[July 4th]

I agree. Two points.

1) It's not as if the Dubai-based company is going to come in and replace all of the workers with Arabs. First off, they can't, for various immigration reasons. Plus, it's not like the employees who are there now are going to be replaced. About all that changes in a transaction like this is the name on the door.

2) As an economic policy, it doesn't bode well when the government starts sticking its nose into places where it shouldn't be stuck. For each government intervention in our free market economy, it makes it just a tad harder to attract foreign investment. Foreign investors do their research and say "why bother?" These are the same kinds of foreign investors who provide millions of Americans with jobs.

The fact is, these ports were already foreign-run, and regardless of how DPW spends their money, they must still run the ports under the American laws governing port operations. Frankly, I'd trust DPW more than P&O, only because DPW has the money to comply with the stringent DHS guidelines on security. Furthermore:

DP World, owned by the Dubai government, said it planned to keep P&O's headquarters in London and chief executive Robert Woods would continue to head the business. There are unlikely to be any job cuts as P&O will be run as a separate business, DP World says, as there is very little overlap between the operations of the two companies. Link

...Which only further demonstrates the "non-issue" that this port sale truly is.

[cripplecreek]

How much money generated will go into the hands of terrorists who seek to kill us?

[clawrence3]

Thank you for the info - I was going to post along those lines as well ; )

[showpromid]

July 4th is exactly right. This is a monumental non-issue being blown out of proportion by the media and some radio talk show hosts.

And I agree with Zogby, it's completely racist to be against giving this contract to UAE simply because they're Arab. Is this the message we want to send to the region? Even if you're our friends and allies in the GWOT, we're going to lump you in with Al Qaeda and treat you like pariahs?

Call me a Bushbot if you like...my gut reaction was to be opposed to this, but the more thought I give it, the more it looks like much ado about nothing.