COSCO is a government owned company that has run our ports for years. Somehow, we have survived. The UAE did not help Al Qaeda attack us in the past anymore than Germany, Switzerland or even ourselves. Remember that every one of the terrorists involved in 9/11 were in this country legally and many received their flying training here. Should we ban trade with ourselves? And we have absolutely no intelligence that says Al Qaeda is in their government. What we have is a 4 year old Al Qaeda propaganda statement published by a group a terrorists furious that the UAE was being so helpful to the West (and especially the US) in fighting terrorism.
You act as if the only thing that ties UAE to terrorists are these intellegence reports. Two of the hijackers came from there and funds for the training came through the government banks.
We'll just agree to disagree. I'm not saying the world is ending if the UAE runs our ports, but I am saying that I'm not comfortable with it.
it's a lot easier to do complete security checks on US companies than on a government company in the Middle East. I would not object to British-owned or Israeli-owned companies running US ports, but to let a "friendly" arab government run the ports is ridiculous. this is not based on racism, but on common sense. Stalin was our ally during WWII--should we have turned our ports over to him?
i am sure many of the home-office employees in the UAE will be sympathetic to hamas and al qaeda--will we be doing security checks on the home office employees? probably not. we will have to trust the UAE security forces to do this.
this is one of the worst deals i have ever heard of. it is a Clintonian deal. when some terrist incident is successfully run through a US port, what are people going to say? i guess bush will say that "No one could have predicted that turning our ports over to an undemocratic Arab regime (that has supported terrorists in the past)would compromise our security". He will then appoint a commission to study it.