Thursday, March 09, 2006

Strategic Retreat

It appears that the Dubai company that was supposed to take over the operations of several key ports in the United States has bowed to the opposition and pulled out of the deal.

I'm not buying it. All this pull out is going to do is kill the bill in Congress that would legally prevent them from getting this contract. If that bill got passed, there would be a snowball affect and populist movement of sorts could endanger any future contract opportunities.

They didn't give up, they pulled a strategic retreat. Congress should still push a bill through stating (at the very least) that Federal contracts were not available to firms owned or controlled by terrorist sponsoring nations. There would have to be additional restrictions dealing with shell companies etc., but you get the gist of it.

If the US cancelled the contract rather than Dubai pulling back, it could have hurt them globally with nations sympathetic to the US also. I suspect that played only a minor role in their decision.

I'm actually disappointed that Dubai pulled out of the deal, I would have liked to see how well the GOP fought Bush on this issue.

**update**

Shrub gives us a typical day at the port if the terrorists Arabs take over the ports.