Epstein Secrets

es, were built on lies and morally dubious accommodations. He states that "the most populous Arab country is Egypt, where Obama stuck too long with Hosni Mubarak as the Arab Spring arrived, and then with the Army, and then the Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi, and now is embracing the Army again."

everal administrations to maintain close relations with Egypt's military rulers. It was Bush administration policy to maintain close relations with Mubarak. Perhaps the 2011 uprising in Egypt could have been avoided had the Bush administration, in honoring its "Freedom Doctrine," engineered Mubarak's

Obama continues to test the water in Egypt, the Saudis made up their mind some time ago, they're all in supporting the predictability provided by Sissi's government. The Obama administration learned a valuable lesson from the George W. Bush administration's ill-conceived plan to topple Iraq's forme

n Egypt: They were the prime intellectual authors and organizers of the January 2011 demonstrations that brought down the military-backed regime of Hosni Mubarak. They are leftist, secular intellectuals who have devoted their adult lives to fighting for human rights as the West conceives of them: free speech

ance with such democratic dissidents. When I saw him last week, he was despairing about the disastrous results of Obama's decision to embrace first Mubarak, then Morsi and now Sissi. "Today in Egypt people believe that America is on the side of freedom even less than they did in the time of Mubarak," S

ce. Who are the allies of the United States in Egypt? The Obama administration's judgment is crystal clear: Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has plied Sissi with more than two dozen phone calls since he led a coup against the elected Islamist government of Mohamed Morsi in July, while Kerry has repeated

staff Sami Anan; and the heads of Egypt's army, navy and air force — as finally giving Egypt's revolution the chance to remove key remnants of the Mubarak regime and fulfill its promise. Others, particularly non-Islamists, are more prone to see recent actions as the Muslim Brotherhood removing any che

d Abbas. Early hopes that Egypt's new president, Muhammad Morsi, might put the Hamas genie back in its bottle have subsided. Under his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, donors meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh in March 2009 committed $5 billion to repair damage from Israel's Gaza war in 2006 and promised to end the siege

he Muslim Brotherhood eminence who was elected president of Egypt a few weeks back. My column was prompted by the Wall Street Journal's coverage of Sissi's appointment, which strained to put a positive spin on an unfolding catastrophe. The Journal has been all in on the "Arab Spring" fairy tale from

or flow, would dissent be further tolerated or not on popular and official levels and would Egypt's security apparatuses decidedly return to their Hosni Mubarak-era ways? Would the upcoming electoral processes and political environment be substantially competitive, inclusive and representative? What will be the

, army chief Gen. Abdul-Fattah al-Sissi would become president with the traditional 90 percent vote claimed by dictators from Gamal Abdul-Nasser to Mubarak. Moussa, a former apparatchik of the Nasserist regime, is already peddling that scenario. "Gen. al-Sissi is the best man for Egypt right now," he

nstitution stipulates that for the next eight years the Defense Minister will be appointed by the military, not whoever is elected president. Thus, Sissi could remain minister and exercise real power as he does now. As usual, the Obama administration has tried to hedge its bets by supporting the cou

d havoc in Sinai. For years now, Egyptian security forces have been battling a ghost in the desert. Since the 2011 uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak, militants have blown up the E FTA_R1_00298250 EFTA01883831 pipeline that supplies natural gas to Israel 15 times. Only weeks before the Ramadan

leiman and her eight children showed off stacks of date boxes, which she insisted were Selmi's only source of income. "We voted for Morsy to escape Mubarak's injustice. Now we don't believe in him! It's the same way they treated us in 2005 after the Dahab and Sharm El Sheikh bombings," Suleiman compla

del-Fattah al-Sissi, other than the fact that he is 57 years old and a former infantryman who was the head of the military intelligence service. If Sissi, Mohamed Refaat Shehata, the new head of the intelligence service whose EFTA_R1_00298266 EFTA01883847 appointment appears to be temporary, or Si