Posted on 02/09/2011 5:04:38 PM PST by Sub-Driver
White House, State Department move to end Egypt confusion
W.H., State move to end Egypt confusion By: Josh Gerstein February 9, 2011 07:28 PM EST
The White House is moving to stamp out reports that top officials — including Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — are sending conflicting signals about how best to resolve the crisis in Egypt.
On Wednesday, the White House and the State Department staged a 50-minute conference call for reporters Wednesday to insist that the administration’s messages on the standoff between embattled President Hosni Mubarak and demonstrators demanding his ouster have been consistent both in public — and private.
“We’ve been very closely aligned and coordinated as a national security team and will continue to do so in the future,” Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, told reporters.
Talk of a rift in the administration over Egypt picked up in recent days after Clinton seemed to offer support for Vice President Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s hand-picked lieutenant, as someone who could see Egypt through to elections in September. “It’s important to support the transition process announced by the Egyptian government actually headed by now-Vice President Omar Suleiman,” Clinton told a security conference in Germany Saturday.
On Tuesday, amidst reports that the administration was promoting the longtime Egyptian intelligence chief as a stabilizing figure, Biden spoke with Suleiman, but White House descriptions of the call didn’t include Suleiman’s specific role. “Vice President Biden urged that the transition produce immediate, irreversible progress that responds to the aspirations of the Egyptian people,” according to the so-called readout of the call.
Rhodes insisted to reporters Wednesday there was no disconnect, and that Clinton was not giving Suleiman the nod.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
We are governed by rank amateurs. God help us.
You mean this confusion:
Exact transcript from Mark Steyn’s opening first hour monologue on 2/7/11:
The administration has now clarified its position on Egypt:
(1) “President Mubarak is not a dictator and he should stay in office...” according to Vice President Biden
(2) “... but he needs to step down immediately...” according to Secretary Clinton
(3) “... and remain President to ensure stability ...” according to Special Envoy Frank Wisner
(4) “... and he should have resigned as President yesterday ...” according to Press Secretary Robert Gibbs
(5) “... paving the way to elections that must be held within three months ...” according to senior officials
(6) “... unless he waits till September, which is fine by us...” according to the State Department.
Got that? The official U.S. position is that Mubarak needs to go immediately, he needs to stay indefinitely, he needs to stay for a bit and then go, he needs to stay for a bit longer then go sooner rather than later, unless he decides to stay until September because he is standing in the way of the full bloom of a new Egyptian democracy, unless it turns out that he is all that stands between us and a Muslim Brotherhood takeover, because the Muslim Brotherhood are a radical theocratic tyranny in waiting, unless of course it turns out that they are reasonable moderate types we should have been talking to all along. So that’s the official Obama position verbatim from WhiteHouse.gov.
If you’re making that critical 3:00 AM call to the oval office and you get voicemail press buttons #1 through #6 for whichever Obama position on Egypt suits you best.
>> The White House is moving to stamp out reports...
Note that they’re not moving to fix their incompetence...
they’re “moving to stamp out reports” that ILLUSTRATE their incompetence.
Probably the biggest foreign policy blunder of our time.
Buffoons At Work
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
He did the same with Honduras in reverse.
The list, ping
Let me know if you would like to be on or off the ping list
“We’ve been very closely aligned and coordinated as a national security team and will continue to do so in the future,” Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications, told reporters.
Yeah right. Not so much. Again rather than spending time actually conveying a clear message they spent 50 minutes saying how the Obamanauts were right and everyone else in the world was wrong.
These people are not just liars they are idiotic liars.
Speakiing of Egypt, that was doubly brilliant of Palin to use Hillary’s 3am line regarding Obama’s fumbling of the issue. It hopefully sows further friction between Hillary and Obama, heh heh.
And if anyone doesn’t think he fumbled why this 50 minute presser as described above? The media is so criminally negligent...they blame everyone but Obama! It’s disgusting and unprecedented, very damaging to our country.
Tu veux, tu veux pas?
Looks like Biden’s foreign policy testing moment came two years into Zer0’s administration instead of six months.
If all else fails the White House plans to execute Plan 9 From Outer Space....Maximum Energy!
LOL I don’t want to laugh because it is so serious but they are like little kids. Did Jarrett and Obama forget their medication today and have hissy fits?
It is like a bunch of fourth graders. Will they make a FB page and whine about how the media are not reporting their club house meetings correctly?
The media cover and write fluff for them daily and they still freaking fail!
This is so funny!!! So why am I crying?
It is really had to be for and against all side all the time, while having you head up the brother hood as*.
You just need to listen to him say all of that it is amazing.
So, they’ve decided to be “consistent” by doing absolutely the wrong thing?
Well, not surprising from the Communist/Muslim Obama and the Communist/Muslim lover Clinton.
It like a ‘Chinese fire drill’ at State and the 1/2 White House.
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