Once again, Deborah Howell’s favorite “liberal” columnist gets it absurdly wrong.  In Tuesday’s Washington Post, Richard Cohen plays the race card in the Dubai Ports World scandal.  Just weeks after Mary Matlin proclaimed on national television, “I think these civil rights leaders are nothing more than racists,” Cohen praises the White House for stalwartly defending civil rights by kowtowing to Arab billionaires.  But even the basic premise of Cohen’s column could not be more off-base.

The simple fact is we have not been repeatedly attacked by Rastafarians, or Gauchos, or Maori.  We have been attacked by proponents of a violent and hateful ideology which has its roots firmly planted in Arab soil.  This could not be more clearly illustrated by the attack on 9/11 itself.  All of the hijackers, planners and supporters of that operation were Arab Muslims.  Does Cohen really believe this fact is a mere coincidence?

As mentioned in my previous post, the idea that a UAE government-run entity could be infiltrated by an Al Qaeda member or sympathizer is not a mere hypothetical question.  It's happened before.  And consider the point that Clark Kent Ervin, the former inspector general of the Homeland Security Department, made on CNN this morning.  Regardless of who patrols the ports on the ground, any port management firm will have to have access to highly detailed information about our port security procedures.  They will need that information to comply with those procedures and run the business efficiently.  Given what has happened before, how can the UAE guarantee that this information won't be passed on to Al Qaeda and exploited in another attack on the US?  This is not about prejudice, this is about common sense.

FYI, here is the Ervin interview: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/23/ervin/index.html

The pundits of the MSM keep prattling on about the possibility that a UAE government-run port management firm might be infiltrated by Al Qaeda.  That’s a very valid concern, but what about the pertinent facts?

It's been widely noted that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from the UAE.  One of the two was Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot-hijacker of United Flight 175.  It was Al-Shehhi who piloted that aircraft into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, killing over 650 people.

Al-Shehhi first joined Al Qaeda while he was a student in Hamburg.  He went to school there on a military scholarship, which he received after joining the UAE Army in 1995.  In fact, he continued to receive stipend payments from the UAE Army through December 23, 2000, using part of that money to pay for the flight lessons he took in preparation for the attacks.  So the same government that will be running our major eastern ports helped finance the 9/11 attacks.  I haven't seen anything to suggest this wasn't inadvertent on their part, but if they had no idea that one of Al Qaeda's deadliest killers was on their military payroll, how can we trust their assurances about Dubai Ports World?

FYI, this is covered in the staff reports of the 9/11 Commission.  The reports are silent on whether Al-Shehhi was ever actually discharged from the UAE Army prior to September 11, 2001.

http://www.9-11commission.gov/staff_statements/911_TerrFin_App.pdf