Six largest US ports now controlled by United Arab Emirates

Barbara Fitzpatrick · Fri Feb 24, 2006 12:40 pm

We also cannot condone stupid behavior (handing over our ports to supporters of our enemies) because we have done stupid or evil (and I go with evil) things ourselves. We have two separate situations here. We need to stop both, but saying that we haven't stopped one is no excuse for not stopping the other. Their rulers won't kill our rulers (although it may not go vice versa) - but their rulers may permit, if not order, things that will kill our people - just as our rulers have ordered things that kill their people. What our rulers have done is not right. Giving them a bite at our people in response isn't right either. Fayetteville being as small as it is, and as centrally located, is not likely to be a terrorist target, so on that logic it won't matter to us here who runs the ports - however, many of us have relatives in places that are likely to be terrorist targets - and Fayetteville is not autonomous - it can't survive without the rest of the state, if not the nation.

Post by **Dardedar** » Sun Mar 12, 2006 1:57 pm

Post by **Savonarola** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 2:32 pm

I realize that many topics that have been and will be discussed on this board will be broad and encompass many specifics, but this thread has pretty much entirely jumped the tracks.

This thread is for discussion of the UAE port deal. Please stay on topic. The posts from this thread that concern the pros and cons of an official state have been split to here. Please continue other discussions in the appropriate threads.
Thank you for your cooperation.

-- Sav, Politics moderator

Barbara Fitzpatrick · Wed Mar 15, 2006 10:32 am

Well, the Dubai deal is off (& the Rs are trying to bring Clinton in, as in "well, he advised UAE, too" - when what he said was for them to cooperate with the investigation), but now we know that the rest of our port system is owned by other countries (Hillary introduced a bill to make foreign ownership of our ports illegal). Of course, Halliburton is the U.S. corp that will probably get the ports, so I'm not sure we're better off, but comments on that should probably 1) wait until it happens, and 2) go to a different thread anyway.