White House: U.S. to Review Aid Policy with Egypt

[Hissyspit]

Source: Reuters

US to review aid policy with Egypt-White House
Fri Jan 28, 2011 8:24pm GMT

WASHINGTON Jan 28 (Reuters) - The United States will review its aid policy toward Egypt based on events that take place there in coming days, the White House said on Friday.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs made the comment at his daily news briefing about what he called a fluid and dynamic situation in Egypt and government efforts to crack down on sweeping protests in major Egyptian cities.

"We will be reviewing our assistance posture based on events now and in the coming days." said Gibbs.

Washington gave Egypt $1.3 billion in military aid and $250 million in economic aid in the 2010 fiscal year. (Reporting by Steve Holland, Alister Bull and Jeff Mason)

Read more: http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFN2817509420110128

[The Stranger]

1. Wait, what?

They're going to cut off aid if their autocratic puppet strongman is overturned by popular uprising?

WTF is going on here? Shouldn't it be the other way around?

[leftynyc]

4. You foresee a good outcome from this

and that may come and it's what we're all hoping for. If religious freaks take over, yes, I want to stop the aid.

[customerserviceguy]

6. You have to dangle the aid as a carrot

to whatever government takes over from Mubarak, if such a thing happens. For three decades, our dollars have bought peace between Egypt and Israel. Surely, the cutoff of over a billion dollars worth of aid is going to make a lot of people over there think about what happens when all they're given to subsist on is religious bullshit from some mullah. It's not like Iran, which had oil, Egypt has pretty much nothing but tourism to sell.

[Uncle Joe]

7. That could be one way to read it, but perhaps the Obama Administration could just as easily

be using this as leverage for a peaceful transition trying to dampen an iron-fist crackdown by the Mubarak Regime.

That would be the high road strategy and could gain favor with the Egyptian People; they certainly deserve a legitimate democracy and the U.S. would be on the right side of history if this were the case.

[Poll_Blind]

2. As clear as it gets: The U.S. has little use for an Egypt run by The People. n/t

PB

[Maine_Nurse]

3. No, they are concerned about MB in power...

There are a lot of ways this could go. Iran '79 V2.0 is one of those possibilities at this point.

[defendandprotect]

5. Maybe we need to lend them more money so they can buy more of our weapons?

Maybe we need to train more of their soldiers to serve dictatorships -- ??

[Solly Mack]

8. K&R