Last December, U.S. News provided the lowdown on Dubai:
From Egypt to Afghanistan, when terrorists and gangsters need a place to meet, to relax, maybe to invest, they head to Dubai, a bustling city-state on the Persian Gulf...Dubai also serves as the region's criminal crossroads, a hub for smuggling, money laundering, and underground banking. There are Russian and Indian mobsters, Iranian arms traffickers, and Arab jihadists. Funds for the 9/11 hijackers and African embassy bombers were transferred through the city. It was the heart of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan's black market in nuclear technology and other proliferation cases. Half of all applications to buy U.S. military equipment from Dubai are from bogus front companies, officials say. "Iran," adds one U.S. official, "is building a bomb through Dubai." Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents thwarted the shipment of 3,000 U.S. military night-vision goggles by an Iranian pair based in Dubai. Moving goods undetected is not hard. Dhows--rickety wooden boats that have plowed the Arabian Sea for centuries--move along the city center, uninspected, down the aptly named Smuggler's Creek.
While the UAE supported the Taliban, they don't recognize Israel.
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The Dubai deal has focused attention on the lack of security upgrades to our nation's infrastructure, including the ports. The recent 9/11 report card is riddled with Ds and Fs for issues such as funding homeland security based on risk (is Kansas at risk of attack?) and creating a common radio frequency for emergency responders.
The backlash against the Dubai deal is also the product of fearmongering by the Bush administration, and reflects our country's lack of understanding of the real threat to our security: fundamentalist Islam. Until we understad the threat, not much will be done about it.
Bush's entire political philosophy for the past five years has been to scare the public into voting for him. Now he says, "We've looked into this, you don't need to be scared." If the picks up the foot of fear that he's positioned across the throat of America, he's done for. What else does he have?
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