What do you find when you lift up a rotten log in the woods? Rapid scuttling by zillions of tiny beetles and worms and things with many legs. This has nothing to do with my present post, of course, which is about trying to understand why Bush is so adamantly behind the UAE contract on several American ports.
First, Digby tells us what is really behind this whole deal, or at least one part of it:
From what I just heard from Senator Warner on CNN, it's about maintaining access to the ports, as I guessed earlier. (Airfields too.) Ed Henry just said the UAE hosts more of the US Navy in the gulf than any other country. If we diss them and refuse to scratch their backs, they'll get upset and pull back permission to dock our ships in their country. It's nothing personal. It's strictly business.
Strictly business...
And then there is this America blog story (via Atrios):
The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.
These routine restrictions include keeping copies of business records on U.S. soil...
It's all bidness, isn't it?
I have more to say about the current debate on the possibly racist nature of opposing the UAE takeover of several American ports but that must wait until later.