| Ok folks, so it seems not only did the Bush administration blindly trust Dubai with our ports, he gave them a sweet deal. Also, Tom Delay has betrayed his dear leader by speaking out against the Port takeover.
Much like this WaPo story portends to demonstrate, the Port issue is becomming a talking point battlefield. With Karl Rove battling a bi-partisan effort by calling those opposed to the Port sale xenophobic crazy folk who are basically anti-all-things-arab.
If you cannot see the potential security implications in this, then perhaps you can appreciate the foreign policy implications of this issue. This is, as everything else in this administration, a hypocritical foreign policy.
Wingers are constantly complaining about how Clinton didn't gun down Osama Bin Laden when he had an opportunity. It turns out, the UAE royal family was hanging out with Osama at the very moment Clinton had the chance to pull the trigger.
These ties are much stronger than Saddam's "operational relationship" claimed by Dick Cheney. We all know what happened with Saddam and his country.
We currently have sanctions against Iran basically for having ties to terrorism (they don't have the bomb just yet).
Given all of this, plus Bush's "with us or against us" doctrine, UAE is either a target for invasion or a country ripe for sanctions. One thing is clear, we certainly should not be expanding our business relationship with them.
It is bad enough we have to use them as pushers for our "oil addiction." If you can't wrap your head around this through all the fog of talking points, just ask yourself one question.
Would you go into business with a drug dealer? If you answer no, then you can understand why we shouldn't go into business with a terrorist supporting, suffrage free, religio-fascist government. At some point we need to stop propping up governments that have values completely antithetical to our own. |
