Egypt protests: America's secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising
The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
9:23PM GMT 28 Jan TELEGRAPH
The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret fromEgyptian state police.
On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.
He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph.
The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.
Mr Mubarak, facing the biggest challenge to his authority in his 31 years in power, ordered the army on to the streets of Cairo yesterday as rioting erupted across Egypt.
Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets in open defiance of a curfew. An explosion rocked the centre of Cairo as thousands defied orders to return to their homes. As the violence escalated, flames could be seen near the headquarters of the governing National Democratic Party.
Police fired rubber bullets and used tear gas and water cannon in an attempt to disperse the crowds.
At least five people were killed in Cairo alone yesterday and 870 injured, several with bullet wounds. Mohamed ElBaradei, the pro-reform leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was placed under house arrest after returning to Egypt to join the dissidents. Riots also took place in Suez, Alexandria and other major cities across the country.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, urged the Egyptian government to heed the “legitimate demands of protesters”. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said she was “deeply concerned about the use of force” to quell the protests.
In an interview for the American news channel CNN, to be broadcast tomorrow,David Cameron said: “I think what we need is reform in Egypt. I mean, we support reform and progress in the greater strengthening of the democracy and civil rights and the rule of law.”
The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East.
In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year.
The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.”
It said the activist claimed “several opposition forces” had “agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections”. The embassy’s source said the plan was “so sensitive it cannot be written down”.
Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organised by the US State Department.
Cairo embassy officials warned Washington that the activist’s identity must be kept secret because he could face “retribution” when he returned to Egypt. He had already allegedly been tortured for three days by Egyptian state security after he was arrested for taking part in a protest some years earlier.
The protests in Egypt are being driven by the April 6 youth movement, a group on Facebook that has attracted mainly young and educated members opposed to Mr Mubarak. The group has about 70,000 members and uses social networking sites to orchestrate protests and report on their activities.
The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information about human rights abuses.
If this is true, it's dumb; it's amateur staff from Hillary and Obama. Democracy is a process, not an overnight development. It took the US decades - about a century - to fully respect the democratic rights of women and African Americans. It didn't happen overnight through a coup de' tat. The US and the West, in general, should judge developing countiries based whether they are going in the right direction - democratically and economically, not on the basis that these countries are shining examples of democracy. To expect developing countries to be shining examples of democracy and good governance overnight, is asking for trouble.
ReplyDeleteWhatever the outcome it will be worse for the US. So it goes when you have a community organizer as the people's choice.
ReplyDeleteThe consequences for good or bad should be on the shoulders of the Egyptians.
ReplyDelete.
ReplyDeleteHopefully, the Telegraph is wrong in their interpretation of the WikiLeaks file.
If their interpretation is correct, it sounds like US intelligence is continuing the same mistakes that got us into the war in Iraq.
Assigning any credibility to xxxxxxxxxx is naive and smacks of the credibility granted to Chalabi by the neocons in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.
Everyone knew Chalabi was a thug with an agenda but he was a useful tool for the neocons, telling them exactly what they wanted to hear even if it wasn't true.
It's kind of hard to blame guys like xxxxxxxx or Chalabi when you have a willing dupe like the US.
.
Q, I don't have a good feeling about this.
ReplyDeleteWhat business does OUR government have dictating to other countries how they run themselves?
ReplyDeleteDon't you see what's wrong with your statement? Why does the CIA and the US government need to involve itself in everything?
Hell, China now owns so much US debt that they have a vested interest in us and our success. The USA has a ridiculously porous border and we have rampant gang violence on the streets in most major US cities. We have one of the largest prisoner populations on the planet yet we still have relatively high crime for a developed nation.
So due to China's interest in America and our deep problems, does China have the right to come in here and occupy us? Do they have the right and responsibility to bring their own secret police here to manage things? You know... since we owe them so much money- money we spent telling the rest of the world how to live?
9-11 was a terrible tragedy but it's not a justification to destroy ourselves. Mark my words... if we continue our wars, our interventions, our controls, our SPENDING, and our own "big sis" homeland security secret police then we will end up just like China.
This morning I read in another foreign paper, (not the Telegraph) the article was beating up on the USA for not saying enough in this matter - The USA is damned if they do and damned if they don't - So I'd agree with Deuce and prefer the US stay out of this and all other country's fights - Besides, the US cannot afford to keep sending these countries billions each and every year. What does it get us?
ReplyDeleteThis story continues and we will follow it through the weekend.
ReplyDeleteAll the talk about a "democracy movement" is naive wishful thinking.
ReplyDeleteAn Ally Imperiled: What Egyptians are demonstrating against, whether they know it or not, is socialism. What they — and we — could end up with is another Iran. Is President Obama repeating Carter's Shah betrayal?
ReplyDeleteRevolutions are like fires. They can make life better, or they can destroy.
Three decades ago, Iran — after being saved from Soviet dominance by the U.S. in 1953 — traded in the flawed autocratic rule of the Shah for the bloodthirsty Islamist fanaticism of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
At the time, Jimmy Carter's presidency was, in the name of "human rights," on the side of the Islamists — with U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young going so far as to call Khomeini "some kind of saint."
Does the Obama administration realize the difference between freedom-based revolutions and violent overthrows that will help jihadists?
In 2009, the Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum reported that President Obama secretly met in Washington that year with representatives of Egypt's jihadist Muslim Brotherhood, the Hamas ally that, while banned, dominates the opposition in the country.
Obama also chose Egypt as the locale for his ill-conceived Muslim outreach speech in June 2009.{…}
{…} Obama also chose Egypt as the locale for his ill-conceived Muslim outreach speech in June 2009.
ReplyDeleteAs Newsweek's Jonathan Alter points out in his White House-friendly book on the president's first year, "The Promise," "Obama never said the words 'terrorism,' 'terrorist,' or 'war on terror'" in the speech, because "the t-word had become inflammatory to Muslims" and the "faster way to the hearts and minds of a Muslim audience was to talk about the tensions between Islam and the West in a different key."
Bet the president didn't think he was planting the seeds of today's protests in Egypt. But what does he expect when he goes to a country in a decades-long police-enforced state of emergency, with tens of thousands of political prisoners, and announces that "you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion"?
He may have awakened a sleeping giant. Too bad the Iranian people didn't receive the same favor a year and a half ago when they were protesting in the streets against a regime that makes Egypt look Jeffersonian by comparison.
Perhaps the president believes that the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian who headed the U.N. nuclear agency, will emerge from house arrest and take over.
Revolutions are seldom so neat.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's Egyptian-born right-hand man who merged al-Qaida with Egyptian Islamic Jihad, has long had designs on his native land.
In the Pulitzer-winning history of al-Qaida, "The Looming Tower," Lawrence Wright notes that Zawahiri's "strategy was to force the Egyptian regime to become even more repressive, to make the people hate it. In this he succeeded."
Embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was as afraid of real capitalism as of political dissent. The Heritage Foundation's latest Index of Economic Freedom gives Egypt poor marks despite recent "incremental reforms to liberalize the socialist economy."
Egypt's GDP growth fell markedly in the wake of the global financial crisis, and government corruption and the lack of a dependable rule of law in the economic sphere are factors that have kept poverty and unemployment painfully high — poisonously mixed with political repression.
Even so, should Mubarak fall, there is real danger of the Islamic Brotherhood imperiling this U.S. ally. Barack Obama sure picked a foolish place to give a community-organizing speech. here
Mubarek, and Obama are both dicks.
ReplyDelete22. Jerry
ReplyDeletewhat is all the fuss about?
egypt is as it has been for 5000 years.
nothing to see here folks.
move along.
move along.
The big E has been a dynastic empire and will be so for ever.
nothing really changes in the nile delta.
it is but a river of people flowing down the river of time.
stay tuned for the next king.
much ado about nothing in the history of time.
The King is dying, there will be a new King.
ReplyDeleteThe US has supported Mubarak since he took power. Has supported him through the fraudulent elections and while he suppressed political dissent.
The US and Mubarak, along with the Sauds and the Shah are the root cause of the rise of radical Islam. There was no other avenue open for dissent.
No means to protest the autocratic regimes that the US empowered, but to radicalize.
I heard on tv: 44% of Egyptians make less than $2.00/day.
ReplyDelete54% of the population is under 30, And unemployed.
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell do they have to lose?
ReplyDeleteAs for the US and the "right" to inject itself in the politics of the Islamic Arc ...
ReplyDeleteYou are not serious in your complaints, are you?
Not after supporting Mr Bush and his democracy campaign, until you didn't.
Not after supporting Israel and its Europeon colonization of the Islamic Arc. If the US and Europe has the "right" to export colonists to the region, the "West" certainly has the "right" to interfere in the internal politics of Eygpt.
Especially if the "West" had the moral authority to establish Islamic Republics in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Near as I can find, there is only one established US military installation, in Egypt:
The estimated cost of this project is between $1,000,000.00 and $5,000,000.00. PROJECT SCOPE: The project consist Modification of existing Pangborn 1520 Room at Hawk U.S. Army Depot, Cairo, Egypt.
...
Place of Performance:
US Army Corps Of Engineers Hawk Missile Facility Cario EG
April 29, 2008
The US also has annual drills, in coordination with the Egyptian military:
ALEXANDRIA, Va. (Oct. 14, 2009) -- Military units from around the world formed a common front to begin a multi-national military exercise near the Egyptian coastal town of Alexandria, Monday.
Operation Bright Star began nearly 30 years ago as a friendly training exercise to better relations between Egypt and the United States, and has matured into an 11- nation combined exercise, a major joining together of traditional military tactics with modern military technology.
"Bright Star has always been about partnership; it started back in 1981," said Maj. Gen. Peter M. Vangjel, deputy commanding general of Third Army/U.S. Army Central.
"As a matter of fact, I was a part of Bright Star back in '81, the very first one, which really started out as a biennial exercise between the U.S. and Egypt," Vangjel said.
"But it has grown substantially since then, and we have almost a dozen coalition partners that are here participating in one way, shape, form or fashion. Whether or not they come from the sea, jumping from airplanes, or Soldiers on the ground -- it's all about partnership."
Bright Star
Star light, Star bright
What star will we see, tonight?
And, you're right, Deuce; Egypt is a pure Socialist economy. The State controls Everything.
ReplyDelete31 years of military support gives US the "right" to comment, now.
ReplyDelete31 years of financial assistance, gives US the "right".
That you may not like what the President says, understandable ...
"Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!
Stephen Decatur knew more of the North African course than anyone alive, commanding as he did US forces in the Barbary Wars.
CAIRO, Egypt (September 21, 2010) - Leaders from Third Army's Civil Military Operations division participated in the fourth iteration of an ongoing series of U.S. and Egyptian Civil Military Engagements Sept. 20-21 in Cairo, Egypt.
ReplyDeleteThe event featured more than 30 officers from the Egyptian Ministry of Defense and U.S. officers and noncommissioned officers from Third Army specializing in Civil Affairs, Information Operations and International Military Affairs.
The series of engagements, hosted by the Egyptian Ministry of Defense, was held in Cairo, Egypt.
Egyptian armed forces continue to be strong partners with the United States, having participated in numerous peacekeeping, disaster response and humanitarian assistance operations for a number of years.
...
"These are important bilateral engagements that build on our strong relationships with the Egyptian military," said to Col. Timothy Hannas, chief of the Operations and Training Division within the U.S. Embassy, Cairo. "By assisting the MoD with exchange events, we foster better understanding of complex doctrines as well as building capacities for use in national, regional and global events."
"But it has grown substantially since then, and we have almost a dozen coalition partners that are here participating in one way, shape, form or fashion. Whether or not they come from the sea, jumping from airplanes, or Soldiers on the ground --
ReplyDeleteit's all about partnership."
Egypt and the US, we have a partnership.
ReplyDeleteThe US Army has told US so.
Has for 31 years.
Only now it is found to be objectionable?
Because Obama spoke up?
No argument that Egypt is socialist.
ReplyDeleteNone that the US has supported its maintenance, either, aye
No, all we ever wanted to do was keep the Egyptian "Street" beat down while we extracted the oil from the region.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, somehow our oil got stuck under their middleeastern sand.
ReplyDeleteThe situation in Mexico is much more serious; and, it's right on our doorstep.
ReplyDeleteI guess, basically, I just don't give a shit what happens in Egypt. The price of oil will spike, temporarily, but it was going to do that, anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe Drug Cartels, sponsored by the elites/government, have taken over N. Mexico, and I've got a feeling That will, somehow, effect me, and mine, in the coming years.
Allah Akbar, the price of paving stones has risen, and I own the quarry!
ReplyDeleteIowahawk tweets:
ReplyDeleteDidn't you all get the memo? Foreign policy is a job for the Berkeley City Council. The President is in charge of school lunch menus.
Bookworm blames Al Gore, because the global warming scam has diverted food crops to energy production, raising food prices. She notes:
Although food riots haven't been in the headlines lately, what do you bet that, with ethanol production still causing producers to divert food crops into the energy market, marginal economic societies such as Egypt continue to feel the effects of food shortages?
Voila - riot conditions. For history aficionados, remember that, in the 1790s, the French had suffered aristocratic depredations for centuries; it was the food shortages that triggered revolt. The same pattern showed up in Russia, with rising discontent reaching a fever pitch with WWI shortages.
Thomas Lifson adds: I have indeed seen news reports that both Tunisia and Egypt have experienced steep food price rises, and thought myself that we can thank the warmists. Lauri Regan notes that in Jordan, too, food prices are at the root of anti-government riots.
I've spent time in Egypt, and can testify that the margin above starvation for maybe 80% of the population is slim indeed. When food prices go up 50%, people go hungry, and some of them die. No wonder they are rioting.
Ethanol doesn't have Anything to do with the cost of wheat in Egypt. Your li'l "bookworm" isn't very bookwormish.
ReplyDeleteEgypt had demonstrations in 2008 when The Bakers went on Strike.
Not only does the cost of "field corn" (fed to cattle for beef for "rich" people) not have anything to do with the cost of wheat in Tunisia, or Egypt,
The plastic wrapping on a loaf of bread costs more than the wheat, therein.
"Not after supporting Mr Bush and his democracy campaign, until you didn't. "
ReplyDeleteGet it straight. I never supported any democracy campaign in any Muslim country. I know better than that. I supported democracy movements in Europe except for Kosovo. Get your facts straight before you tell me what I did and did not support.
What the Egyptians do is their business. I am sick of assholes like Obama and Bush and Clinton and Carter lecturing countries that they do not know and understand. Leave them alone and they will let us alone.
ReplyDeleteIt’s interesting, isn’t it?? When the West takes action against violent protestors, it’s Law and Order, a lawful action against violent Criminals. But when a developing country does the same thing, it’s government repression or Police Brutality!
ReplyDeleteThy Hypocrisy of the West is mind boggling.
The difference tweenst what is occurring in Egypt and what happened in Iran is simple.
ReplyDeleteJimmy the dhimmi had no clue as he made the way for an islamic slave state to emerge. Clueless.
Obama sees islam as a "religion of Peace" and absolves it and the bloody imams of any wrong doing and blames any "bad acts" by devout muslims on a tiny number of extremists, misunderstanders of islam. We who can see know this is not true. He cannot or will not.
This is why he will stand by and do nothing to stop and perhaps even facilitate the rise of another islamic "Republic"...what a joke.
the original aim when this plot was hatched was done with a true Democracy in mind. That notion went by the wayside when Obama stepped in. Either he is uninformed enough, biased enough that he actually believes that a Democracy will rise from this conflagration or his belief that islam is nothing but good will allow the creation of another sharia run hellhole where people are stoned to death and barbarism thrives.
He probably believes that the muslim brotherhood, the group that created AQ are just muslim brothers.
You are not serious in your complaints, are you?
ReplyDeleteNot after supporting Mr Bush and his democracy campaign, until you didn't.
Not after supporting Israel and its European colonization of the Islamic Arc. If the US and Europe has the "right" to export colonists to the region, the "West" certainly has the "right" to interfere in the internal politics of Eygpt.
Listening to Obama congratulating himself about what he said when he was in Cairo makes me sick and Israel better be paying attention.
Get your history straight, Israel is not a colonial power. The entire ME was colonized since the Romans and before. There were Jews in Israel before the Romans got there. I dare say the Jewish faces in Europe, ancient Judea and modern Israel would all have a familiar look.
Israel would be better off, for its own good, to quit begging for and taking US aid. It should take care of itself as it is fully capable of doing.
If I were Israeli, I would tell American Jewish Israeli wannabes to mind their own business and quit trying to do favors for Israel. But I am not. I do not have a dog in that fight.
Don't tell me what I believe. Criticize what I say and write.
I believe in minding our own business. That is what I believe.
ReplyDeleteIf someone attacks us, I believe in killing them and destroying their stuff. Other than that leave them alone. When we send out our moralizing ignorant missionaries of faith and democracy to the world to show the world how they should and should not live and someone in some foreign land decides to put them in the proverbial pot... well I don't blame them.
Obama does not know his ass from third base about Egypt.
ReplyDeleteObama is as ignorant about Egypt as Carter was about Iran, Clinton about Kosovo, Reagan about Afghanistan and Bush about Iraq.
ReplyDelete