Robert Scheer: Hey Obama, Read WikiLeaks!!

In his posting on truthdig, Robert Scheer advises our president that the Obama administration's response to the democratic revolution in Egypt has begun to exude the odor of betrayal. Now distancing itself from the essential demand of the protesters that the dictator must go, the administration has fallen back on the sordid option of backing a new and improved dictatorship. Predictably, it is one guided by a local strongman long entrusted by the CIA, Vice President Omar Suleiman, described by the US officials in the WikiLeaks cables as a "Mubarak consigliere." The script is out of an all-too-familiar playbook: Pick this longtime chief of Egyptian intelligence, who has consistently done our bidding in matters of torture and retrofit him as a modern democratic leader. But this time, the Egyptian street will NOT meekly go along. The first test was on Tuesday, after the weekend theatrics of Suleiman making a show of meeting with the opposition, but rejecting its demands. A huge crowd-inspired by a most most modern protest figure, a Google executive-showed up to reject defeat as a compromise. Defeat, because under Suleiman's plan all the levers of oppressive power would remain, including Hosni Mubarak as president and a state of emergency denying fundamental freedoms that date back four decades. Conning the masses with fears of a foreign enemy is a political art form in Egypt (and also in our USA) going back to the pharaohs, but this time, perhaps thanks to new empowering technology, or just too much suffering, it is not working.