Out of precaution, Marines on ready to go to Egypt to protect U.S. Embassy, citizens

[WestVirginiaRebel]

CNN:

U.S. Marines stationed in southern Europe have been put on alert as a precaution in advance of expected large demonstrations and potential unrest in Egypt this weekend, CNN has learned.

About 200 combat capable Marines in Sigonella, Italy, and Moron, Spain, have been told to be ready to be airborne within 60 minutes of getting orders to deploy, according to two administration officials.

The units have several V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft that would carry troops and infantry weapons to Egypt to protect the U.S. Embassy and American government personnel and citizens if violence broke out against Americans.

The planned demonstrations are aimed against the Egyptian government.

The officials both emphasized this is contingency planning in advance of the expected demonstrations to ensure American military assets, including rescue forces, can act if needed. In the event Americans had to be evacuated from Egypt and could not get to the airport due to the unrest, there are about 2,000 additional Marines on board three Navy warships in the Red Sea, officials said.

A third official said the decision to keep the warship in the Red Sea was "very precautionary."

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What could go wrong?

[Valin]

@WestVirginiaRebel

 

More Here

Clashes break out at protests in northern Egypt

The Arab Spring is not over.

Posted by some skinny old guy.

[Valin]

A Light Fails In Egypt

Walter Russell Mead

6/29/13

 

Is Egypts revolution falling apart? Clashes between anti-government protestors and Muslim Brotherhood supporters turned deadly yesterday, leaving at least threeincluding an American college studentdead. These clashes come ahead of massive country-wide demonstrations against President Morsi scheduled for Sunday. The NYT reports that on-the-ground forces are even speaking of a civil war:

 

(Snip)

 

Its hard for the American press to wrap its head around whats happening in Egypt. The Western media instinctively wants to view the conflict as Islamists vs. secularists or liberals, with the future of democracy at stake. The reality is both darker and more complicated, but at best only a handful journalists have the intellectual chops to make sense of this picture, or the writing ability to help American readers understand a reality so different from our own experience here at home.

 

 

(Snip)

 

Inexperienced 18 years olds who have grown up in corrupt, poorly governed societies, and been educated in trashy schools by incompetent hacks know very well that the status quo is unacceptable. Young people who know they are being ripped off and abused are typically not very patient. Throw in healthy doses of sexual frustration and contempt for an establishment that has lost confidence in its own capacity to lead, and you have a cocktail much more explosive than anything Molotov knew.

 

(Snip)

 

The really scary question in Egypt is whether things have decayed so far that the Army, either directly or indirectly, can no longer maintain order. Are so many Egyptians so angry, so disillusioned and so desperate that they will simply refuse to accept another stitched-up military backed state? If so, Egypt is less likely to explode than to implode: the economy would collapse further, food riots and other forms of violence would break out, minorities would face persecution and pogroms, criminal gangs would emerge. There could well be mass killings and civil chaos though, despite the clerics words, we dont see Egypt descending into a Syrian style civil war. Egypt lacks Syrias ethnic and religious diversity; the largest minority group, the Copts, are too interspersed with the rest of the population to fight a civil war and are neither well-armed nor well-organized.

 

(Snip)