It is interesting to me that Obama has the whole professional State Department available for him for advice. Either he is not taking advice or he is getting bad advice. I wonder which is true?
He had bungled, bungled bungled. He acts like he couldn’t sit on the board of a small hamburger franchise.
Al Jiz had on a retired Major General of the Armed Forces Security and Intelligence who repeatedly called Mubarak’s speech literally “Insane,” as if Mubarak has lost his grip on reality and is mentally ill.
That might be the pretext for the Military to step in under the “He’s Nuts!” pretext.
He couldn't. He's totally unqualified.
I have to think that the professional State Department is reporting straight information, so far as they can ascertain it. (The internal dynamics of the Egyptian government may not be accessible to them at the moment.)
I suspect that the political State Department (to some extent) and Obama's foreign policy team to a much greater extent, are operating based more on ideology than information or sound judgment.
My sense of Obama's strategy is that he's trying to publicly embarrass Mubarak into doing "the right thing," as Obama sees it.
There's no telling what, if anything, Margaret Scobey, Obama's ambassador to Egypt, has been saying in private. She's career foreign service with a lot of Middle East experience.
My guess is that Obama has been running open loop on his public comments, not coordinating them with State at all.
What was that phrase again? Oh yes... "Above My Pay Grade". Ah-yup.