CAIRO — An Egyptian friend asked me if Washington backs the Muslim Brotherhood or the military that threw the Islamist party from power here last month.
“Whose side is the United States on?” he wanted to know.
Frankly, I didn’t know how to answer him — and it turns out, neither do many U.S. diplomats and intelligence analysts.
Several senior U.S. intelligence officers have told me they don’t see a clear U.S. policy — an American vision — for this volatile, oil rich land of prophets, religious passions and ancient scriptures. American policy, they said, seems to be reinvented day by day, veering from the management of one crisis to the next. Washington’s inconsistencies have been undeniable.
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This is a big win for the administration in three ways:
First, it deflects the media away from all the scandals for a while.
Second, if nothing happens they can say that the "enhanced" surveillance of the NSA has paid off and thwarted an attack.
Third, if something does happen they can say that the "enhanced" surveillance detected the attack but we need more surveillance mechanisms in place to get more complete information. And the sheeple will buy it.
