On Tuesday the Obama Administration asked Hosni Mubarak to step aside.
On Wednesday they said that transitioning power “now means yesterday.”
On Saturday morning the Obama Administration said Mubarak must stay.
On Saturday evening the Obama Administration said Mubarak should step aside.
On Sunday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Mubarak must stay in power.
On Tuesday the Obama Administration said that political reform will be a gradual process.
After days of conflicting reports the Obama Administration insisted today that their message has been consistent.
Yeah right.
The Politico reported:
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.
What rubbish. Even the Egyptian Foreign Minister said the messages coming from the White House were “confusing.”
