An American official here said the hope was that Mr. Mubarak’s ultimate replacement would be someone who maintains the same historical appreciation for peace and relations with Washington. In other words, Mubarak’s successor must be, like him, an American stooge.
A Suleiman government would have an out-and-out criminal at its head. The Egyptian vice president—appointed to that post only last week by Mubarak—is better known as the chief of Egypt’s notoriously brutal security apparatus. He is directly responsible for the torture of thousands of political prisoners, a role for which he was especially prized by the CIA, which regularly shipped prisoners to Egypt for treatment that could not be administered in Guantanamo Bay or the agency’s own network of secret prisons.
...
If Mubarak is replaced by a caretaker regime based on the military, both the Obama administration and the American media will swing behind the new rulers, vilifying all popular opposition as "terrorism" and endorsing the bloodiest measures of state repression.
Far from representing a concession to the democratic demands of the masses, such a regime would represent a carefully constructed roadblock. It would cement the role of the Egyptian government as a servant of US imperialism, collaborator with Israel, and enemy of the Palestinian people and the oppressed masses of Egypt itself.