"The United States has approved a business deal that would turn over the operation of six major American ports to a company that is owned by the UAE" (Miami Herald)
"President Bush has announced he will veto any moves to stop the takeover, saying the Arab company is as safe as any other foreign entity to run a stevedoring operation" Australian Broadcasting Corp.
New York's Democratic senators, Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, too, have objected. Clinton and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., expect to offer a bill to ban companies owned or controlled by foreign governments from acquiring U.S. port operations.
"Congress must stop this sale of American ports to foreign interests and, in an era of terrorism, prevent any more potential terrorist targets from falling into the hands of those who wish to destroy us".
©2006 Washington Post Writers Group
LOS ANGELES TIMES
“It only provides . . . Congress an opportunity to talk tough and pander to the terrorism-rattled xenophobe in all of us”
THE NEW YORK TIMES
“The United Arab Emirates is an ally, but its record in the war on terror is mixed. It is not irrational for the United States to resist putting port operations, perhaps the most vulnerable part of the security infrastructure, under that country’s control”
"We're very concerned about the level of rhetoric and the way that there seems to be the assumption that because a company is Arab it can't be trusted with our security," said Katherine Abbadi, executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee of New York.
7 comments:
After what happened in Iraq, whatever happens will seem miniscule.
I think it would be the worst thing that we could possibly do. Most especially right now. I don't mean to offend anyone here these are just my own personal opinions, but I am beginning to think that our biggest danger of distruction is George Bush.
He is a master of denial and a danger to us all. I am just stunned, STUNNED, that any of our ports would not be controlled by our own country.
This sounds outrageous !!
So not only does Bush talk out of his hat, he thinks through it as well? Sigh....the delusions of grandeur are transforming into senile dementia already!
:p
It is saddening to see that everyone thinks the notion of selling ports to a UAE company is a folly just because George W. Bush did it. It would have been received far more warmly had the spin been the following:
"In the past few weeks, President Clinton has been consulting a certain company owned by the UAE that is interested in purchasing ports in the United States."
Unfortunately for all the people who indiscriminately criticize anything George W. Bush does, the above sentence is not a fiction, it is the truth! President Clinton has, in fact, been advising the company from the UAE as to how best to acquire the ports.
While Bush has made many poor decisions in the past 6 years, this is not one of them. Sadly, due to his track record, this decision is being called a bad one as well. But, if Scandinavian companies (many of which, I imagine, are partly state-owned as a result of the socialistic government in place there) can own ports within the United States, what is wrong with a company owned by the UAE doing the same? Just because the UAE is a country is from the Middle East, we feel they are somehow less fit to own commercial properties within the United States? Since when did we begin discriminating based on racial origin (again)?
If we think this issue through carefully, a lot of us will realize that the stance we are taking reeks of racial profiling on the grandest scale. George W. Bush's endorsement of a group should not immediately condemn it in our eyes.
-SR
Rationally said, 'annonymous'!
Not many today think that way today, and that is a shame.
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