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OT: Airlift of 3,000 Secret Servicemen to Cairo |
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sjf53
Valued Member Joined: April 06 2008 Location: Arizona Status: Offline Points: 400 |
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Posted: May 31 2009 at 11:09am |
I know this security is needed but wondering what the cost will be??Airlift of 3,000 Secret Servicemen to Cairo to secure Obama speech to MuslimsDEBKAfile Special Report May 31, 2009, 8:51 AM (GMT+02:00) Typical scene on US president's travels abroad US president Barack Obama has not yet decided whether his historic speech reaching out to the Muslim world will be delivered on June 4 from a lecture hall at Al Azhar University in Cairo or its main mosque, DEBKAfile's Middle East sources report. If the second, his address will take place in the presence of Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the Sunni Muslim world's greatest religious authority. In any event, Al Azhar is the most eminent school of Islamic learning in the world and the US president therefore expects its impact to far outweigh his first address to Muslims from Istanbul. His arrival from a meeting with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on June 3 is planned to add extra weight to Obama's dramatic outreach to Muslims, since the king officiates as Custodian of the Holy Places to Islam. Radical Muslims will therefore have all the more reason for rejecting it. Giant transports have been landing at Cairo airport, unloading a fleet of armored vehicles, White House helicopters, counter-terror weapons and the vanguard of the 3,000 Secret Service officers backed by CIA and FBI personnel who will secure the US president during his stay in Egypt. Cairo will soon be in turmoil as forces are deployed from a command center at the American Embassy to control sections of downtown Cairo, with guard posts on the Nile River's banks, the international airport, main railway terminals and approaches to the city. Some 30,000 Egyptian security personnel including army units stationed in Cairo have been placed on special duty until the American president leaves. Their names and those of the welcoming party at Al Azhar University were submitted to the US presidential security center. Obama is due to land in Cairo Thursday at 10 a.m., drive to the Abidin Palace to meet President Hosni Mubarak and proceed from there to Azhar University. His convoy will be escorted by vehicles equipped with sensors for detecting firearms and explosives and covered by Marine helicopters overhead. Until the last minute, the president's routes to the university have been withheld from Egyptian security authorities as a safeguard against leaks to hostile elements. |
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sjf53
Valued Member Joined: April 06 2008 Location: Arizona Status: Offline Points: 400 |
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I think we need to invest in our military.......... Embarassing.
Washingtion Wire > WSJ BlogMay 31, 2009
1:10 PM
Plane Trouble Grounds Robert Gates in SingaporePeter Spiegel reports on Robert Gates’ Asia trip. As if tensions over North Korea hadn’t already made Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’ annual trip to East Asia complicated enough, he now finds himself facing another unexpected challenge: a broken airplane. Gates’ high-tech Boeing 747 — which is specially equipped to communicate with submarines in the sea, bombers in the air, and fight a world war from high above the earth if necessary — was grounded in Singapore Sunday after a series of mechanical problems, which have plagued the aircraft since his five-day Asia trip started Wednesday evening. Gates was scheduled to fly to the Philippines Sunday. The irritated defense secretary will try to get back under way Monday morning, 24 hours after the close of a summit in Singapore of regional defense officials. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the flight crew believed the plane would be fixed overnight, but the Air Force was flying in a back-up plane just in case. “Despite the later arrival, the secretary still anticipates being able to conduct all of his planned engagements in Manilla,” Morrell said. The mammoth aircraft, originally built in the 1970s, is informally known as the “Doomsday Plane” because it was acquired by the Pentagon at the height of the Cold War to serve as a national command center in the event of an emergency. It is hardened against the effects of a nuclear blast and electromagnetic radiation. |
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