With the benefit of some additional hindsight and cooler heads, one is hard-pressed to argue that the proposed transfer of operational rights to a UAE company remains significant to any material degree. I don't recall the final decision, as the last I can remember is that the matter was simply delayed for further due diligence. I can vaguely remember that the company eventually withdrew the bid, but I'm not sure what eventually happened. While Bush clearly misjudged what the public reaction would be, he was really placed in a no-win situation. As I understand it the prior contract holder was a British outfit that was purchased by the UAE company, resulting in the proposed deal. Bush either had to stick it to the Brits and the moderate Arabs or pander to American fears. He eventually gambled on supporting the longer-term interests and paid a political price. As other comments noted, the Democrats did evidence some clear hypocrisy in complaining about the deal when having previously denounced xenophobia, alleged fear mongering, and fought any form of racial profiling. (I don't recall anyone in the media calling them on it however.) In the big picture the fears seemed unjustified in that the users of port facilities are a much greater danger than the operators (though collusion could be an issue) and any drastic regime change in the UAE would have resulted in an immediate reaction by port security. The bottom line is that given the ultimate resolution (assuming there is one presently) and the now passed political ramblings, this is currently a non-event when compared to other items on this list.

That deal was never going to give control of port security to the UAE government, but that fact is beside the point. The significance of the event is that Bush so badly misread the attitude of the American public on the issue.

That would be just opening another door for the terrorists to get weapons into the country (as if they haven't already).

A poorly calculated and obvious political pay-off. This puts ammunition on the table for the shrieking leftists who love to screech about what a moron they deem W to be. He's not a moron but this decision/move was not his finest moment.

Democrats and Republicans are unified on this thinking it is a big deal and I tend to agree with them. It sure looks like it on the surface. Giving control of major ports in the US ( Where we are admittedly vulerable) to an Arab country that can be infiltrated (easily) by our emenies just is asinine. This from the President who has promised to protect us from Terrorism. Doesnt this seem fishy to everyone? It should. It reeks of a political payback in the guise of "Creating goodwill in the Middle East". Anyone else out there buying that? Hey Louiethe20th : Republicans AND Democrats are against this. There's a big difference between selling a country jets and selling them access to the USA.

Update:If the UAE wanted to hit us they have other ports around the world with which to send something our way. Why would they need to own the rights to the ports in order to attack us? They could do that at anytime. What people are missing is the fact that they would still have to obey U.S. laws, the Coast Guard would still have juristiction and, yes, the Unions would still supply the workers! You would not have a bunch of Arabic workers driving around the docks on fork-lifts. The only reason Hillary and Chuckie Shummer are so involved in this is their pandering to the unions as usuall. Also, why is nobody talking about Bill Clinton selling the UAE 60 U.S. fighter jets in 1998? Why doesn't anybody talk about the leader of Dubai staying at the White House(maybe in the Lincoln bedroom) during the Clinton presidency? If the Dems are so worried about National Security (which they are not) why have they done everything in their power to undermine Bush's attempts at twarting the terrorism?(OM)The Democrats think that Arabic nations buying our ports are a threat now, but why were these people not a threat any other time? The British currently own these ports and, for the record, the U.S. owns zero ports anywhere in the world.The UAE own several others around the world and according to our Navy the port in Dubai is the friendliest and the port that makes them feel the safest in the world. The UAE would be investing 8 billion dollars in this deal, do you think they would allow anything to jeopardize their investment? The bigger picture is that the U.S. is only inspecting 5% of cargo imported into U.S. ports. That is a much bigger concern to me.

I don't feel comfortable with this "deal". I've heard the pros and cons, but I don't like gambling with the lives of Americans. It's becoming clear that the ports are already very vulnerable. It would be foolish to tempt fate any further. It's really time to stop all this political posturing. Terrorist don't care if you are a democrat or republican--they just want to kill "Americans". I've read some of the comments posted by some very intelligent people. Some are so intelligent that they can't see the forest for the trees. Sometimes you have to take out all the "melodrama" to see things clearly. If we renege on this deal, we will offend the Arabs. If we gamble and lose, a lot of Americans will lose their lives--not to mention the damage to our ecomony. I'm not willing to take that gamble. If our government had handled this situation correctly in the first place, we wouldn't be in this situation. If there are no risk, why so much secrecy? A little common sense goes a long way!

I don't like the idea of selling the operations of key seaports to the U.A.E., but foreign ownership of key national assets may become a reality if we keep up our spending habits. A state owned corporation in China already owns a large terminal in the port of Los Angeles and Singapore has numerous operations throughout the country. Certainly there is a precedent for this. The main contention with this deal is that the company in question is owned by the government of Dubai. Additionally, it has been claimed that the Bush Administration did not perform adequate due diligence with regards to this company, specifically the U.A.E. governments ties with terrorist organizations. Certainly, the US and Dubai have been good allies for 30 years. They have been especially helpful with the War on Terrorism. But, what causes me to take pause here is the potential for regime change in the U.A.E. Look at what happened with Iran, a nation which under the Shah was America's best ally in the region until it fell to the radical element, which was oppressed for years. Iran was (and still is in many respects) the most Westernized nation in the region. The point is that the political landscape can change very rapidly. Given the sensitive nature of our ports, a geo-political shift could literally mean that an enemy regime could be running our ports. This is not a xenophobic statement, nor is it racist to imply so. On principle, I agree with Bush that we ought to help Arab nations integrate into the world economy, and I understand the need to maintain good relations with the Arab world in general, but the security situation here is rather unique. Some have also claimed that the media should ignore this issue and concentrate more on the corruption or the out of control spending in Washington. However, the foreign purchase of key piece of national infrastructure has everything to do with these issues. Increased foreign ownership of national assets is going to continue to be a reality, especially given that personal and public debt has increased so much over the past 10 years, so much so that our rate of savings is now lower than it was during the height of the Great Depression. The US has been financing its trade deficit through debt. Essentially, what the Federal Reserve does is sell Treasury securities to central bankers. Subsequently, the holders of these Treasury bills--Asian, Chinese and Saudi central bankers, end up financing our high debt. The Federal Reserve also uses these injections of capital to keep interest rates low. However, such a strategy is merely a holding strategy, for inflation is already on the way up. At the rate were going, in a matter of a few years, foreigners will own a majority of US capital stocks. China and the Saudis can do significant harm to the US if they decide to unload those bills, which represent US debt. But dont count on this doomsday scenario happening. More than likely in such an event, they will simply transfer those T-bills over into equity investments; in other words, they will invest in US assets like our factories and ports. What can cause them to unload their investment in our debt, paradoxically, is their inability to invest in American assets due to the public's opposition to such controversial foreign buys. Unfortunately, it seems to me that our careless spending habits have put us between a rock and hard place. The best way to minimize damage would be to cut back on spending across the board in order to reduce our deficit and structural debt. However, no one in Washington seems to want to make the sacrifice, as usual. Theyre more interested in scapegoating and playing political games rather than solving problems.

I personally am against this, but looking at it objectively, if Red China owns a big chunk of shipping and port facilities on the West Coast, what could be wrong with the UAE? This is more of a union deal than anything else.

Talk about letting the fox guard the hen house! Definately reason for concern.

A non-story, IMHO. Pure xenophobic drivel. My preference is not to sell our ports to terrorists, but that doesn't seem to be an option on the table, so I'm not stressed about it. Nothing would be better for the Bush administration than to keep this crap and Cheney's shooting spree in the news - it keeps discussion away from real issues like torture, corruption, cronyism, Congress and Bush's obscene spending, and the like.

Another reason to despise the MSM, and another opportunity for posturing by blowhard politicians. Does anybody really believe Hillary Clinton is concerned about national security? She'd sell this country for a song if it meant she could become queen of hell for one day. And Diane Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, our two conniving libtard senators here in the People's Republic of Kalifornia, are using this opportunity to get their sound-bytes and photo-ops out to the public, posing as sentries for Fortress America. Maybe they should do some posing on the Kali-Mexican border, where the real security threat lies.

Wow, how much incompetence can there be regarding a single story? Those democrats who oppose the agreement, the ones claiming for months and months that the administration has been pimping out the issue of arab danger, suddenly have found that racial (or ethnic) profiling is perfectly OK to do. You can't profile Arabs at the airport but in the bid process, it's perfectly acceptable. Ask Bill Clinton what he thinks of the UAE, and how much money they've paid him in speaking fees over the past five years. He thinks they're pretty good guys (in spite of Hillary's stance). Those republicans who oppose it must believe that it's such a hot issue they could part company with the president who has championed national security since 9/11/01, making it the centerpiece of his entire two terms. They think they can out-security the national security president. And those who aren't even able to pretend to know what's going on are simply pounding the table in their "I hate George Bush" drumbeating. One thing is for sure: if you don't know who had the contract before, which cities it covers, what is the scope of the responsibility of this firm and who made the decision, you should do some reading lest you look uninformed when the facts (which are available to everyone) come to light. Isn't this a story that was pushed off the front pages of American media outlets while the press was outraged about Cheney's accidental shooting accident? I thought it was. Let's face it, the American media (with a few notable exceptions) are desperate to "pin" an ugly story on Bush and continually look like little kids in a snit every time they misfire.