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Rantings of a Sandmonkey

Be forewarned: The writer of this blog is an extremely cynical, snarky, pro-US, secular, libertarian, disgruntled sandmonkey. If this is your cup of tea, please enjoy your stay here. If not, please sod off

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Yay for Egyptian security

In case some of you don't know or weren't aware, there is a group of US Marines and Secret Service agents currently residing in every major Hotel in Egypt. They are not there to protect any US visitor or anything of the like: They are there to secure the hotels , they have been doing this for a while now and they are there on a permenant basis it seems. You don't believe me, go to J.W. Marriot. You will see them there. The reason why they are there? Ehh, the Ministry of Interior has apparently acknoweldged its inability to secure those "terrorist targets", so they outsourced the job to the americans. Yeah. The country of 2 million policemen can not secure its hotels. Don't you just feel proud to be an egyptian? The pragmatist in me is not against it; I am glad we have someone there who knows how to do their job for a change. It's the principle that pisses me off, or what the news implies about the state of this country: We have become a country that admitedly can't even secure it's own hotels. That's how inept we are. Sigh...

8 Comments:

At 10/05/2005 04:18:00 AM, Blogger ritzy said...

Great post, very interesting, would like to know more. Sources?
You're tagged:
http://missmabrouk.blogspot.com/2005/10/hotel-security-outsorced-to-us-agents.html

 
At 10/05/2005 04:58:00 AM, Blogger The Sandmonkey said...

A couple of workers there Ritzy. First hand accounts. This kind of thing is not gonna be put in the media.

You can always go visit the J.W. Marriott and see for yourself. You will recognize them, believe you me.

 
At 10/05/2005 10:04:00 AM, Blogger Assem said...

at least we are not ignoring the problem and trying to do something about it.

But really what will a few marines do to protect the hotel from an attack. The only way to stop an attack is by having good intelligence.

 
At 10/05/2005 01:47:00 PM, Blogger This Thoughtful Idiot said...

Well, last week, I was at the Cairo Marriott. I can testify to the fact a whole bunch of U.S. military were there.

Now, were they guarding the place? Not from what I saw, unless you count hanging around by the pool getting a tan and then moving onto the terrace in the late afternoon to drink beer guard duty.

Nah, these guy were on R&R. I talked to them. If they were on guard duty, you would have seen them in their BDUs with their guns in clear sight. They wouldn't have been horsing around in the pool, sauna, steamroom, terrace, etc.

 
At 10/05/2005 03:27:00 PM, Blogger programmer craig said...

# I talked to them. If they were on guard duty, you would have seen them in their BDUs with their guns in clear sight.

True. Probably. US Marines from the embassy in Israel have, on a number of occassions, been sent in street clothes to evacuate tourists (not just American tourists either!) from dangerous situations. But this sort of thing is highly unusual. If there US military ON DUTY but not in uniform in Egypt, that would bother me quite a bit, I think.

#They wouldn't have been horsing around in the pool, sauna, steamroom, terrace, etc.

Well... not necessarily. A 24 hour shift for a security detachment is typically like this: 4 hours on Post, 4 hours on React, 4 hours off duty. Cycle repeats twice in per day. So, for 8 hours out of every 24, they could be "lounging around" doing their own thing.

I'm not really sure what to make of this. Any chance somebody can dig into it further?

 
At 10/05/2005 03:36:00 PM, Blogger Kat said...

Um..you all know that we just did Operation Brightstar with Egypt right? you know, that thing that we do every year where our military and your military gets together and practices beach landings and such (just in case the MB and AQ get together and take over egypt and the Egyptian free forces and US have to free you from their dastardly claws or in case some other country decides that the control of the Suez Canal would significantly damage trade with the west so we have to take it back; that kind of thing).

Now, onto why military is there. You should be aware that these guys aren't necessarily marines. Every guy in BDUs and a flat top is not a marine. However, even if they were, the military, not having a base in Egypt, often puts the Air force, pilots and rear-echelon guys up in hotels. The AF and pilots for comfort and the rear echelon guys because they come before and stay after to perform logistics, deploy and redeploy supplies and materials and do pre and post op review with the other cooperating forces.

Thus, you may want to NOT be spreading rumors that they are there to protect American property and Egyptian tourism since that is not their intent.

 
At 10/07/2005 08:34:00 AM, Blogger SavtaDotty said...

Next thing you know, they'll be hiring Israelis (like the U.S. Marines sometimes does, but don't tell anyone and I can't prove it).

 
At 10/07/2005 11:58:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is going to turn into a fantastic conspiracy theory.

 

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