We have always had a powerful Southwest based corporate lobby in this country that sell high tech equipment, services, and weaponry to the Muslim world. Bechtel, Enron, Halliburton, etc. And it is embedded in the GOP. It has over the years assured us that Iran and Saudi Arabia were loyal allies because these were their prime customers. We sold them F14s, Phantoms, AWACs, F15s, and just about every high tech item in our arsenal. They had/have been our military-industrial complexes bread and butter customers.
But we know that their perspective was shallow and mistaken. They had intimate business relationships with corrupt elites. They hadn't a clue about the man in the street. It came crashing down when the Shah fell and on 9/11.
So now we have a procession of the same corporate interests and their assorted hangers on in the bureaucracy praising the UAE just as they praised Iran and Saudi Arabia and for the same reasons, and like sinkspur yelling "racism, racism" when their motives are questioned.
Yep, General Tommy Franks and Colonel Ollie North are hangers on. How dare anyone assume that they have a knowledge of the middle east, terrorism and national security greater then yours.
No one here that I saw called anyone names.
If we agree to disagree, that's what good discussion and FR are all about. If you are not happy that some don't agree with you, please don't be unhappy about that. That's what makes us better at understanding issues.
I do wonder if you see that by killing this deal, you may be advocating something that goes out of your control to become Smoot-Hawley part deux, in the middle of a 21st century war.
Iran controls the East side of the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The UAE controls the West. If the UAE gets no points for helping us apprehend an AQ bigwig in 2002, why should we bother with Afghanistan and Iraq?
Your problem is, you really are a Know-Nothing, and you don't know it. Your life is filled with boogeymen that you conveniently blame for all your problems.
To don't know that you don't know puts you in the same status with my one-eyed cat.
She gets through life pretty well, and entertains me a great deal, but she doesn't participate in any important decisions, nor does she weigh in with cliche-filled, conspiratorial posts about the "military industrial complex" on Free Republic.
In a sense, I guess, she's actually smarter than you, since she has the good sense to only do the things she can do.