Death Toll in Egypt Clashes Climbs to 525

This seems to be going down a path of getting much much worse.

Just to share a link, I think this covered pretty well a lot of the behind-the-politics how things got this bad.

I look at the Middle East and I see Central America in the 1980's -- an endless series of half-baked and bloody civil wars with the United States clumsily deciding which group of thugs to support -- but with more severe potential consequences and the added accelerant of religious mania. Our instincts back then were always lousy, and our choices back then were almost always bad. I don't see either the instincts or the choices as having improved very much here. The fact is that nobody knows what to do about Egypt -- or Syria, for that matter -- until the people there decide to stop slaughtering each other. If nobody knows nothing, then the safest course may be to do nothing.

Link

he U.S. military is heavily dependent on Egypt to move personnel and equipment to Afghanistan and around volatile parts of the Middle East, complicating U.S. efforts to place pressure on the Egyptian military in the wake of its violent crackdown on protesters.

 

"Egypt has been a cornerstone for the U.S. military presence in the Middle East," said James Phillips, an analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

 

During the past year, more than 2,000 U.S. military aircraft flew through Egyptian airspace, supporting missions in Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, according to U.S. Central Command, which is responsible for the region.

 

About 35 to 45 U.S. 5th Fleet naval ships pass through the Suez Canal annually, including carrier strike groups, according to the Bahrain-based fleet. Egypt has allowed U.S. warships to be expedited, which often means getting to the head of a very long line of ships waiting for access to the canal.

Ah, that explaisn a lot.