Pretty much my sentiment:
"Dubai - I don't have to tell you - is an Arab nation. Yes, two of the 9/11 hijackers were citizens of the UAE, but, then again, as Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute notes, Richard Reid, the attempted "shoe bomber," was a British citizen, and Jose Padilla, among others, is an American citizen (as was Timothy McVeigh). The UAE has been a staunch ally in the war on terror, training security forces in Iraq and helping to cut off the flow of money to al Qaeda.
Isn't this precisely what the United States preaches? Don't we want places like Dubai to fight terror and to grow, to invest, to buy, to trade, to adopt Western commercial practices, to expose themselves to the rest of the world and thus become tolerant and moderate?"
My only quibble is Jim Glassman's assertion that the Bush administration has a good record on homeland defense. I think, by now, we know that this administration is functionally incompetent on any number of levels; and I have close to zero confidence in its work to protect America. But that has nothing to do with P&O. If people are worried about the ports, they need to scrutinize the Coast Guard and the administration's own DHS. Much of the rest is xenophobic nonsense. Leave that crap to Lou Dobbs.