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If one reads what Rumsfeld said (see maica's Post #215 above, and looks at the map:

then one gets another perspective on this. Rumsfeld said that UAE has been very cooperative with air and naval basing, and has a port able to take our aircraft carriers.

Then note that United Arab Empirates (UAE) is very close to the critical Straight of Hormuz, and very close to southern Iran. With Iraq on the west, and Afghanistan on the East, this gives us 3 of 4 sides of Iran. That's a nice place to be.

I doubt that Bush wants to come right and say this. The UAE would prefer we not make to public a point of their support in the war on terror.

Being in a strategic world war with an enemy who rules some of the countries, and who has significantly infiltrated the other fiefdoms, controlling an essential portion of your energy supply calls for a deft choice of words at time.

The stunning city of Dubai:

is the home port of Dubai Ports World and a huge trace, commerce and port center. You can just see Dubai marked on the map above, above the trailing "TES" of "UNITED ARAB EMPIRATES"

This part of the world is strategic to the oil and gas that is the primary energy source for civilization, with huge oil and gas fields in Saudia Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, southern Iraq, Iran and Turkmenistan.

The kind of war we are fighting is not like World Wars I or II. This war is sub critical -- the enemy lacks the military to take us on straight up in a frontal assault. Without that force threatening us, we can continue to expect a less than 100% focus on winning the war from many people. We need to be able to win using the excess strength of a robust economy, rather than the galvanizing force of a wide spread all out war focus by all our citizens.

Until we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil, which is many years out at best, we have no choice but to maintain some cooperative ties with some of the fiefdoms in this region, even though that too has its risks

Money speaks. We bring to the table the worlds largest stable banking system and worlds largest market. China brings the worlds largest labor force (but deposits their money with us, since our banks work) and the Middle East brings the largest supplies of easily gotten oil and gas.

The above analysis is, I suspect, suggestive of the motivation behind this decision. The corresponding analysis, that others have done explaining why Dubai's purchase will not threaten our security, can be made somewhat more public, though even that can't have all aspects spelled out. It would not help our security to give the enemy a road map to our port security measures.

This war will provide plenty of opportunity for all but the most sanguine amongst us, sooner or later, to be outraged at what we are, or are not, doing to win it.

Thanks

See also some decent looking maps and explanations of Iran's nuclear, military and oil resources at SecurityWatchTower.com.

Lots of other interesting stuff on that site.

I suspect this is what Chertoff was alluding to on MTP when he more or less said any further discussion was classified and he was not going to comment any further.

As was said on the Sunday Talk Show Thread for the sake of National Security that should have been the end of the issue but of course the talking heads will not let it go.

Thank you for this very thorough and enlightening report.

I know that the TV show 24 is just a show, but it does allow average Americans the chance to see some of what has to be done by our President sometimes---and just how much cannot be said during it all.