In recent days President Obama has let it be known that he is disappointed in the performance of the nation's intelligence agencies for having failed to warn him of the instability of the situation in Egypt prior to the outbreak of anti-government protests and rioting there.
Now your not so humble blogger is no fan of what passes for an intelligence establishment in the U.S. After all, they had no clue of the weakness of the Soviet regime before it collapsed, and it kept us in fear of that regime's prowess which turned out to be capable of using its missiles to (on a good day) hit a target the size of Nebraska. Nor did it provide advance warning of significant developments such as India's acquisition of a nuclear capability.
But is the supposed leader of the free world (or, perhaps more accurately, the pretender to that title) indicating that he previously believed the situation in Egypt to be a reliable and stable one? All but the most doltish and insular among us have long recognized Egypt as a seething cesspool of instability, kept under control only by the brutally repressive tactics of Mubarak's omnipresent internal security apparatus. That harsh apparatus kept the lid on but the underlying pressures mounted steadily and for years it has been commonly recognized that the death of the old and ailing Mubarak or any of a wide range of other possible sparks would result in at least (and probably far worse than) what Egypt now is experiencing. Our president apparently was not privy to, and did not share that universal knowledge, and was depending on an intelligence agency to impart it to him.
What are we to make of this?
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