EGYPT UPDATE – AT 8:53 A.M. ET:  After a few calming days, the Egyptian situation has become chaotic and confusing once more.  The Mubarak government is holding on, possibly even strengthening its position, as strikes and demonstrations start to spread again.

It was widely reported that Saudi Arabia has warned the United States against throwing Mubarak under the bus that's parked outside the White House – an extension bus by now – and has reportedly said that it would make up any foreign aid that the U.S. cuts from Egypt.  While the Saudi regime is pretty despicable, stability in Saudi Arabia is critical to the world's oil supply and energy prices.  From The New York Times:

CAIRO — As Egypt’s uprising entered its 17th day on Thursday, bolstered by strikes and protests among professional groups in Cairo and workers across the country, a senior official in President Hosni Mubarak’s embattled government was quoted as saying the army would “intervene to control the country” if it fell into chaos.

Among the latest to join the protests, thousands of chanting lawyers in black robes and physicians in white laboratory coats marched into Tahrir Square — the epicenter of the uprising — to join the clamor for Mr. Mubarak’s ouster.

Engineers and journalists also headed for the square on Thursday as the numbers there began to swell once again into their thousands, with demonstrators mingling among the tents and graffiti-sprayed army tanks that have taken on an air of semi-permanence.

The warning by Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit seemed to add a further ominous tone to earlier comments by the newly appointed Vice President Omar Suleiman who said the alternatives facing tens of thousands of demonstrators demanding Mr. Mubarak’s ouster were dialogue with the authorities or “a coup.”

COMMENT:  We didn't have a clear route for how this will end on the first day of the demonstrations, and we don't have a clear route now.

The U.S. has stepped up its public demands for the regime to bend to the will of "the people," whoever the people are, but American influence seems minimal, now that the Saudis have pledged to write the foreign-aid checks if we won't.  Also, Mr. Obama doesn't exactly project strength and determination, and there is a price to be paid.

February 10, 2011