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Obama dropped the handkerchief by signalling to the MB that the United States would not give substantial practical help to the Egyptians, Bahrainis, and Yemenis.

Exactly what "substantial practical help" could we have offered the dictators that run those countries?

That's what he told them -- it's called dissembling. Easy for a lifelong dissembler, and well-understood throughout the Middle East. It's just that a U.S. President hasn't done that before. Not to America's friends.

We have tossed "our friends" under the bus before. Remember the Shah or Batista or a host of other tyrants and dictators we have had to deal with. Nations don't have "friends," just strategic national interests.

Exactly what "substantial practical help" could we have offered the dictators that run those countries?

Diplomatic and moral support; police supporting services and equipment; realtime sigint and comint. Nonlethal mob-handling gear (disorienting gases, sleep gases -- hell, itching powder). Names and addresses and IP's -- intelligence around the clock. Orbiting flying intel centers (RIVET JOINT etc.), providing realtime intercepts. Background info on who's screwing Mubarak and why. We could have made it infinitely harder for the MB to turn out a flashmob without Mubarak's people knowing where, when, and how many -- and who, if there were a phat MB agitprop puke in charge.

We have tossed "our friends" under the bus before. Remember the Shah or Batista or a host of other tyrants and dictators we have had to deal with.

Batista got screwed by the International Left (formerly known as COMINTERN) working through the New York Times and other KGB exarchates manipulating American opinion. That one wasn't on us -- and we did put together the Bay of Pigs to do something about it. Too bad Jack Kennedy's guevos dropped off.

As for the Shah ..... yeah, you got me there, dragging that selfrighteous little pr*** Jimmy Carter's kill through the living room. Okay, I'll give you that one. But that's the only one I think we could really be guilty of having sold out. Maybe Somoza, but he screwed the pound-pooch when his goons executed that U.S. newsie on-camera. You don't do that to U.S. citizens, I don't care who you are. Even if it's a little liberal puke who insisted on sticking his nose into a hornet's nest.

That was Jimmuh again, by the way.

And the Vietnamese are on Ted Kennedy's conscience as he burns brightly in hell. Congress did that, not President Ford.

We stood up for, in no particular order, the Greeks, the Flips, the Turks (all against international Communists in the 50's), the Germans, the Austrians, the Izzies, the Egyptians (against Russian subversion), the Ethiopians (until Jimmuh showed up), the Afghans (until Jimmuh showed up), the Brits, the Frogs, the Taiwanese/Kuomintang, the Salvadorans, the Dominicans, the Cubans (so it didn't work -- so sue me), the Viets, the Laotians, the Khmers, the Thais, the Panamanian democrats, the Venezuelans and Indonesians (against the Communists in the 60's), the Chileans (ditto in the 70's), and who else have we got?

It's not like we've been lying down, eating grapes.