The Dubai Deal Is About “Free Trade”?

The current explanation for the Dubai arrangement is that the UAE and the USA have been engaged in free trade talks since 2004. This so-called free trade pact would allow companies to own and operate businesses in both countries. Selling of the US ports to Dubai Ports World, the explainers say, would go a long way to setting the free trade wheels in motion. It’s true that the Bush administration has never met a corporation it doesn’t love. And it’s true, the Bush administration says its first priority is to fight terrorism and make America secure. Except where Big Business is concerned. For Big Business, the whores in the White House are prepared to encourage terrorists to take over, own and run American corporations. But why all the secrecy if this whole sorry exercise in government by fiat is simply to pave the way for global deregulation of corporations? Why was everyone blindsided? Surely if the Dubai deal were coming out of free trade talks then the entire Republican power-elite in Congress would not have been caught unawares. I believe the UAE cabal is something a whole lot murkier, uglier, more underhanded and smellier than a free trade pact. I think (yes, I prefer to think) the White House is paying off the UAE for some nasty and unspeakable shit it performed at the behest of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, the White House Iraq Group and Ahmad Chalabi. I believe the UAE has presented a bill to the President of the United States for services rendered re the US gaining rights to Middle East oil. And I think George W. Bush is frightened out of his wits that if this covenant doesn’t go through, he’s going to wind up with his balls stuffed in his mouth. It’s certainly a tantalizing scenario. Abject fear is the only thing that sufficiently explains why the President of the United States would go to the mat for a foreign government that has demonstrated it willingly cooperated with 9/11 terrorists and is fiercely anti-Israel into the bargain. Lest you forget, this is the UAE track record: 1) The UAE was one of three countries in the world to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. 2) The UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea and Libya. According to the New York Times, the UAE was “the main transshipment point for Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear engineer who ran the world's largest nuclear proliferation ring from warehouses near the port, met Iranian officials there, and shipped centrifuge equipment, which can be used to enrich uranium, from there to Libya”. 3) According to the FBI, money was transferred to two 9/11 hijackers and was laundered through the UAE banking system. 4) After 9/11, the Treasury Department reported that the UAE was not cooperating in efforts to track down Osama Bin Laden’s bank accounts. 5) The UAE does not recognize Israel as a sovereign state. This goes a little farther than holding hands with an Arabian prince. Now the Prez is the entire UAE’s bitch.