There are two things we should be concerned about, in my opinion: dangerous individuals and small but deadly packages.
Both are extremely unlikely to arrive via shipping container while they can still arrive by plane or truck.
A 20 year old terrorist of Jordanian extraction with a Spanish passport and no criminal record coming on a work visa is far more likely to arrive on a plane than to be packed into a shipping conmtainer for weeks with a carefully concealed water and food supply and air-conditioning source, the connivance of a number of crewmen, the bribing or deceiving of multiple harbormasters, forging of inventories, etc. at the enormous personal and financial risk of dozens of individuals and multiple corporations.
A small and dangerous package is less likely to enter the US via a port, with police and inspectors and receiving managers and dogs and metal/radiation detectors than it is to arrive in the dead of night over the Canadian or Mexican border in the trunk of a used Honda.
Terrorists, like anyone else, are risk averse and avoid overly complicated scenarios with numerous risky steps.
I disagree. A dirty bomb or a large-scale chemical weapon explosion would be far more devastating than anything that could be carried by hand. And a large number of security experts believe that if such a weapon does make it here, it would arrive by shipborne-container. It would not even need to be offloaded to be set off. And IMO it would only take a couple of al Qaeda sympathizers being involved with the management of the company to help that happen.
Throw in the fact that the deal is contingent upon not having the second, more rigorous 45-day review and this just doesn't come across right without a far better review and a better defense from the Bush Admin other than the first use of the veto pen.
Make sure you PING me when the White House does something about the borders. This is just another symptom of this administration's inexplicable nonchalance about national security. And none of it adds up. Why commit our forces to Iraq if we won't even protect our own borders? Why let Syria run the Ba'ath insurgency with impunity? Why are we allowing Iran to go nuclear?
It doesn't add up and people are frustrated and the WH has done everything in its power to contradict itself on its stated priorities.
"There are two things we should be concerned about, in my opinion: dangerous individuals and small but deadly packages."
You left out shipping containers full of heroin.
Dubai is listed by the CIA as a place that does that.