Nothing to do with terrorism, they said. The UAE are our buddies, they said. So why is it that they were known to go galavanting around Afghanistan in areas where Bin Laden operated openly?

The report states U.S. intelligence believed that bin Laden was visiting an area in the Afghan desert in February 1999 near a hunting camp used by UAE officials, and that the U.S. military planned a missile strike.

Intelligence from local tribal sources indicated ``bin Laden regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited the Emiratis,'' the report said.

Notice how things are starting to change among bloggers and the press, since we're being "assured that there is no security threat?" There is still evidence to show that the UAE government is not as anti-terrorism as it is made out to be. It's just one of the many reasons why I have said that Bush supporters are like Clinton supporters. A few words of good news comes out and all of a sudden, it was just a "communication problem."

I think this boils down to a very severe problem with the way that many Americans think about war and foreign affairs. A lot of Americans, probably most, think in terms of dichotomies. If you are anti-Bush, you must be at least sympathetic to Kerry. If you help us in part of our "War on Terror," you must be anti-terrorism. It's a fundamental weakness that is perhaps the greatest one that many Americans have in terms of understanding issues like this.

Just because the UAE is helping us fight our enemies, does not make them our ally. Islamists in governments in the Middle East have spent decades funneling cash and weapons to terrorist elements around the world in order to build up their movement. They do not appear to be Islamist on the surface to the casual onlooker, but their goals are the same. The House of Saud always seemed like a quaint, albeit corrupt, government to many Americans, but in fact they have spent quite some time funding the expansion of Wahabi Islam around the world to create an ideological base for their religious expansion by the sword. The Saudis let us work closely with them and seemed to be our ally in the Cold War and the Gulf War, even as they were (and still are) funding the rise of Wahabi Islam and its corresponding bloodshed around the world.

One can easily imagine scenarios where Islamists gain employment with DWI and end up bringing weapons into the United States through this deal. All it would take would be for someone with the corporate headquarters with a suitcase nuke to make an official visit to a port site, drive off for lunch into the middle of New York City and that's all she wrote. The very reason why we have to worry about this company is that if there are Islamists who have access to its shipping channels and corporate transportation, they will not be the raving lunatics of Gaza and the West Bank, but rather cold, dedicated and professional in the delivery of their attack.

It seemed ironic to me earlier today when Joe Carter dismissed this story as pure paranoia, considering his defense of the "wisdom of repugnance." It is repugnant to me, and many others, that we are allowing a foreign corporation with very intimate ties to its government, to own the port operations at some of our most important ports. Yes, I know about the Chinese COSCO corporation, and I don't support that either. The one does not justify the other.

I don't think that there is some organized conspiracy among right wing bloggers here, but it takes me aback that so many of them dismiss outright the legitimate criticisms of this deal. My question to the people defending this transaction comes down to this: what if you're wrong and they deliver a nuclear bomb into NYC? If we keep them from taking over, we can at least say that we tried. And enough of the sophistic comments about fear of this corporation's roots in an Islamic country. Considering the undeniable fact that Islamic terrorism is the most pervasive and widespread terrorism in the history of mankind, and arguably would be the most genocidal if suitably equipped, I have no sympathy for Islamic countries. It's not up to us to give them them the benefit of the doubt that Islam is a religion of peace and that they are dominated by a peaceful majority that encompasses almost the entire society. The Danish cartoon fiasco proves quite clearly that we have every right to be skeptical because the jihad is not some fantasy shared by a tiny minority.