the renditions Suleiman reportedly handled was that of Ibn Shaikh al-Libi. I wrote about the case after reports emerged of al-Libi's mysterious death, which was ruled a suicide, in a Libyan jail in May 2009:
He may have been connected to the death of torture subject Ibn Shaikh al-Libi, one expert believes: Terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann has said that "Al-Libi’s death coincided with the first visit by Egypt’s spymaster Omar Suleiman to Tripoli." Al Jazeera's Lisa Hajjar explains:
Learn More: Jane Mayer | Bill Moyers Journal | ABC News | Al Jazeera | Mother Jones: Al Libi's Suicide | Mother Jones: Al Libi and the Case for War
This makes any succession that puts Suleiman in power a win for the intelligence community.
He was trained by communists: Paging Glenn Beck! Suleiman received his initial military training in Egypt, but he finished up at Moscow's Frunze Military Academy—in what was then the Soviet Union.
He's fought Arabs and Israelis: The 73-year-old Suleiman is a veteran of Egypt's 1967 and 1973 (Yom Kippur) wars with Israel and the 1962 civil war in Yemen.
He's the Muslim Brotherhood's worst nightmare: Suleiman's intelligence forces don't just interrogate people who are rendered to them by the US. They also go after internal dissidents—especially Islamists. Reuters says he was "the mastermind behind the fragmentation of Islamist groups who led the uprising against the state in the 1990s."
He helped get the phony "intelligence" that led to the Iraq war: One of the renditions Suleiman reportedly handled was that of Ibn Shaikh al-Libi. I wrote about the case after reports emerged of al-Libi's mysterious death, which was ruled a suicide, in a Libyan jail in May 2009:
Al-Libi was the man whose false confession, obtained under torture, of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda provided the Bush administration with its casus belli for war with Iraq. It didn't seem to matter that al-Libi's claim that Bin Laden had sent operatives to be trained in the use of weapons of mass destruction by Hussein's people didn't make any sense. "They were killing me," al-Libi later told the FBI about his torturers. "I had to tell them something." [Michael Isikoff and Mother Jones' own David Corn were the first to report on these comments, which they revealed in their 2007 book Hubris.] A bipartisan Senate Intelligence committee report would later conclude that al-Libi lied about the link "to avoid torture."Secretary of State Colin Powell cited al-Libi's confession when he argued the case for the Iraq war to the United Nations in February 2003.
He may have been connected to the death of torture subject Ibn Shaikh al-Libi, one expert believes: Terrorism consultant Evan Kohlmann has said that "Al-Libi’s death coincided with the first visit by Egypt’s spymaster Omar Suleiman to Tripoli." Al Jazeera's Lisa Hajjar explains:
Kohlmann surmises and opines that, after al-Libi recounted his story about about an al-Qaeda–Saddam-WMD connection, "The Egyptians were embarassed by this admission—and the Bush government found itself in hot water internationally. Then, in May 2009, Omar Suleiman saw an opportunity to get even with al-Libi and travelled to Tripoli. By the time Omar Suleiman's plane left Tripoli, Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi had committed 'suicide'."
Learn More: Jane Mayer | Bill Moyers Journal | ABC News | Al Jazeera | Mother Jones: Al Libi's Suicide | Mother Jones: Al Libi and the Case for War
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