dinger:
I think the racism charge is unfair. If we don't like Cuban policies, does that make us racist against brown-skinned peoples? When some Americans disagreed with France and Germany before the Iraq invasion, was it because they were mostly white-skinned people there? I think that if every time we have an issue with a country comprised of people of a different race we're charged as racists, we have seriously limited our foreign policy options.

Having said that, I'm sure there are people that are racists against Arabs, but I don't think everyone who thinks this deal should be reviewed more closely fall into that group.

gadbearr

ITJock, you are the international history buff. Wasn't this what gave the Israeli Army a hand up when the plane and hostages were captured back in Uganda when they raided Entebbe? Didn't Israel have the contract years before to run the airport so they knew the place like the back of their hand? In this case it was a good thing. [/QB]

HotlantaTarheel:
UUUGGGHHH!!! \"Arab\" is NOT a race! Anthropologically speaking, this is an often misused term. Arabs are simply people who are from Arabia or those who speak Arabic. Iranians are not Arabs, nor are Afghanis, Turks, or Kurds.

gadbearr:
Has anyone here thought about WHY the UAE even wants to manage our ports? Was it some type of test to see if we would allow them to do so? What is their motivation to manage these ports? We have to realize too that nothing may happen for many years if anything happens at all.

This could be a very long range plan to manage our ports now, gain access to all plans, systems, schematics etc. and then down the road they turn over the management to us or some other country but they still have all the details of these port systems and plans.

ITJock, you are the international history buff. Wasn't this what gave the Israeli Army a hand up when the plane and hostages were captured back in Uganda when they raided Entebbe? Didn't Israel have the contract years before to run the airport so they knew the place like the back of their hand? In this case it was a good thing.

MIB:
The Democrats are being awfully cynical over this ports issue, having for some time said that national security wasn't as important as other things.

MIB:
Did I quote them? No.

thersis:
so let me get this straight...

mib is basically using as an argument, \"it depends upon what the meaning of 'said' is\".

oh, the irony!

We are focusing today on one sentence in a two-page U.S. document officially known as number AFGP-2002-603856. It is a 2002 letter in which al Qaeda says that it has infiltrated United Arab Emirates security and other agencies.

It was a warning siren document that should have raised urgent concerns at the highest level of the U.S. government. President Bush and his entire team initially dozed through the alarm and apparently expected we all would, too. They rushed to approve a bid by Dubai Ports World (a United Arab Emirates company) to buy a British firm that runs six major U.S. ports without publicly addressing the obvious questions the document raises.

The document, a letter from the al Qaeda terrorist organization to the United Arab Emirates government, mainly warns UAE officials to stop arresting al Qaeda's \"Mujahideen sympathizers.\" The second paragraph begins with a potentially chilling boast: \"You are well aware that we have infiltrated your security, censorship, and monetary agencies along with other agencies that should not be mentioned.\"

This document was not exactly a tip top government secret. U.S. officials could find and read it (in its original Arabic or English translation) in the files of various government counter-terrorism agencies. But you can find and read it too. Just check out the Web site of the Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and peruse the list of unclassified documents. It is the one that says at the top, \"In the Name of Allah the Most Compassionate and Merciful,\" followed by a warning title, \"Get the Idolaters out of Arab Island (Gulf Countries).\"

While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was ripping President Bush's handling of American ports management, Bill Clinton was pushing for one of his favorite White House aides to be hired to defend the deal. The former president proposed to the United Arab Emirates his onetime press secretary, Joe Lockhart, as Washington spokesman for the UAE-owned company, Dubai Ports World.

The Lockhart deal was never consummated. But the spectacle of the two Clintons going in opposite directions on the port-management question exposed a Democratic fault line. Widespread public reaction against outsourcing control of the ports was seen by Sen. Clinton and other prominent Democrats as a chance to outflank the Republicans on homeland security in this year's elections. But behind the scenes Democrats aligned with the Clinton family were lobbying for the UAE.

The lineup over DP World raises questions about how Bill Clinton's free and easy political manner will impact his wife's prospective presidential campaign for 2008. Highly disciplined Hillary Clinton plays politics by the numbers, following a carefully plotted strategy. Her husband's freewheeling, intuitive style was typified when he tried to secure a well-paid assignment for Lockhart, who heads a Washington-based media firm.

According to well-placed UAE sources, the former president made the suggestion at the very highest level of the oil-rich state. The relationship between him and the UAE is far from casual. The sheikdom has contributed to the Clinton Presidential Library, and brought Clinton to Dubai in 2002 and 2005 for speeches (reportedly at $300,000 apiece). He was there in 2003 to announce a scholarship program for American students traveling to Dubai. Certainly, the emirs would pay the closest attention to any request from the former president. Lockhart did confer with DP World officials, but the UAE sources said Lockhart's asking price was much too high.

UAE sources, contending that Lockhart priced himself out of the market, asserted there was no question but that Clinton had intervened on his behalf and added it was not possible that Lockhart had not known about the intervention. Clinton's press spokesman Jay Carson said, \"I don't know for sure, but I don't know him to generate employment even for someone he likes and admires as much as Joe Lockhart.\"

While Lockhart may have been a bridge too far for DP World, the UAE has reached out to high-priced Washington lobbyists on both sides of the aisle (including Republicans Bob Dole and Vin Weber). Leading the way in putting together the port deal was Jonathan Winer, a Democrat who spent 10 years as Sen. John Kerry's aide. Winer's associate at the Alston & Bird law firm supporting DP World is Kathryn Marks, who was policy director for then Sen. John Edwards.

In contrast to Democratic operatives working behind closed doors are Democratic lawmakers attacking the ports deal. Speaking to the Jewish Community Relations Council at Manhattan's 92nd Street YMCA on Sunday, Sen. Clinton went beyond questions of homeland security. She called the Dubai deal \"emblematic of a larger problem\" of ceding \"some of our fiscal sovereignty.\"

Does that put the Clintons on a collision course? Not exactly. Having failed privately to hook up Lockhart with DP World, the former president publicly turned on his old friends from the UAE last Friday in a speech at Auckland, New Zealand. DP World, he said, \"is from UAE, where some of the money from 9/11 was laundered.\" If Democrats in general are divided publicly and privately on this issue, so is Bill Clinton as an individual.

\"It's my interpretation that the Byrd Amendment is pretty clear, that if you look at the legislative history, they certainly didn't follow the law that I thought they should have,\" Shelby, R-Ala., said in an interview after a congressional hearing on the Dubai Ports World deal. He referred to the 1992 law that requires extra national security review of some foreign investments.