Sic Semper Tyrannis

HARPER: A HIGH PRICE FOR FALSE AFFECTION

 President Obama’s just-concluded visit to Israel, his first since his election in 2009, was by all accounts a public relations success.  Long-demonized among a majority of Israelis, Obama’s charm offensive won him new friends, particularly among Israel’s younger generations.  For the hardcore Likudniks, the specter of Obama being fawned over by his former harsh critic Bibi Netanyahu softened some of the hatred.

          Back in 2009, when the newly elected President Obama appointed George Mitchell as his Middle East peace envoy, ex-President Bill Clinton urged Obama to go to Israel, to marshal public support for his peace initiative. Clinton warned the President that unless he built up a base of support within Israel, Netanyahu would clean his clock and sabotage any efforts to halt settlement expansion or move ahead on a two-state solution.  Obama ignored Clinton’s sage advice and the rest is history.

          Four years later, President Obama took up the Clinton recommendation.  But the circumstances are very different now.  For one thing, President Obama’s advisors have told him that, despite a weakened political situation, Netanyahu is more adamantly opposed than ever to a halt in settlement expansion and has no intention of moving forward with a two-state solution deal.

         So, in their private talks, President Obama gave a great deal of ground to Bibi, dropping any attempt to get a settlement freeze.  In effect, Obama ripped up the Quartet agreement, under which Israel was to halt settlement expansion once the Palestinian Authority cracked down on terrorism coming from the West Bank.  The PA has fully complied with their side of the Quartet deal, and Obama just gave Netanyahu a green light to ignore Israel’s obligations.

         In return for calling for a resumption of talks between Israel and the Palestinians with no preconditions—key and code for settlement expansion—Obama extracted an unreliable promise from Netanyahu that Israel would not take any unilateral action against Iran for the foreseeable future.  Obama indicated that there was some progress at the last P5+1 talks, but it could take a year to fully explore the chance for a diplomatic settlement.  Obama provided Israel with detailed intelligence assessments of Iran’s nuclear program, making it clear that U.S. evaluations are more in line with those of Israeli intelligence.  In these talks as well, Obama made it clear that Israel has the sovereign right to defend itself against the Iranian threat, but that the U.S. was prepared to use military force if the diplomacy failed.  In effect, this amounted to a quasi-green light for Israel, given that Netanyahu’s “Red Line” for an attack on Iran is quite different than the U.S. Red Line.  For Netanyahu, the first moment that Iran approaches 225 kilos of 20 percent enriched uranium, the order goes down for an attack.

         Obama also conceded that the United States had to reassess the Arab Spring, particularly given the growing power of the most extreme Jihadists in the wake of the overthrow of Qaddafi, the Benghazi attack and the obvious leading role being played by the Al Nusra Front, an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq, in the Syrian insurgency.

         And Washington also celebrated the success of the Iron Dome missile defense program by pledging a continuation of ever-expanding American military assistance.  Sequestration apparently stops at the banks of the River Jordan.

         In short, in return for a passing and soon-forgotten “feel good moment” Obama once again gave away the store to Bibi. 

HARPER: DRINKING THE KOOL AID AGAIN?

On the tenth anniversary of the start of the disasterous Iraq War of 2003, it is more useful than ever to read or re-read Col. Patrick Lang's monumental account of the blunder into war, "Drinking the Kool Aid."  The importance of this work was puncuated this week, when President Obama commemorated the anniversary of the Iraq war by making his first presidential visit to Isreal, where he effectively gave Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu an American green light to take whatever actions he felt are necessary to defend Israeli interests against the threat coming from Iran.  Behind the scenes, Obama actually extracted a promise from Netanyahu to hold off from unilateral action so that the United States could decide the proper time for military action against Iran.

When I received the report of what had actually been discussed between Obama and Netanyahu, my thoughts immediately returned to "Drinking the Kool Aid."  Now, as then, a U.S. Administration embarked on a path that will almost certainly lead to war in the Persian Gulf, a war that will likely have even more devastating consequences than the disasterous action of March 2003.  Now, as then, the greatest skepticism about the need for war came from senior military officials, people with the greatest appreciation for the folly of war as the first option, rather than the last.  Now, as then, the usual rightwing Zionist and neoconservative propaganda apparatus is churning out disinformation to hype the conflict. Except for the map coordinates, very little has changed.  The threat of imminent "nuclear mushroom clouds," the prospect of weapons of mass destruction being used against Israel by an Iranian/Syrian/Iraqi "rogue regime" driven by irrationalist motives--the buzz words and frightening images remain the same.

This is precisely the message of "Drinking the Kool Aid."  Unless there is a genuine recognition of the folly and consequences of the Iraq fiasco, it will be repeated over again and again--with the same disasterous outcome.  It makes no difference what party is in power at the White House or on Capitol Hill.  President Obama was swept into office in 2008 on the mandate to end the war party rule of the Bush-Cheney era.  Once in office, President Obama found that the unitary executive powers were too awesome to repudiate.  He has continued on the path set for him by the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, who once told General Wesley Clark that the United States had one or two decades to overthrow the governments of Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya. Sudan and Somalia--before an emerging rival power like China challenged the American global military hegemony.

Col. Lang's treatis on the road to folly in Iraq has withstood the test of time.  Like a Shakespearian tragedy, it offers a prophetic warning and opportunity to change paths before the die is cast.  The image of "drinking the Kool Aid" must be used as a powerful tool to alert, shame, embolden enough of our political, military and intelligence leaders so that another string of needless wars can be averted.  I am sure this was Col. Lang's intention in writing his landmark account of the slide into Iraq war.  

HARPER: IS JOHN BRENNAN A SAUDI ASSET?

 

Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's Osama Bin-Laden task force for many years, has had more direct experience butting heads with John Brennan than most people in the intelligence community.  His commentary in Foreign Policy, posted below, is clearly worth reading carefully by every member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, before they vote on whether to confirm John Brennan as Director of the CIA.  If even half of what Dr. Scheuer recounts from his own personal dealings with Brennan is true, not only should there be very serious reservations about President Obama's nomination of Brennan to head the CIA.  There should be a serious inquiry into whether Brennan, in effect, has been an asset of Saudi intelligence. 

 

HARPER ON OBAMA: PARTISANSHIP ON STEROIDS

 

President Obama's second inaugural address was an exercise in partisanship, cultural revolution and narcissism wrapped in patriotic slogans and references to the Founding Fathers that will have some among them turning over in their graves. After a brief opening paean to the Founders, President Obama proceeded to spell out a very partisan agenda, based on radical reforms of our educational system, our tax code, deep cuts in our healthcare system, climate change and gay rights. Some clever speechwriter finally figured out that the overwrought use of the imperial "I" which has regularly dominated President Obama's rhetoric, was inappropriate for the occasion. Yet every time he called on Americans to pull together and work towards "our" common goals, he set out a very narrow set of acceptable policies. Never mind that the President declared that we are now in the midst of an economic recovery and the end of perpetual wars--two highly dubious propositions. The President event told us that the oath that he took today was to "God and country, not party or faction." Why is it that I remain unconvinced? - Harper

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/21/transcript-president-obama-inaugural-address/

"Renewed Brawl in Israel Over Iran Attack?" by Harper

 

The below item, posted today by the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank with close ties to the IDF leadership, indicates that there is renewed concern that Netanyahu will revive plans to launch a preventive unilateral strike on Iran early next year if he is reelected.  I am told that the publication of details of this wargame, which includes a warning that an Israeli strike could lead to an out-of-control escalation ultimately triggering World War III is part of a push-back, once again, by sane elements in the Israeli national security establishment who distrust Bibi Netanyahu as a messianic lunatic who could lead Israel and the world into a devastating war.  This comes at the same time that other Israeli national security insiders are revealing that Bibi tried to launch a preventive strike against Iran in 2010, but was rebuffed by the IDF leadership and others because he did not have the go-ahead from his Security Cabinet or the Knesset.  British independent TV Channel 4 is going to air a broadcast tonight detailing the 2010 attempt to launch a preventive attack, and just how close things came to a hot war.

http://www.inss.org.il/publications.php?cat=21&incat=&read=10461

HARPER: ANOTHER GLASS STEAGALL MOMENT

Two recent developments have put real momentum behind a return to the full separation of commercial and investment banking that existed from 1933-1999 under the Glass Steagall Act; and the prospects of such a long-overdue divorce are moving forward both in the United States and the United Kingdom. 

On July 4, the Financial Times published a lead editorial under the headline "Restoring Trust After Diamond," explicitly calling for the total separation of what in Britain are called retail and merchant banks.  "The clash between retail and investment banking," the editors wrote, "has always been evident.  What is now clear, however, is that the hard-charging, revenue-seeking investment banking culture predominates when they are pushed together.  The more herbivorous retail banking ethos--with its emphasis on patient stewardship--is marginalized.  this seems to lead ineluctably to the proliferation of socially questionable trading activities and abuses such as the Libor scandal... While the FT supported those conclusions [of the Vickers Commission calling for partial separation of the banks--ed.] we are now ready to go further.  For all the diversification benefits, the cultural tensions between investment and retail banking can only be resolved by totally separating the two, on formal Glass-Steagall style line."

The Financial Times embrace of Glass Steagall came in the immediate aftermath of revalations that the British Banking Association, in league with 18 major banks and, perhaps, some officials of the Bank of England, had been rigging the London Interbank Overnight Rate (Libor) to facilitate insider trading on the derivatives market and other serious financial crimes.  Three top officials of Barclays Bank were forced to resign, investigations are now underway in the UK, the United States and Switzerland, and the prospects of bankers being jailed over this scandal is looking more and more likely.  The Libor rate determines more than $350 trillion in mortgage, credit card and other interest rates worldwide.

The second development that produced a flurry of calls for a return to Glass Steagall was the recent Brussels summit meeting of European heads of state, at which German Chancellor Merkel, French President Hollande, Italian Prime Minister Monti, Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy and others took the equivalent of a blood oath to preserve the euro single-currency system at all costs.  Some more experienced bankers in London took this as a signal that continental Europe will be going through months, if not years, of financial turmoil and potential hyperinflation, that will likely spill over into the business of the City of London.  For one thing, British banks have forged extremely close ties to some of the largest and most fragile Spanish banks, as their gateway into South America.

The Financial Times editorial was both preceeded and followed by a number of other strong statements for Glass Steagall coming from very senior voices in the City of London.  Lord Paul Myners, a former Treasury official under Gordon Brown, a former publisher of the Guardian and Observer, and an affiliate of Lord Jacob Rothschild, gave an interview to Britain's Channel 4 TV, echoing the Financial Times.  Paul Hambro, now a Russian gold trader, but a member of one of Britain's oldest merchant banking families, added his name to the chorus promoting the complete separation.

Expect these calls to resonate in the United States, where a bill is already in the House of Representatives, HR 1489, to restore Glass Steagall separation.  The bill was introduced by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Oh.) and now has 70 co-sponsors, including half a dozen Republicans, including several Tea Party Republicans.  Thomas Hoenig, the former President of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank, and now the Vice Chairman of the FDIC, gave a recent interview to Bloomberg Radio, in which he made a powerful argument for Glass Steagall.  Hoenig is widely respected among Main Street Republicans in the Congress.

The point is obvious:  The European debt crisis is far from over, and the cries for new bailouts, coming from Spain and (soon) Italy will overwhelm the capacity of the European Central Bank and the not-yet ratified European Stability Mechanism (ESM) to meet the bailout demands.  Spain is being forced to pay nearly 7 percent yields on ten year sovereign debt, Italy is not far behind, and Greece is still in a state of economic and political disintegration.  The prospects for a European turn-around are grim, and the recent JPMorgan Chase losses on the derivatives market of European debt ($9 billion and rising) makes the obvious point that Wall Street is up to its eyeballs in the crisis across the Atlantic. 

Glass Steagall will not solve all the problems, but it is a long-overdue first step towards at least protecting commercial banking from the wild leveraged gambling activities of the investment bankers and hedge fund managers, who were reckless because they believed that they would be bailed out by American and European taxpayers, no matter what they did.   Harper

HARPER: JP MORGAN CHASE SCANDAL IGNITES SUPPORT FOR GLASS STEAGALL

The shocking admission on May 11 by JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon that the bank had suffered a $2 billion loss on a bad derivatives bet at their London office has served as a painful reminder that nothing has really been done, since the financial meltdown of 2008, to fundamentally change the gambling mania with "other people's money" on Wall Street.  In just one week since the original Dimon admission, the price tag on the London derivatives blowout by JPMC has more than doubled.  As of today, the bank is acknowledging $4 billion in losses, and the figure is expected to reach $20 billion by the time the complex highly leveraged bets are unraveled.
 
The JPMC revalations are particularly embarrassing to President Obama, who has publicly praised Dimon as one of the most competent bankers on Wall Street, and who had him at the top of his list of candidates to replace Tim Geithner as his Treasury Secretary, should he win reelection.  Sources close to the White House have told me that the President and the First Lady maintain their personal bank accounts with Chase.  At least the President puts his money where his mouth is.

HARPER: BIBI BLINKS by Harper

 

The surprise announcement overnight that Prime Minister Netanyahu reached a coalition agreement with the centrist Kadima Party, thus averting unpredictable Knesset elections in early September, must be understood in the context of the still-looming threat of a military confrontation with Iran.  In the weeks leading up to the deal, Netanyahu had come under merciless attack from all corners of the Israeli military/intelligence establishment.  He was accused by former Shin Bet head Yuval Diskin of being a "messianic" fanatic who could not be trusted to decide on issues of war and peace.  His own IDF Chief of Staff, General Benny Gantz, gave an interview to Haaretz in which he endorsed the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear bomb at the present time, and that Iranian leaders were "rational" and would abandon a nuclear weapon in order to avert military attack.  General Gantz did not seek prior authorization from either Bibi or Defense Minister Barak before granting the interview. 
 
Netanyahu knew that it was only a matter of time before the Israeli security institutions would move to dump him--regardless of his strong approval rating with the Israeli electorate.  Bibi chose wisely to accept a grand coalition with Kadima, thus assuring that he is likely to remain in office through to October 2013, when Knesset elections are mandated.  In return for keeping his job--without elections--Bibi has agreed that Israel will not launch a unilateral military attack on Iran for the time being.  The Netanyahu-led coalition government and the Shaul Mofaz-led Kadima share an understanding that Iran can never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon.  They agree that prevention is the only acceptable policy.  No containment of a nuclear-armed Iran is acceptable.  For the time being, this is also the policy of the Obama Administration in Washington.  It will be the job of incoming Deputy Prime Minister Mofaz to guarantee that there is no change in the US policy.  For the time being, barring a breakdown of the coalition agreement, Israel will not launch unilateral military strikes on Iran.  This will satisfy a deal struck between Bibi and Obama in Washington in March.  Until today's coalition agreement between Likud and Kadima, no one in Israel or the United States had any confidence that Netanyahu and Barak would keep their word and wait until after the November elections in the United States.  Any military action against Iran will be postponed--at least until after the P5+1 talks have fully run their course.  At this moment, there is a reasonable chance that Iran will accept a viable agreement sometime during the next several round of talks.  War--at least a war triggered by Israel attacking Iran--can still be averted altogether.

HARPER: TRUTH IN MEDIA IS DYING IN AMERICA

Years ago, I always enjoyed the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour on PBS.  Whether I agreed with the news analysis and commentaries or not, I always had the sense that the personal integrity of the two anchors was on the line at all times, and that there was some greater depth to the coverage than one would otherwise find on the major networks.  This was the pre-CNN and Fox 24-hour news cycle era.
 
It was from this mental image that I watched, in horror, as the same PBS News Hour last night delivered a typical neoconservative propaganda line, under the pretext of giving news.  It was a short news update on the Iran situation, centered on the announcement of new U.S. sanctions against Iran.  In the course of the report, the news anchor slipped in the formulation that the United States and Israel are in full agreement that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.
 
Hold the phone!  Yes, that has been the persistent mantra of every Netanyahu government mouthpiece for months and months, and it has been echoed in every American neocon propaganda front for even longer, dating back to the bad old days of Bush and Cheney.
 
But, the truth is:  In October 2011, the National Intelligence Council, the premier agency of the U.S. intelligence community, issued an update to the November 2007 NIE on Iran's nuclear program.  Both the published/declassified 2007 study, and the classified 2011 study reached the same conclusion:  Whatever work Iran was doing on weaponization was halted in late 2003, and has not resumed.  Iran is engaged in enrichment, and is constantly improving their ballistic missile capabilities.  But the vital part of any nuclear weapon program--the actual work on converting enriched uranium into a bomb--has been suspended for almost a decade, and the best U.S. intelligence community estimate is that it remains suspended.
 
This is no light matter.  And this is not something that is based on "leaked" information.  While the content of the updated NIE has not been released in declassified form, as recently as last week, General James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, issued an annual global threat assessment, in which he summarized the NIE findings, noting that there is no evidence that Iran has resumed weaponization.  Nor is there evidence that the Iranian leadership has made a decision to even pursue building a nuclear bomb.
 
Back to my original point:  The media, including the once-respected public broadcasting network, has gone over to the dark side on an issue that is too serious to let pass.  We had the experience in the year leading into the Iraq invasion of a flood of neocon propaganda, about "thermonuclear mushroom clouds" and armageddon from Saddam Hussein's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.  Are we going to allow ourselves to be railroaded again into a war that would have far more devastating consequences than Iraq?  At least some of our taxpayer dollars go to the funding of PBS.  Don't we have a right to expect some degree of accuracy and honesty on matters of war and peace?

DEAFENING SILENCE by Harper

 
The deafening silence in Washington on Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ heroic defiance of the Obama Administration’s efforts to kill of the Palestinian bid for United Nations full membership leads me to an obvious conclusion:  The White House has put tremendous pressure on everyone within their reach to go silent.  No doubt, similar efforts from AIPAC and others are bolstering this top-down effort to pretend that last week’s events in New York never happened.  Of course a few brave voices like Henry Siegman did not buy into the omerta, but the vast majority of people who should have commented on the Obama capitulation to Bibi Netanyahu have so far towed the line.  

            This is both unfortunate and foolhardy.  The die has been cast, and there will be a vote—sooner or later—at the UN Security Council.  It may, if the Obama Administration has its way, take months for that showdown vote to occur.  But it will occur, and likely, in the meantime, the PA will win General Assembly approval for non-member observer state status.  This will give the Palestinians access to the International Court of Justice and other UN bodies.  I know that senior Israeli Defense Force officers are very unhappy at the prospect of having to restrict their overseas travels, based on pending complaints and threats of arrest or interrogation. 

            The behavior of President Obama in New York—his patronizing scolding of the Palestinians in his address to the General Assembly, his pressure on Security Council member states like Nigeria, Gabon and Bosnia Herzegovina, to abstain from a Security Council vote on Palestinian full UN membership, and worst of all, his groveling with Bibi—cannot be swept under the rug.  An apparently deep rift has opened between Washington and Paris, after French President Sarkozy offered an alternative mediation to Washington’s hardline stance against any Palestinian action at the UN.  President Obama, according to my White House sources, pitched a fit that the French are suggesting that all roads to Middle East peace do not pass through Washington.  Europe is deeply divided over the fate of Palestine.  Saudi Arabia stepped in on the eve of the General Assembly to provide the PA with $200 million and a promise of further Gulf states aid, thus offsetting the Israeli freeze on tax payments to the PA and the anticipated U.S. Congress cut off of aid. 

            The next step is uncertain, but clearly the events in New York City last week and this will be looked back upon as a watershed.  The U.S.-led Middle East peace process has been shown for what is has been since at least the day that Bill Clinton left office, and maybe earlier:  all process and no peace.  Abbas has, for the moment, emerged from the shadows of the late Yasser Arafat and established himself as a leader in his own right.  It was a deft political move. The PA and Fatah are strengthened.  All of the good will that President Obama garnered from his Cairo speech in 2009 and his address to the same UN General Assembly in Sept. 2010 has been squandered, ostensibly in order to retain a few Jewish votes and the hope of continuing AIPAC largess.  I doubt he will realize either. 

HARPER: OBAMA A WALL STREET REPUBLICAN... OR WORSE

 
No sooner had the ink dried on President Obama's latest assault on our U.S. Federal Constitution, than word came down from the Congressional Budget Office that the whole agreement to extend the debt ceiling and impose equal cuts on Federal spending, was based on a thoroughly false assumption.  It seems that the CBO scoring on the debt ceiling/budget cuts deal was based on the premise that the U.S. economy, measured in GDP, would grow at a rate of 2.8 percent for 2011.  For the first six months of the year, GDP growth has been an anemic 0.8 percent, with budget cuts assured to keep those numbers in the gutter for the rest of the year and beyond.  For every fall of 1 percent of GDP from the projections, you have to add $750 billion in added deficit, due mostly to revenue losses from the listless economy.  If the 0.8 percent figure holds, we will have an added $1.5 trillion in debt or something close to that by yearend.  The whole deal is a great big fraud, that grabbed an enormous amount of media attention for much of July.

HARPER ADVICE TO OBAMA: BACK THE ARAB SPRING

 
When President Obama completes his victory lap over the killing of Osama bin-Laden, he is going to have to face the fact that the entire Arab and Islamic world is profoundly confused by his Administration's self-contradictory responses to the Arab Spring protests.  After several weeks of confusion and mixed signals, the President finally threw his support behind the Egyptian protesters in Tahrir Square, and, following the brutal assaults on those peaceful protesters, called for President Mubarak to step down.  As belated and weak his response to the dramatic events in Egypt, he ultimately got it right, and gave his support to those forces demanding progress and greater freedom and opportunity.  His reactions to the plight of similar protesters in Bahrian and Yemen was a much more clinical case of severe flip-flopism.  Once Saudi troops crossed the causeway into Bahrain, and Saudi officials flooded Washington with claims of Iranian intrigue and fomenting of anti-Sunni revolution, Washington went completely radio silent.  By the time that the Yemen situation reached a break point, President Obama had totally deferred to the wisdom of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council, making a few muted comments about the need for reform, but truly walking away from the situation.  The case of Libya was complicated by the fact that the country erupted into a fullscale civil war, and the President's Secretary of Defense firmly opposed drawing the United States into yet a third military conflict on Islamic soil.

#HARPER: THE ANGELIDES REPORT

 
On February 13, 2011, the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, known as the Angelides Commission, completed their one year mandate, and submitted a 500 page report to Congress.  That report is now a nationwide bestseller on both the New York Times and Washington Post list--and for good reason.  Don't be put off by the fact that this was a Congressionally-mandated investigation, or that a number of the Republican members of the commission issued dissenting reports.

HARPER: AN ASSESSMENT FROM NEW DELHI

I got this email this morning from a friend who is a senior Indian intelligence officer.  Given historic relations between Egypt and India, going back to the heyday of the Non-Aligned Movement, I thought I'd share this up to the minute assessment from a third party country with great interests in the Middle East.  I am sure this assessment is circulating within the Singh Cabinet in New Delhi today.

President Hosni Mubarak has remained defiant and has refused to quit now. He has told his people that he would quit only in September when his current term ends and a new President would have been elected. He has also totally revamped his National Democratic Party (NDP) executive. Hossam Badrawi, a reformer and top physician, who enjoys the confidence of Mubarak, has been appointed the  head of the policies committee, a post  held by his son Gamal Mubarak till now, and also  the party secretary-general. This revamping is meant to re-assure the protesters that people associated with the hated policies of his Government and accused of corruption would not stay in office in the run-up to the elections.

HARPER: FAST-MOVING DEVELOPMENTS IN EGYPT AND WASHINGTON

 
I received the following message this morning from a close friend in Egypt, who is very much engaged in the events now consuming the country. Since I received this note, some new dramatic events have transpired. President Obama's special Egypt envoy, Frank Wisner, a former U.S. Ambassador there and a close friend of President Mubarak, spoke at the Wehrkunde conference in Munich, and announced that Mubarak had to remain in office to steer the transition to a new government, etc. This is a 180 degree turn, after Obama's own "out now" demands, that were very impolitic, unless they had been already pre-negotiated. As a precondition for Mubarak staying on, his son Gamal, and the head of the ruling party, Sharif, were both forced to resign, which they did this afternoon. A reform-minded figure has been named as the replacement for both men, a good sign. In the Tahrir Square, there are growing indications that the Army may attempt to clear out the demonstrators, which could rile things up as bad as the Wednesday-Thursday hooligan attacks, organized by the Interior Ministry and the "oligarchs" behind the looting of the country under the radical privativation of post-1996. So things are in flux, and the U.S. Administration's involvement now seems to be in the hands of some people who know the Egyptian situation alot better than the White House circles around the President. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are handling the contact with Omar Suleiman, the VP; and Gates and Mullen are dealing continuously with their counterpart. Here is my friend's status report: