UAE Port Deal

[Stu Pidasso]

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This whole thing is being orchestrated and is a brilliant move by the republicans.


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I've thought this too.

If the UAE company hasn't already purchased the British company, they will probably withdraw thier offer(because politics made the British company suddenly less desirable).

Bush wins becuase he and by association America as a whole isn't precieved as snubbing its arab allies.

Republicans win becuase they distance themselves from Bush.

Stu

[MtSmalls]

And that would still be 2 more than were from Iraq...

[morphball]

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OK guys, there are 2.5 million people in the UAE. Despite being overwhelmingly Arab, they are actually not all terrorists. It would be both disgusting and terribly damaging to our current image war in the Middle East to disrupt this deal solely because the buyers are Arabs.

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Are you forgetting about 9-11? How many hijackers were from the UAE?

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2.

2/2,500,000 = 0.00008%.

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This is misleading, IMO. First there are way more than two terrorists in UAE. Just look into the nationalities of suicide bombers in Iraq. Second, how many sympathizers have to exist in order to produce one suicide bomber?

These people have to be surrounded by many many many others who feel the same way. They need mosques filled with pro-terrorism clerics and pro-terrorism members. They need friednds I would bet that it's closer to 10% minimum of the country that at least morally (if not financially or otherwise) supports terrorism.

That said, I haven't made my mind up about this deal...I need more info

[vulturesrow]

I'll tell you what is going on here. Many Repubs on the Hill see this as a chance to disassociate themself from Bush come election time if they believe they need to do that to be re-elected. I dont think Bush did on purpose to give them an election year whipping boy, rather I think he actually realizes that this A)isnt a big deal and B) is rather important for our Middle East relationships. I just dont get the outcry. Oh and for all you squawking about security, you realize that overseas we routinely allow the citizens of that country onto our military bases on a regular basis? Even in places like Qatar?

[canis582]

One of the times we were gonna assasinate Bin Laden, we held off because we would have killed half of the UAE's royal family. Lets enrich them.

Vr,

You folks can justify anything, cant you. Here are the battle lines: Its the Bush crime family and the arab royal families vs the american people and the arab people.

[dustybottoms]

First, the Hillary Clintons of the world have to stop making this out as if we're turning security matters over to the UAE. Inspection and security issues will still default to DHS, Coast Guard, and local law enforcement.

But guys like Bill O'Reilly have to stop lying by saying that everyone wants to quash this deal FOREVER. This is about a secret review done by the Administration, once again without keeping Congress in the loop. Honestly, I think there's an excellent chance that we have nothing to worry about here. That being said, however, since this deal will now involve a company closely aligned to its government, who may have lingering terrorist sympathizers, the President and Congress should have been informed earlier.

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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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So the easy solution is for Congress to pass a law forbidding the outsourcing of our port management to ANY foreign entity--that way, the Arabs won't feel too slighted, if Great Britain, or Israel, or Canada would be forbidden from running our ports too.

The larger point in my opinion, though, is that current public relations with the Arab world (or with anyone else for that matter) is far less important than our security.

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Lets turn it around. Suppose because of this the UAE stops letting us fly U2s and other aircraft out of its country.

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If the UAE were to do that then there is more to it than merely "feeling snubbed" and they would likely have either an ulterior motrive or conflicts of interest.

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If this happens there is a chance one of our U2s will miss collecting valuable intelligence which we could have used to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Or perhaps becuase we we lost our base in the UAE, we weren't able to get that predator drone up in the air to kill a Yemeniese terrorist cell planing to suitcase nuke Phoenix. Although the risks may be miniscule the consequences utterly disastourous.

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That's a further-fetched and loosely contrived example than the very direct scenario involving smuggling nukes into our ports. I don't think the two scenarios are really comparable.

Are we to base our most vitally important security decisions on whether or not Middle Eastern nations "don't feel snubbed" or whether or not they "really like us"? Not a good criteria at all IMO. And as in another post, simply passing a law forbidding ANY foreign entity from running our ports would help the UAE and Arabs save face in this instance as well as helping to insure our future security.

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We can't just outsource our security to any country relying on that there is "ANY EVIDENCE that their proposed purchase is suspicious in any way." No, we need to be SURE--but we can't. So outsourcing our security to any foreign country is a bad idea, and outsourcing our security to an Arab Muslim country is a worse idea, and outsourcing our security to an Arab Muslim country that has a fair amount of terrorist activity going on is yet a worse idea.


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Hi MMMMMM,

Can you tell us exactly what is being outsourced. Apparently security of those ports has and will continue to remain the responsibility of the USCG. How much of an impact does this company's operation have on actual port security?

Stu

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The contract is for $6.5 billion...they are doing more than cleaning the toilets.

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Then since you oppose this deal, surely you can tell us what they'll be doing?

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I haven't made any opinions on this deal, I just heard about it yesterday, but it is silly to believe the Coast Guard handles all of the security at ports. The Coast Guard functions like the police, meaning they only come when they are called or when when someone does something illegal right in front of them.

So the question is, can we trust the company to call the police?

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And trust them not just now, but in the future; and trust all of their lower-level management as well.

[Nepa]

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I wouldn't wish for my WORST enemy to deal with the American longshoreman's union. These people are the laziest and most militant union people in the world.

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Great plan, lets make our country less secure just as long as we can bust up a union. Hmmmm, How about this? Lets sell all of the Schools to Bin Laden! I'll say it again Great plan.