Epstein Secrets

depended to help protect its interests. They were constant, if not always agreeable, companions. Egypt's Mubarak, Jordan's King Hussein, Tunisia's Ben Ali, Yemen's Ali Saleh, Morocco's King Hassan II, Saudi Arabia's kings Fand and Abdullah. The PLO's Yasir Arafat rounded out the group photo. America'

There was the good King Hussein, the wily but indispensable Arafat, the enigmatic yet much-courted Assad, the cruel Saddam, the crazy (like a fox) Qaddafi, and the plodding but reliable Mubarak. The United States built its policies on these men and their regimes without much regard to broader politica

there was now the cult of the rulers, the unbounded power of Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi and Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. The traditional restraints on power had been swept away, and no new social contract between ruler and ruled had emerged. Fear was now

ck in Libya, the counterrevolution made its stand, and a despot bereft of mercy declared war against his own people. In the calendar of Muammar el- Qaddafi's republic of fear and terror, Sept. 1 marks the coming to power, in 1969, of the officers and conspirators who upended a feeble but tolerant monar

otably President Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen and President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. One of them, also referring to former President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and former President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, read: "Ben Ali escaped, Mubarak is in jail, Qaddafi was killed. Which fate do you prefer, A

round, with fighters grabbing his hair. Blood pours down his head, drenching his golden brown khakis, as the crowd shouts, "God is great!' Colonel Qaddafi's body was shown in later photographs, with bullet holes apparently fired into his head at what forensic experts said was close range, raising the p

re demanding to be rid of him. The senior commanders of the armed forces cast him aside, and he joined his fellow despot, Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who had fallen a month earlier. From Cairo, the awakening became a pan-Arab affair, catching fire in Yemen and Bahrain. As a monarchy, the latter

of Arab rulers," Muammar al-Qaddafi. For four tormenting decades, Libyans had been at the mercy of this prison warden, part tyrant, part buffoon. Qaddafi had eviscerated his country, the richest in Africa yet with an abysmally impoverished EFTA_R1_00234071 EFTA01845125 population. In the interwar

Saudi Arabia was uneasy with 2011's outpouring of people power from the start, lest it flow into the kingdom as well. First, when Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia, he and his family were welcomed in Saudi Arabia. Then, Riyadh worked EFTA_R1_02205167 EFTA02721247 to prevent the toppling of the

hrain. It was only Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi's downfall that Saudi Arabia welcomed. Saudi-Syrian relations had been quite problematic under Qaddafi, who was once even accused of trying to assassinate Saudi King Abdullah. Turkey, of course, took the opposite tack, supporting all the uprisings,

nt was authoritarian but also determinedly secular and pro- Western. The cracks, however, were larger than anyone thought: President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had carefully hidden the extent to which illness had weakened his control of the government; his ties with other centers of power, such as the mili

hose domestic systems of governance we may dislike, aiming to encourage them over time to change their behavior. Indeed, in the case of Libya, the Qaddafi regime was brought in from the cold when, among other things, it abandoned its quest for weapons of mass destruction. Might Qaddafi have been broug

there was now the cult of the rulers, the unbounded power of Saddam Hussein and Muammar el-Qaddafi and Hafez al-Assad in Syria and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia. The traditional restraints on power had been swept away, and no new social contract between ruler and ruled had emerged. Fear was now

ck in Libya, the counterrevolution made its stand, and a despot bereft of mercy declared war against his own people. In the calendar of Muammar el- Qaddafi's republic of fear and terror, Sept. 1 marks the coming to power, in 1969, of the officers and conspirators who upended a feeble but tolerant monar

di had not struck him—and she was acquitted). But there was enough tension and discontent within the country—and in particular with Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali— that had it not been for the unfortunate Bouazizi, some other incident might well have caused the overthrow of the regime. Next, for a revolution

doubt more accounts and properties will be discovered. True, those in power might have stolen a little more than customary, but probably less than Qaddafi. Egypt's overall economic balance sheet these last few years had been quite positive (in contrast to that of Syria). True, not enough had trickled