Ask yourself if you are really all that comfortable suddenly calling me a koolaid drinker just because I don't want our ports given over to a Muslim government when most of the world's Muslims want us dead. UAE, just like Saudi Arabia, is cordial to us publicly, but I don't trust them enough to control our six biggest ports. Hell, I wouldn't trust the British government to run our ports because I don't think it they should be controlled by any foreign government, but handing them over to a Muslim government is just stupid. BTW, did you actually read what I posted or do you assume that I'm just like anybody else who disagrees with you?
And for how this will make our ports more vulnerable, I'm still trying to figure out what I could say that would satisfy you in that fashion. Most Muslims want us dead. UAE is mostly Muslim. Rumor has it that some crazy Muslims have a nuke. The easiest way to get one of those into the country is by ship. The ships are checked by the people who own the ports they're going to. If a Muslims country owns the ports, then this Muslim country will be inspecting the ships. If it turns out that the crazy ones really do have a nuke, all they have to do is find one Muslim supervisor that's sympathetic to their cause to get a nuke into a harbor. With a government running the thing, it'll be far less likely that they'll be more careful about things like background screening, since government agencies don't typically look to be profitable, like corporations do. That is, of course, assuming that that government isn't looking to stab us in the back, which is very likely, and then it's even more dangerous.
If the company stays in the hands of a private firm, you can be damn sure that they'll be as damn sure as they can be that they aren't hiring any Al Qaida members to inspect crates for suspicious or dangerous cargo. I really don't know how I can make it any clearer than that.
BTW, I'm a red meat-eating, gun-toting, small government, low taxes, grunting, rough and tumble, red-blooded American conservative, so don't be calling me a Koolaid drinker. Them's fightin' words.
I, personally, am dissapointed at both you and dillo. I know you're better than this, but both of you are doing what I tend to attack several board liberals for, and that's attempting to say that we have the burden of proof and then dismissing any sources we give as horribly biased without even looking at the facts they present. Even the New York Times has some good articles in them.
