Free Republic

Just listening to Mubarrak - He's staying, not bowing to foreign pressure( Adios Hillary)

"I have laid down a clear vision on how to resolve the crisis"--

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has announced he is will not stand down until elections have been held. In a televised address, the president said he refused to be the subject of foreign pressure. He said those responsible for violence will be punished. He promised to scrap emergency laws as soon as the situation in Egypt is stable. Rumours spread earlier this evening that the resignation of the president was possibly imminent after Egypt's military announced earlier it was taking measures to preserve the nation and aspirations of the people. The Higher Army Council held an ongoing meeting without President Mubarak...

Arizona senator and 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain is warning that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s decision not to step down could touch off “a much more dangerous situation,” and he called for the Obama administration to tell Mubarak he must resign immediately. “The volatility of the situation was already very high,” McCain said on Fox News, “and I think it’s been ratcheted up dramatically. “I think the United States had better be more clear in our message to President Mubarak, that we are very clear in our message that he needs to step down,” McCain said. Asked by host...

President Obama watched Hosni Mubarak's speech to Egyptians from the conference room on Air Force One, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs tells the pool. Obama is now headed to the White House for a meeting with his national security team, moments after Mubarak said he wouldn't step down but that he had given some powers to his vice president.

Mubarak-backers fire back at U.S.By YASMINE SALEH AND PATRICK WERR REUTERS Updated 8 hours ago CAIRO -- The government of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak hit back on Wednesday at what it called U.S. attempts to "impose" American will on a loyal Middle East ally, saying rapid reforms would be too risky. But as pro-democracy protesters consolidated a new encampment around Cairo's parliament building, the White House again said that Egyptian ministers must do more to meet the demands of demonstrators, who want an immediate end to Mubarak's 30 years of one-man rule and sweeping legislative changes. **SNIP** "When you...

Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., chairman of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, called Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's address "a sadistic tease" and predicted that demonstrations could turn violent. "He just lit the final fuse," Ackerman said in an interview on MSNBC TV. "And now I think the situation is going to verge on the explosive over the next 24 hours."

Although Saudi King Abdullah warned Barack Obama not to push Mubarak over the edge, according to reports by the Times of London, CIA director Leon Panetta believed the Egyptian president would step down.Just a few minutes ago, the New York Times reported that Mubarak refused to step down. Not only did the speech prove U.S. estimates wrong, it casts doubt over whether their game plan was ever working at all. Even as Mr. Mubarak spoke, angry chants were shouted from huge crowds in Cairo who had anticipated his resignation but were instead confronted with a plea from the president...

The Obama administration took the rare step Thursday of correcting its own intelligence chief after the official claimed Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood is "largely secular." Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discussed the Islamist group during a hearing on Capitol Hill earlier Thursday. He testified that the organization has "pursued social ends" and a "betterment of the political order," and downplayed its religious underpinnings. "The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' ... is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion...

U.S. sources closely involved in the government's handling of the Egyptian crisis told NBC News that they were "taken by surprise" by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's announcement and that it appears "Mubarak is going nowhere." The officials told NBCs Jim Miklaszewski that they were especially concerned about Mubarak's apparent declaration that he would "federalize the streets." They said, however, that their reaction was based on an initial translation of Mubarak's remarks. "We have assurances, both private and public that the military would not fire on the people," one of the officials stressed.

As the situation in Egypt heats up all day today..where's our Secretary of State? Just a few dayys ago, she made the rounds of ALL the Sunday talk shows. Today..nary a peep...What's up?

This just hit the internet, and we don't know if it's true. It's on IslamTimes, and frankly it doesn't read credibly because it ties his death to discussions about Egypt. Needless to say, were it true, it would only further concerns about Mideast stability at an already fragile time. Oil prices originally jumped on the news, but then that faded, perhaps indicating the market's disbelief in the rumor.

The White House won’t take the bait on Sarah’s Palin’s latest criticism, in which she said President Obama’s response to the crisis is Egypt was like a 3 a.m. phone call that was ignored. “This is that 3 a.m. White House phone call,” Palin said on CBN’s The Brody File, reviving an image from the 2008 campaign. “It seems that that call went right to the answering machine, and nobody yet has explained to the American public what they know ... and surely they know more than the rest of us know who it is who will be taking the...

Egypt is in the grip of revolutionary violence. The longstanding regime of Hosni Mubarak may be overthrown. If this happens, the consequences will be far-reaching. Egypt has the largest population and the strongest military in the Arab world. If a revolutionary Jihadist regime takes power in Egypt, then Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates will probably not survive. In that event, the oil-rich Persian Gulf will fall into the hands of radicals who are likely to use oil as a weapon against Europe, Japan and America. Following the pattern of other revolutionary regimes, the radicals will realign their respective countries...

The White House said Monday that the former ambassador President Obama sent to Cairo doesn’t speak for the administration, even after he carried a message from Obama to Hosni Mubarak. The envoy, Frank Wisner, said over the weekend that Mubarak’s “continued leadership is critical” in Egypt and that “it’s his opportunity to write his own legacy,” while the White House has suggested that Mubarak needs to leave power sooner rather than later. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Monday that Wisner “is not an employee of the government” and that he wasn’t speaking for the administration when...

The White House is now openly pushing for replacing Egypt President Hosni Mubarak with a temporary caretaker government that includes the military and is applauding a decision by Mubarak’s son to step down as head of the country’s ruling party. But a senior administration official said those steps weren’t enough - and suggested that Mubarak needs to take “additional steps” to quell the chaos in the streets of Cairo, which is threatening to sink Egypt’s already foundering economy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking to a conference of allies in Munich, Germany, on Saturday, expressed support for a transition effort...

Amid calls for President Hosni Mubarak to not wait until the end of his term to step down, the U.S. special envoy to Egypt told the Munich Security Conference that the 30-year ruler needs to stick around fro now. Frank Wisner, a former ambassador to Egypt deployed there this past week to apparently urge Mubarak to hand over the reins, said Saturday that the transition "is an ideal moment for him to show the way forward." Wisner spoke to the conference via video link from New York. "We need to get a national consensus around the pre-conditions for the next...

Frank Wisner, a former ambassador to Egypt who was sent to Cairo earlier this week by President Obama meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said Mubarak “must stay in office” to guide his country through important transitions in the coming months. “You need to get a national consensus around the pre-conditions for the next step forward,” Wisner told the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. “The president must stay in office in order to steer those changes through.” Wisner said he considered Mubarak’s continued leadership in his country “critical.”

US special envoy Frank Wisner has said that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak should remain in power to oversee a transition to democracy. The remarks appear to contradict previous US calls for Mr Mubarak to begin an immediate transition.

Anderson Cooper of CNN has clearly been one of the most active journalists in Egypt over the course of the past weeks, having done his best to report on the streets and also in the midst of near-constant violence. He has been punched on many accusations, had a car he was in destroyed, and at one point he was even trapped inside of an undisclosed building in order to keep both and his crew safe. So with all of this in mind, Cooper's announcement Sunday should not come as too great of a surprise. Here is what Anderson had to...