Tag Archives: UAE

“Ties To Terrorists” — Invade or Do Business Deal?

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I want to make a comment on the “UAE port deal” controversy. We invaded Iraq based on less evidence of al Queda and other terrorist ties than there is of UAE ties. Yet, the Bush crowd insists that we have nothing to worry about from handing control of our ports over to the UAE.
Let me make this clear: I am NOT saying that UAE is a terrorist state, or even a terrorist-supporting state, I am pointing out the fear-mongering nonsense that Bush and the right spew for the lying, fear-mongering manipulative propaganda nonsense it is. The Bush crowd has spent four years whipping Americans into a state of absolute fear and paranoia over anything to do with Islam, Arabs, etc. Now they reap what they have sown.
According to the Bush/right-wing narrative, the invasion of Iraq was justified because Iraqi “had ties” to al Queda hijackers many years before 9/11. For example,

President Bush yesterday defended his assertions that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda, putting him at odds with this week’s finding of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission.
“The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda: because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda,” Bush said after a Cabinet meeting. As evidence, he cited Iraqi intelligence officers’ meeting with bin Laden in Sudan. “There’s numerous contacts between the two,” Bush said.

See also here, here, here, here…
Meanwhile,

President George W. Bush calls the nation behind the port-security controversy a trusted ally, but the Sept. 11 commission offers another take – saying the CIA believed top United Arab Emirates officials had cozy relations with Osama bin Laden before 9/11.
The United States even believed it had a lead on bin Laden two years before the attacks but passed up on an air strike to kill him.
The reason: fears of taking out UAE princes or other senior officials believed to be hosting bin Laden at a remote hunting camp in Afghanistan, the commission’s report said.

Which is it going to be, George? Do “ties to terrorists” mean we invade, or don’t they matter? Or, maybe that wasn’t it at all — maybe there were other reasons we invaded Iraq — reasons that you haven’t shared with us? Was “ties to terrorism” just a cover-story? Your reasoning sure doesn’t mean much when you want to do a business deal with UAE.

Now Bush Calls Republicans Traitors

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The outcry from Republicans over Bush’s allowing the transfer of control of our ports to a company controlled by the government of the UAE has provoked the traditional Bush response — he sent out people to call them traitors:

“If the furor over the port deal should go on, Mr. England said, it would give enemies of the United States aid and comfort: ‘They want us to become distrustful, they want us to become paranoid and isolationist.

Matt Stoller at MyDD, Dissenting Redstaters: Bush Thinks You’re Traitors,

I really hope that principled conservatives start to realize that there is a very unconservative set of threats coming from this administration, and that staying silent about this very unAmerican intimidation by the government is not conservative in the least.

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War With Oceania – So Yesterday

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The Bush administration is allowing the sale of several American ports to the United Arab Emirates, and of course cronyism is involved.
Before today the Republicans were sending surrogates around the country whipping up anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments. The right-wing, Bush-cult blogs were all lined up in anti-Islam frenzy. WE WERE AT WAR WITH EASTASIA!!!
But not today. Today we are at war with EURASIA! We have ALWAYS been at war with Eurasia! Today Democrats are racists for daring to question a Bush deal (even though it is largely Republicans who are questioning this.)
Rush this morning:

This is the first time in four years that I can recall a Democrat seriously being concerned about this group of people, and this is racism. This is racism. We are concluding that all Arabs are terrorists. We are concluding that every damn one of them — be they a sheik, an emir — they are all terrorists. They all have ties to terrorists and they all seek our utter, total destruction, and we can’t risk an exception to that. They’re all that way — and welcome to racism Democrats, because the Democrats are leading the show on this just as well as a lot of conservatives are. So when Democrats are illustrating their racism, their xenophobia, they’re also demonstrating that they fully acknowledge we have an enemy. Well, this is a tenuous position for them to take because their kook base doesn’t believe any of this.