Obama knew

Comparisons of Barack Obama to Jimmy Carter are all too easy these days, with Egypt apparently going the way Iran did under President Carter's benign neglect. But for all the evidence that would tend to paint Obama as Carter II, there's a crucial, even sinister difference that was made clear in congressional hearings on Thursday. Obama had ample forewarning of the uprisings in Egypt. Don't expect this to be played up in Obama's hip-pocket media, but according to the Associated Press: Top CIA official Stephanie O'Sullivan told senators Thursday that Obama was warned of instability in Egypt "at the end of last year." She spoke during a confirmation hearing to become the deputy director of national intelligence. Our president had at least a month's heads-up about the trouble brewing in Egypt, and presumably Tunisia -- which was being organized on Facebook long before any merchant lit himself on fire, the incident the White House is saying started the whole Middle East ruckus. Despite that knowledge, and knowing that the Muslim Brotherhood was involved up to its elbows, the president still used his State of the Union speech to encourage Tunisian rioters, whom he characterized as "pro-democracy." The anti-Mubarak faction in Egypt is similarly being classified by the White House, and the liberal press, as pro-democracy, despite the ample and clear evidence that the violence is fueled by the radical Muslim Brotherhood for the purpose of installing a hard-line sharia state. When George W. Bush was in office, the Left tried to connect him to 9/11 by virtue of his having received an intelligence briefing months before the fact that Muslims were up to something somewhere in the U.S. Many on the Left used that flimsy excuse to call for Bush's impeachment (the first of many such calls). But now we have a president briefed a month ahead of the fact, publicly encouraging the rioters and deliberately ignoring the involvement of radical Muslims. And now, Obama has welcomed the Muslim Brotherhood into Egypt's interim government. Carter let Iran fall due to his own stupidity and naivete about the Muslim rebels. Bush failed to stop 9/11 because of a communication breakdown in the intelligence agencies. But our current president's actions raise an ominous question: Did Obama want this to happen?