First it's 6...now it's 21

One could easily get whiplash trying to keep up with news on the UAE acquisition of our ports. Although personally not thrilled about this decision, I kept thinking, "Bush knows what he's doing, and whatever that is should be good for our country."

Until the numbers changed. From six ports to TWENTY-ONE.

It gets worse.

The Marine Transportation Security Act of 2002 requires vessels and port facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop security plans including passenger, vehicle and baggage screening procedures; security patrols; establishing restricted areas; personnel identification procedures; access control measures; and/or installation of surveillance equipment. Under the same law, port facility operators may have access to Coast Guard security incident response plans -- that is, they would know how the Coast Guard plans to counter and respond to terrorist attacks.

Here's where the whiplash comes in. An article in the WSJ by Glenn Harlan Reynolds (of Instapundit.com) assures us it might not be so bad after all.

Then Jim Dunnigan of StrategyPage explained why the UAE has been a good friend to the U.S. and is likely to be trustworthy here, and why this deal is in American interests. I found it pretty convincing. A lot of other bloggers, of all political persuasions, were reaching the same conclusion, even as the mass-media and talk-radio hysteria was still building. (To be fair, some Big Media like The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post were weighing in with good sense.) As the National Journal's Blogometer reported, "This movement was generally led by the intellectual right, and the intellectual left soon found itself in guarded agreement -- the deal wasn't as bad as it first seemed."

Mr. Reynolds may not have been aware that the number of ports involved would jump from six to twenty-one. I'm still trying to support our President, but this is a tough call.