Bob Dole joins the United Arab Emirates
This post was published 3 years 8 months 28 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.…to fight for them to gain control of US ports.
A delegation from the UAE is in Washington to lobby for the deal, and the company has hired former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole to assist them.
I can just imagine how he will work this one out when he talks in his usualt third person.
For those who are out of the loop, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates (a goverment) is buying a private company owned by the Brittish to control the commercial port operations in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. The UAE won approval from a secret US committee that cleared the UAE from any national security concerns.
The State Department describes the UAE as a vital partner in the fight against terrorism. But the UAE, a loose federation of seven emirates on the Saudi peninsula, was an important operational and financial base for the hijackers who carried out the attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the FBI concluded.
Do you think this is right?
GAH
Bob Dole doesn’t like blink tags
Bush is okay with torture, eavesdropping, indefinite detention of US citizens without trial, ‘extraordinary rendition’, and who knows what else, all in the name of ’security’.
But blocking a business deal with major security implications, which could further weaken the security of our already weakly defended ports? No way, buddy, that’s one step too far. It’s VETO time!
I live in Baltimore and I’m not afraid of this happening. The ports will still be watched over by Homeland Security (even though they do a poor job anyway) and local law enforcement. I don’t think we would be as dumb as to give up complete and absolute control to a foriegn power on American soil. Just a bunch of hoopblah.
It’s sad to see so many liberals jump on to the bigoted anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bandwagon. I’m sure that the company buying these ports will make damn sure that security is top notch, from fear of being kicked out of the US.
As James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute, said, “Bush is vulnerable so the Democrats jump on it. The Republicans feel vulnerable so they jump on it. The slogan is, if it’s Arab, it’s bad. Hammer away”.
People need to take a deep breath and think about this logically or we can all continue to scream “The arabs are coming, the arabs are coming! Lock up the women and children!” and then ask why do they hate us?
They may well do a fine job at protecting us, but we can’t ignore the potential for corruption just to be politically correct.. To me, the idea of it is as absurd as if we were to employ a company from Uzbekistan to oversee our ICBM installations during the Cold War. It’s ridiculous. The UAE have about as much business maintaining our national security as the United States does overseeing the adoption of a democracy in Iraq.
Furtermore, coming in at a close second behind my safety, the biggest problem I have with the whole idea is that there are thousands upon thousands of capable people within our society that could use the work. Our government is too busy worrying about the well-being of strangers in other countries than they are about their own citizens, now, obviously , to the degree that they’re willing to entrust our safety to a potential rogue nation.