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This is exactly where I'm at. I don't know why this is disastrous. It looks to me like the Democrats are playing off of the fears of the Republicans on this one.

I actually tend to agree with Bush on this one --- if you withdraw now, you have set back relations with Arab countries in a HUGE way. That set-back is, it seems to me, a greater harm than the potential risk.

Perhaps the initial decision was incorrect, again I don't know, but to withdraw now...(this all sounds very familiar)

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The 'potential risks' I've read about pretty much boil down to this:

The buyers are Arab and Muslim, and Arabs and Muslims are the people I see on the news associated with the terrorism I hear about and am scared about, therefore we can't do business with them.

Those who try a little harder to justify their opposition to the deal point out that some of the 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens (as bobman points out, something on the order of 0.0000008% of their population) and that they're "linked" to terrorism, although no one seems to know how specifically, nor do many seem to know exactly what the hell the UAE would actually be doing at the ports anyway. Since no one has anything resembling specific details, most of the outrage seems to be something similar to "wait...I don't think America should be doing business with these rag-heads. I don't know why, but I don't like it." Sounds like irrational fear to me, unless of course you're of the school that thinks all Arabs and Muslims are deserving of such fear -- which is of course how all Islamo-phobes justify their unwarrented paranoia anway. It's just vicious circular logic that demands we fear all Muslims because they're Muslims, and they're deserving of fear specifically because they're Muslim.

Democrats seem to be saying something like "wow, look at all the peanut gallery outrage, we smell an opportunity!" And they're apparently right, because it's generating alot of emotion (for reasons I still fail to understand).

That's how it looks from my vantage point, anyway. Maybe some facts other than "but cmon, these guys are MUSLIM!!! Don't you see the danger?!?!?" will make me change my mind and oppose the deal. Until then...