Bogus Gold quotes Frank Gaffney, president of Center for Security Policy as saying the sale of P&O to UAE interests is a "Harriet Miers moment".

Doug focuses on the political calculus, which is admitted rather obvious--this dog won't hunt. Yet there is a considerable difference between kicking the can down the road on Social Security and allowing partisan warfare to undermine years of foreign policy work.

Chuck Schumer, a man completely devoid of any discernable principles except the pursuit of power by any means necessary, is actively engaged in racist rhetoric. While he cleverly masks it by saying that the UAE had a connection to 9/11, so did Germany, yet we know that this wouldn't be an issue if Germans had bought P&O.

Are we seriously going to engage in racial profiling here? Are we building a bridge back to the 19th century?

Obviously the moral elements of this nefarious rhetoric don't concern people striving for power or survival--so much for a civil society. Let me then offer a more practical argument--basic military tactics.

Sun Tzu devotes a chapter in his famous work to the importance and deployment of spies.

...what enables the wise commander to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge. Now this foreknowledge cannot be elicited from spirits; it cannot be obtained inductively from experience, nor by any deductive calculation. Knowledge of the enemy's dispositions can only be obtained from other men.

...

Hence it is only the enlightened and wise general who will use the highest intelligence of the army for purposes of spying and thereby they achieve great results. Spies are the most important asset, because on them depends an army's ability to march. 

If we alienate our Arab allies, we have thrown away our greatest strategic advantage, and that itself makes Bush's threat of veto much, much easier to understand, even it is no easier to explain to people who don't even think we are at war...