Tunesia, Egyt and now Yemen: a domino effect in the Middle East?

georgeob1 wrote:

That of course was part of the motivation for our intervention in Iraq.

Bullshit and you know it. Laughable

Cycloptichorn

Well, I supposed if you want to re-write history we all should be allowed to. Seriously, you are now going to say the US went into Iraq on shining horses to protect the citizenship from a civil war? Puh leaze... The USA, protecting the people of the world from Massacres.. what next George? ha ha ha

George--you have slipped rather easily from "one of the expressed reasons for our intervention to "this was a part of our motivation for doing so".

George, what the hell are you on about? You're delusional. When the Turks ruled the middle east, everybody, but everybody hated them. They are no leadership figure for the nations of the middle east. You been smokin' that whacky weed again?

Cycloptichorn wrote:

georgeob1 wrote:

That of course was part of the motivation for our intervention in Iraq.

Bullshit and you know it. Laughable

Cycloptichorn

It is simply a fact that this was indeed one of the expressed reasons for our intervention. Perhaps you believe our government was lying and had no interests in creating a reasonably democratic government in Iraq to replace Saddam's tyranny.

Given the fact that we have invested considerable effort in doing exactly that, it seems to me that you have a certain burden of proof here that you have not addressed at all.

In effect waving your arms and crying "bullshit" is not persuasive proof.

I'm not suggesting that the enterprise, all thiungs considered, was a good idea; rather that this was a part of our motivation for doing so.

Apart from that, Islam spreads right across the globe. The most populous Muslim nation is Indonesia. Do you think they'll follow the lead of Turkey just the PM pays lip service to Islamic purity?

The morning after Mubarak dramatically announced he would not run for re-election in September, his supporters waded into Tahrir Square by the thousands and suddenly, serious, prolonged violence reigned in central Cairo.

There were immediate suspicions that the pro-Mubarak demonstrators were not simply average citizens standing up for the man who has led Egypt for three decades -- suspicions that proved at least partly founded.

As battles raged between the two sides, some pro-Mubarak protesters were captured by his opponents. Some were terrified to be caught and begged for their lives, screaming that the government had paid them to come out and protest. Others turned out to be carrying what seemed to be police identification, though they were dressed in plain clothes.

Shadi Hamid, a Brookings Institution analyst based in Qatar, told CNN that the use of hired muscle to break up demonstrations "is a longtime regime strategy."

"There are usually a line of thugs outside a protest who are waiting there," he said. "They're dressed in plain clothes, and then they'll usually go and attack the protesters. Egyptians have seen this for quite some time, and that's why they were able to recognize what was going on fairly quickly."

The global rights group Amnesty International said it has documented the use of unsavory forces by Egyptian authorities to disperse political gatherings in election years.

"It looks like much of this violence is being orchestrated by the Egyptian authorities in order to force an end to the anti-government protests, restore their control and cling onto power in the face of unprecedented public demands for them to go," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, the deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International.

An Interior Ministry spokesman denied on state-run television that police identification cards had been confiscated from demonstrators. He said if they had been, they were were stolen or fake. But state television reporting Wednesday did not always match CNN's own observations of what was happening in Tahrir Square.

Several CNN journalists heard from pro-Mubarak demonstrators that they worked for the government. Staff from the national petrochemical company said they had been ordered to come and protest.

Amnesty International researchers said witnesses told them of "lorry loads" of pro-Mubarak supporters leaving Wednesday morning from Mahalla, north of Cairo.

"These (pro-Mubarak) protests were organized by the government and the ruling National Democratic Party," analyst Kamal Zakher told CNN. The government mustered government workers and lawmakers whose seats are threatened, he said.

"They were ordered to go out today. They are well organized and that is suspicious -- especially the use of camels and horses. These are abnormal techniques to demonstrate," he said, referring to the shocking charge of about 50 or 60 mounted men through Tahrir in the middle of the afternoon.

And Emad Shahin, a Mideast analyst at the University of Notre Dame, said "reliable contacts in Egypt" told him the counter-protesters were organized "by Mubarak himself," with the aid of businessmen who support him.

"The whole objective is actually to give the impression that there is still support for Mubarak and to force the demonstrators out of Tahrir Square," Shahin said. He said the embattled president "is presenting a very difficult choice before the Egyptian people -- either liberty or security -- and he is hoping that they will choose security at the expense of liberty."

...

State television called the pro-Mubarak demonstrators tourism workers. At least some Egyptians working in the tourism industry are known to be genuinely upset at the anti-Mubarak demonstrators, accusing them of hurting their business by bringing instability.

Zakher also said it was suspicious that security forces did not intervene to break up the violence.

"There were no police or military to separate the two crowds at the beginning and that's also suspicious enough to implicate the security agencies," Zakher said.

Journalist and protestor Reham Saeed told CNN she saw men with police uniforms go into hotels on the way to Tahrir Square and then come out wearing civilian clothes, joining the pro-Mubarak protesters. She called that an act of "betrayal."

State TV interviewed several people at the demonstration who said they backed the president because he had provided stability and independence.