CBS Evening News anchor and managing editor Katie Couric is accompanying Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on a five-day overseas trip to several undisclosed countries. She is currently in Cairo, Egypt. Look for her reports next week on the Evening News and on 60 Minutes.
Arrived in Cairo around five this afternoon and was greeted by a very dusty dusk, caused (we're told) by the khamseen wind, as our convoy makes it to the hotel through rush hour traffic.
This is Secretary of Defense Robert Gates's first overseas trip since February when he traveled to Krakow for the NATO Defense Ministerial. He's been busy significantly altering the Pentagon's budget to address the changing threats the U.S. is facing rather than the age old practice of gearing up for a cold war confrontation. Less emphasis on multi-billion dollar weapons systems used for conventional warfare, and more on what soldiers need as they fight less organized insurgencies in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan.
Gates will be meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Their first encounter was in 1990 prior to Desert Storm. He says he'll talk to him about Egypt's role in the Arab-Israeli conflict and about the problem of smuggling supplies into Gaza through underground tunnels. There is a small press corps on the trip: The New York Times, Washington Post, AP, CBS Radio. CNN's new Pentagon Correspondent Chris Lawrence is the pool reporter.
We came over on a Boeing 757, part of the Air Force fleet.
Cocktail party for press before Sec. Gates has dinner with Egypt's defense minister.
We're on our own.
Light show at the pyramids, anyone?
This post originally appeared at CBSNews.com.
Sort of like the secret tunnels that are dug out of prison camps.
Not like the Lincoln Tunnel or the Holland Tunnel or the Channel Tunnel.
The situation in Gaza makes me think of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Nothing is ever the same but there are similarities.
How many semiconductor device fabrication plants are there in Gaza?
What is the business model for building in Gaza anyway?
Is Gaza just some kind of manual labor holding pen?
There is absolutely no comparison between military arsenals. USA money paid for the variety of sophisticated weapons used to indiscriminately kill the Palestinians.
Please Katie, we look to journalists to ask the tough questions and report all the facts, the facts that affect ALL human beings, not just some of them. Who are the victims and who are the ones victimizing? We all hear that Israel is the only Democracy in the ME........do democracies have discriminatory laws? Do they treat one group of citizens differently than another? Do they have roads that only some of the people can use?? Report on the facts please, thanks.
Lets hope we Americans finally change this unfair and unbalanced attitude in the Middle East, if we ever want lasting peace in the area, we have to return to the role of fair and honest broker.
Are the tunnels, the cause or a consequence?
As you know, we are months since the last cease fire is in place, but was the siege of Gaza lifted? Is the reconstruction underway? What are the life conditions of the 1.5 millions people packed there because of an aggression after another since 1947?
Ms Couric, I hope that a visit to Gaza may be possible for you, so that you can make your own assessment of the problem.
During the past 25 years of Mubark’s ruling (fair Presidential elections) the population in Egypt has become more radicalize and with one little spark the whole place will burn to the ground and there goes our TAX DOLLARS propping up another failed government.
Good job Katie, please report about the real stuff not the soup-operas..
Tied down as we are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and very fearful of events in Pakistan, there's little we could do militarily -- "rescue" troops would be out of the question, I'd think. The Shah of Iran once appeared invulnerable and was overthrown, this government looks much shakier.
Sooner or later, our sixty-year mideast folly will collapse -- an expensive failure that has served to inflame hatred for us in much of the world. Nasser tried to forge a secular, modern state, and after a good start in the Eisenhower administration, when we smacked down the joint British-French-Israeli grab of Sinai and the Suez Canal, (funny how the Zionists never mention that) our policy has resulted in an eventual victory for much less progressive Islamist groups who will win because they have not sold out their country. Eisenhower, unfortunately, was the last truly Israeli-lobby independent president.
Let's see what Obama does.
Arab-Israeli conflict, a land grab a - wait a minute it's not really the greatest land grab story in the mid-east. Lott and Abraham (according to my 3rd grade Sunday school teacher ) had the same problem in Genisis I think. As their tribes elbowed each other into a stalemate and though by tradition (Abe being the older uncle) it would be Abraham's call, he choice of parcels, but he gave preference to Lott and the good Lord, so the book says, showed favor to Abraham for it. What will the Israelis do? The Arabs?
DenverJJ
Just wanted to say thanks for your persistence in a particular interview of a particular woman at a particularly critical time in this country's election season.
Now, Gates is so focused on some Hamas guns and rockets. What about Israel's use of
white phosphorous and her undeclared nuclear weaponry?