America...

To get a really good political panic going in this country, the recipe is simple: Start with your regular base of fear and loathing, time its rise for a congressional election year, mix in presidential ambitions like Hillary Clinton's, call out the kind of demagogues who see the Fall of the Republic every time a new Supreme Court justice is nominated, and turn up the heat. Serve quick, before it cools. Result: Demagogues of both left and right were soon inviting Americans to picture burnoosed terrorists slipping a weapon of mass destruction into a cargo container and devastating a great American city. (It's getting harder and harder to distinguish political discourse in this country from a B-movie.) The only ingredients missing from this scary scenario were the facts... This deal with the U.A.E. is not a security problem, or at least not any more of one than is presented by any foreign company's investing here... Nor is it an economic problem; this country welcomes foreign investment and should. No, this is a psychological problem.

The way the Bush people have handled this [Dubai Ports] matter from the very beginning is simply appalling... Because it was done behind closed doors, with nary a word to the leadership on Capitol Hill, it comes out looking like a bumbled attempt to put one over on the American people... It may well be that the arrangement has great merit and could prove beneficial to the U.S., but as a political matter it is an unmitigated disaster—and one which could cost the GOP dearly in both the 2006 and 2008 elections. Here we have an issue—national security—that is uppermost in the minds of the American people, largely because the president has hammered away at it and used it brilliantly to portray the Democrats as weak-kneed in the war on terror and on matters involving national security. In one fell swoop the president throws it away, and even worse allows the Democrats to appear stronger in defending the American people than he and the Republicans have been. It's worse than stupid—it's suicidal.

"Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." —Theodore Roosevelt

"For too long, the world was paralyzed by the argument that terrorism could not be stopped until the grievances of terrorists were addressed. The complicated and heartrending issues that perplex mankind are no excuse for violent, inhumane attacks, nor do they excuse not taking aggressive action against those who deliberately slaughter innocent people." —Ronald Reagan