I never thought I’d long for the days of Colin Powell as Secretary of State. He may have been a James Baker, but Condoleezza Rice is turning into a Warren Christopher.

When the Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt arrested and imprisoned Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a well-known Egyptian sociologist, democracy activist, and dual U.S.-Egyptian citizen, both the Bush administration and Powell’s State Department put their foot down and held up some aid until Egyptian authorities released Ibrahim.

The Egyptian government is now furious that Bush met Saad Eddin Ibrahim at the recent Democracy and Security conference in Prague. They have cut off e-mails in and out of his Ibn Khaldun Center and are interfering with its telephone system. His employees have been threatened. Second term George W. Bush and the Rice/Burns’ State Department is silent. U.S. credibility is on-the-line.

Then again, when the Bush administration continues uninterrupted its outreach to Tehran despite that regime’s imprisonment of dual U.S.-Iranian citizens, why shouldn’t Mubarak feel he can get away with such behavior?