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But it's political corruption that will be Mubarak's legacy. In preparation for his visit to Washington, the aging strongman granted an interview with Charlie Rose. Here are a few of the choice statements Mubarak made, with a straight face, and largely unchallenged by the sychophantic Rose:
Mubarak: Look, we are a large country. And we have stability here. We enjoy stability...It is not on my mind to have my son inherit me...the choice and election of the president is open to the population in its entirety. It is the decision of the population to elect who would represent people. It is not for me to decide that. It is the decision of the people to elect the person who they trust...
There is freedom of speech...The more good opposition the more stronger our (inaudible).
Rose: Do you think the Bush administration was right to promote democracy in the region in the way that it did?
Mubarak: No...We do not accept pressures in politics or in interior domestic politics from any administration with due respect to all governments. We do not accept pressures on the pretext of domestic reform. It has to be home-grown. Reform has to be home-grown. And it is what the people demand...to accept pressure from an administration or another, no. This pressure might be against the interest of the people. I respond to the demands of the people...Democracy is there in Egypt. We have freedoms that were not there before. We have an election
of the president. We have freedom of the press. We have about 600 dailies and weeklies, give or take...We are doing reforms based on the demands of the people.
Rose: It is said that (Obama) will not publicly discuss human rights. He does not want it to be an issue, but that he will bring it up in private.
Mubarak: Your concept of human rights is a merely political one. Human rights are not only political. You have social rights. You have the right to education. You have the right to health. You have the right to a job. There are many other rights. And we are doing well on these fronts...We have a human rights commission...There have been many sentences against people who have breached human rights. It is not merely a political concept. It is social. It is health.
Rose: Much is written about the fact that in the election, the most - the last election in which there were more candidates, that since then, you have moved away and that you have cracked down on the Muslim Brotherhood.
Mubarak: These people whom you are talking about cannot form a political party, because our constitution maintains and stipulates that a political party shall never be based on a religious basis. They cannot form a political party. And this is part and parcel of the constitution as amended by the people. But the Muslim Brotherhood are there as (members of Parliament) as individual (members) within the Parliament. We have about 80 of them.
Rose: You've had emergency rule since 1981. Emergency rule. You should be confident enough in your leadership not to have to....
Mubarak: You do not grasp fully the emergency law. It has been there since the days of the British occupation. And it used to be called marshal law. We confine our recourse to the emergency law, to terrorist crimes. Otherwise it is the rule of law under the normal laws through the...courts of law.
Rose: But is it necessary?
Mubarak: We have two choices, either to issue a law to combat terrorism, which will be a permanent law. It was refused because nobody wanted a permanent law. And the second choice is emergency law that will be used exclusively against terrorist crimes. We have not used it for any intent to close down a newspaper or to contain or limit any movement, any freedom of movement.
Rose: The history of Egypt for the last 28 years is the history of one man, Hosni Mubarak...What is your legacy? What are you proud of?
Mubarak: What I will leave behind is that I have been working for - in public service for 60 years. I took part - I saw action. I rebuilt the country after military action. We revamped the entire infrastructure of Egypt. We are improving education. We are expanding education. We are building universities. We are doing many, many other things.
Well, one of the most credible truth-tellers about Egypt is a new organization called Voices for a Democratic Egypt (VDE), on whose Board of Advisors sits one of Egypt's most courageous human rights advocates -- Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, founding chair of the Cairo's Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies.
Ibrahim was arrested in 2000 for accepting a grant from the European Union and using the funds for "defaming Egypt's national character." He was imprisoned by the Mubarak regime, acquitted in a second trial, and now lives in exile in the U.S.
