Dubai deal compromises our ports, but ensures US access to the UAE ports

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. . . for Bush's upcoming military meddling in Iran. It's not like Bush is going to up and call the UAE a hub of his 'evil axis' and risk upseting the cozy deals we have to base military operations from there.


U.S., UAE Have Sensitive Relationship

Associated Press | February 23, 2006
http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,88778,00.html

- Air Force U-2 spy planes and Global Hawk unmanned surveillance aircraft have been based at al-Dhafra air base, along with KC-10 aerial refueling planes. When a U-2 crashed in the UAE last June, killing the Air Force pilot, American officials did not publicly disclose the location "due to host nation sensitivities."

- U.S. sailors and Marines regularly make liberty calls at the port of Jebel Ali, near the UAE's largest city, Dubai.

- The threat to commercial shipping in the Gulf during the "tanker war" between Iran and Iraq in the 1980s was the impetus for the United States to develop closer ties to the UAE. Ties grew much closer after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.

The formal basis for the U.S.-UAE military relationship is a defense cooperation agreement signed in 1994. As with most other American allies in the Persian Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, the presence of American troops in the UAE is either cloaked in a degree of secrecy or de-emphasized out of concern about anti-US sentiment.

The Pentagon will not say how many U.S. troops are based in the UAE.

full article: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,88778,00.html

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1. This is the reason Bush is sticking with the deal. The base of operations

He doesn't want to screw that up in advance of his plan to attack Iran.

Everything else is background noise.