Epstein Secrets

not against the paramilitaries linked to radical Islamists who have increased their activities in the peninsula since the fall of former President Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Last week, they attacked an Egyptian military post on the Gaza border, killing 16 Egyptian soldiers. This followed several attack

an President of 30 years was unceremoniously shunted out of power by SCAF, a coterie of generals he appointed. That was a reminder, of course, that Mubarak's regime hadn't been created in his image and was no personality cult; he'd simply inherited the reins of power when his predecessor, Anwar Sadat,

ssing Iranian security concern, but saw yet more U.S. troops massed now on its western border. With U.S. forces also in the CIS republics, notably Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, Iran has been encircled by the USA on its own continent. A bitter joke has made the rounds in Tehran for some years now: "there are

, while Mubarak fils is prisoner No. 23 at Tora Farm, the country's most notorious prison. The wheel of fortune has turned so dramatically for the Mubaraks, in part because the provisional military government found it necessary to mollify protesters -- who continue to challenge its reform bona fides -

the United States. But they did not begin with Libya, or with the surprise uprising in Tunisia in January or the stunning fall of Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak in February. They were evident from Year 1 of the Obama presidency in his excruciating deliberations over the Afghan surge, in the hand extended in

his sons and his former associates all now EFTA00585487 8 "guests" in Egypt's most famous prison, provides little encouragement for leaders like Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov or Belarus' President Alexander Lukashenko to follow a similar path. As Stephen Walt noted, other authoritarian leaders m

' who counseled President Obama to forget George W. Bush's support of Middle Eastern democracy and cultivate our relations with regional despots like Hosni Mubarak, the Iranian mullahs and the younger Assad have been sent back to the benches in disgrace. Their counsel is now seen as both morally dubious and prag

king less democratic by the day; it looks more and more as if the Army used public unrest to block the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_031886 --- PAGE BREAK --- 12 Mubarak family's attempt to turn Egypt into a family possession. The Army has ruled Egypt since the overthrow of King Farouk, playing liberals and religious

s quickly. Even in 1989-90, those countries were the exception and not the rule. Think Ukraine, Belarus, Yugoslavia, Romania, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and of course Russia itself. More people live in countries where the 1989-90 revolutionary wave failed to establish secure constitutional democracy t