Posted on 02/23/2006 11:45:01 PM PST by faithincowboys
Sounds like the promo for a soap opera.
Blood Justice?
Put down the paperback westerns. Matt Braun hasn't been elected to office, yet.
So let's say your kid decides to go to college in one of these port towns and the boom happens. Who do you blame? Just the UAE? Or do you want life imprisonment and nuremberg justice for the midlevel bureaucrats that said "The Hell with you, American People."
Bush is setting himself up to be blamed for terrorist attacks far into the future.
He is besmirching his legacy bigtime with this dumb move.
The Chinese tend to think generationally, something we westerns aren't familiar with. If they have any plans to take over this country it will be through economics and be planned to span many, many years.
"we lose Los Angeles to a Chinese nuke"
Okay. What's the bad news?
Smoke Jensen (The Mountain Man) For President!
Uh, I live in NYC. I'm aware of the risks. And I'm not crazy about the UAE deal. On the other hand, terms like "blood justice" also make me nervous...
You're right. Why wouldn't every Bin Ladenite on the planet focus on creating bloody havoc at these ports? If they were successful, they would cause a French Revolution in this country. They would effectively tear this country apart and symbolically end Bush.
After 9-11, Gen Hugh Shelton said in his confidence-inspiring (yeah, he was a Clinton appointee, but still) Southern way "Your armed forces are Ready."
If the zero hour hits the ports, no CJC could say that and make the people believe. The people would say, "You guys were bought byy dem der UAE Arabs and you sold us out."
Forgive me it is actually one of the few things Geraldo said that I agree with. Is it sensational? YES. I think he said blood debt.
But it's true. How can you do this. What if 45,000 Americans with families, dreams, mortgages, favorite sports teams died because of this nutty deal? Who answers for it?
Is "Sorry, we thought they were a-ok, sorry everybody died" a satisfactory response?
Get used to saying Chairman Leahy. We're losing the Congress buckaroo.
To be flat out honest --
A)I don't know enough about the deal as a "business deal." Right now it's almost impossible to find out anything since every side is spinning like crazy.
B)Generally, speaking, I'm inclined to have Americans running vital infrastructure. That doesn't assure 100% security, but it seems to make sense on a "gut level."
C)I don't know enough about UAE. I've heard good things and odd things about it, but that's only word of mouth.
Do you concede that we've had communist and Islamist infiltration of our government and military??
We had these infiltrations (i'm thinking of FBI Hansen) despite the fact that all of our societal cues were saying "Be loyal, be a Boy Scout etc." and our adversaries were unattractive fascists.
In a society like the UAE where all societal cues are saying, "Jewmerica, Infidels, insulters of Islam and the Prophet," it seems to me the normal trajectory is jihad and the oddball is thinking to himself, "America, whiskey, Sexy, no bomb belts."
If a nuke comes through one of our ports someday it won't likely be because of the nefarious UAE paperpushers in the operations office but rather because some Coast Guardsman skipped a briefing or some customs agent took an extra 10 minute break from inspecting every 50th crate on the dock!
We've always had traitors, yes.
But I just don't know enough about the key elements of the port deal to have an informed opinion.
So we've always had traitors. But most people don't betray, they follow society's expectations. The people of the UAE have to betray their culture not to kill us. Given that most people are conformist, the sleeper at DPWorld will be a small d democrat who doesn't think "Death to America" is a cool street corner chant. Ahhhh... I think this deal is very, very prudent. It's only slightly less security conscious than having Lara Flynn Boyle guard a Twinkie.
Yeah, the guys in Dubai who greenlighted AQ Khan's nuke shipments through THEIR part are going to be B1 Bob Dornan America Firsters if we just give them the keys to the ports of 6 major American cities. What anti-terror badasses the arhitects of this deal are!!!
Gut reaction is to put all U.S. ports under U.S. management.
Reason tells me that there won't be any security gains from U.S. only management of the ports. Security will still be handled by us and only management and administration of the port will be handled by the foreign company.
If you'll note, even under current management - U.S. or otherwise - port security has been diligent but not perfect, and that perfect security would cost us more than we can afford to pay.
As for UAE citizens gaining access to information about our ports... Frankly, most of that information is available from a variety of sources. I don't doubt that Middle Easterners and Muslims are employed at various levels in American and International companies that also manage ports.
Killing this deal would change absolutely nothing in regards to our security, and actually promote a false sense of security that could be fatal.
I would rather see real news about security problems, like our porous southern and northern borders. Our ports are fairly secure with diligent and multi-layered security that relies on information intercepts. And information is truly the first line of defense. Protecting the NSA eavesdropping program is more relevant to protecting our ports and our homes than who manages the ports.
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