The latest news out of Cairo is that the American Embassy is advising citizens to get the heck out of Egypt and is providing helicopters for expediency’s sake.   Turkey is doing the same, as the ancient nation implodes, in a scene all too reminiscent of the fall of the Shah of Iran.

According to Reuters, over 100 people have been killed and around 2,000 wounded in the upheaval so far.

As reported by the Associated Press, leading Egyptian dissident Mohamed ElBaradei proclaimed yesterday that the appointment of a vice president and a new prime minister in Egypt was not enough to end the revolt against President Hosni Mubarak’s rule.

In comments to Al Jazeera television, ElBaradie also said that Mubarak should leave Egypt as soon as possible for the good of the country.

The former UN nuclear watchdog chief warned:

I have respect for Suleiman and Shafiq, but replacing individuals is not enough.

I tell President Mubarak and his regime to leave Egypt as soon as possible. It will be better for Egypt and for you.

Mubarak has ruled Egypt for 30 years.

His two sons have already fled to safety in London, England.

19 private jets carrying families of wealthy Egyptian and Arab businessmen have also left Cairo, according to an official at the city’s airport.

The official said the jets left Saturday carrying dozens of family members of Egypt’s business elite. He said most of the planes were headed for Dubai.

With good reason…

It has also been reported that gangs of armed men laid siege to at least four jails across Egypt before sunrise Sunday, freeing hundreds of Muslim militants and thousands of other inmates as police disappeared from the streets of Cairo and other cities.

Hmmmm…I’m getting that ol’ queasy feeling again.

Widespread looting has been reported, as normal Egyptian citizens form vigilante groups to try to protect their homes, possessions, and families from the rioters and looters.

Where is the strong presence of the Leader of the Free World during this crisis?

Yesterday, he attended his daughter Sasha’s basketball game.

However, there was a two-hour meeting about the Egyptian situation held in the White House.  Whether that accomplished anything at all, remains to be seen.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under the Bush administration, expertly sums up the problem that Obama faces:

Let’s be clear what the stakes are for the United States. We’ve got an authoritarian regime in power that’s been our ally. We don’t know at this point what the real alternatives are.

Hey, shouldn’t Obama’s Secretary of State be all over this crisis, advising the president?  Where is the distributor of Smart Power!, anyway?

Hillary Clinton is flying to Haiti to be the mediator in a political crisis there.

The Secretary of State will meet today with President Rene Preval and the three candidates running against him. She will also take the time to visit a treatment center for the cholera epidemic that has killed almost 4,000 people.

The first-round presidential election in November that was marred by fraud, thus prompting Hil’s visit.

The U.S. Administration believes that Preval’s preferred candidate, Jude Celestin, should drop out of the election because the Organization of American States says he had the least support. The creators of Smart Power! have warned Preval that continued aid for Haiti’s reconstruction from last year’s earthquake is at stake.

Nice little country you’ve got there…

The island  nation’s presidential run-off is scheduled for March.

Speaking of putting out fires…as Egypt burns…did you know that the State Department does not even list The Muslim Brotherhood as a Terrorist Organization?

From discoverthenetworks.org:

In recent years, the Brotherhood has attempted to forge a reputation as a moderate and reformist Islamic group that has renounced its violent past. Lending plausibility to this reputation has been criticism of the organization by radical Islamist groups, who have condemned the Brotherhood’s willingness to participate in the political process as heretical. These groups have also criticized the Brotherhood for supposedly abandoning violent struggle as a means of establishing an Islamic empire.

…Even as it is deemed insufficiently militant by some Islamist groups, the Brotherhood has had a discernible influence on contemporary jihadist terrorism. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, was a member of Muslim Brotherhood. More prominently still, Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood preacher, was a mentor to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

In May 1991 the Muslim Brotherhood issued to its ideological allies an explanatory memorandum on “the General Strategic Goal for the Group in North America.” Explaining that the Brotherhood’s mission was to establish “an effective and … stable Islamic Movement” on the continent, this document outlined a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” for achieving that objective. It stated that Muslims “must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and ‘sabotaging’ its miserable house by their hands … so that … God’s religion [Islam] is made victorious over all other religions.”

The Muslim Brotherhood has even met with the Obama Administration over the past year as reported by Richard Pollock at pajamasmedia.com:

Last month [January], U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and her senior staff privately met in Washington, D.C., with a select group of Muslim, Arab, and Sikh organizations. Among the mix were three organizations directly associated with an outlawed terrorist entity — the Muslim Brotherhood.

Secretary Napolitano spent an hour and a half briefing them on Department of Homeland Security (DHS) counter-radicalization and anti-terrorist programs. The intensive briefings spanned two days (January 27 and 28) and were called by the DHS.

Doesn’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

The Egyptian Crisis appears to be a lit trail leading to a barrel of gunpowder.  God help us.