Wisner's the man on the ground, a guy who has first-hand info. He's obviously been talking and checking around.
What's truly astonishing to me, is that all of the waffling and Large Statements by Obama and his team, have evidently been made without good information -- and/or whatever information they had, was trumped by Obama's typically idealistic thinking.
It's awfully late in the game to be changing course like this. It would have been very easy for Obama to keep his mouth shut until he knew more. But he didn't.
From a domestic political perspective, I think this ends up being a Big Deal.
I agree that it’s a big deal. This means that a few more of the more sensible people in the State Dept may actually have decided they don’t want to be waving their fannies in the air or wearing a burqa anytime soon.
So are we going to have a State/WH conflict? Wisner was Bambi’s “choice” about the same way that a kid’s dentist ws the kid’s choice. Maybe there are some grownups there.
And while a lot of them are serious leftists, maybe they don’t want to unleash the 12th imam either.
I hope they can hear the would-be 12th Imam pounding on the closet door even as we speak...
He had plenty of practice.
How many times did he vote present?
This bunch makes the Carter administration look good.
1. Obama gives televised address, taking credit for Mubarak's decision to retire when his term ends in September.
2. One day later, Gibbsie says that Mubarak "has to go...now" and "now means yesterday".
3. Today, Wisner, the guy on the ground, says that Mubarak must stick around -- to manage an "orderly translition".
This administration isn't just not on the same page, they're not even reading from the same playbook.
All of this is funny as hell -- the 3 stooges in a clown car, if you will. But, in foreign relations, being a joke is the recipe for disaster.
“What’s truly astonishing to me, is that all of the waffling and Large Statements by Obama and his team, have evidently been made without good information — and/or whatever information they had, was trumped by Obama’s typically idealistic thinking.”
Oh come on, he’s never done that before.
“I don’t know – not having been there and not seeing all the facts – what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two that the Cambridge police acted stupidly ...”
In an attempt to throw water on Wisner’s remarks we have this from the BBC:
2043: US State Department spokesman PJ Crowley: “We have great respect for Frank Wisner and we were deeply appreciative of his willingness to travel to Egypt last week. He has not continued in any official capacity following the trip. The views he expressed today are his own. He did not coordinate his comments with the U.S. government.”