Heh, looks like your the only person who's going to answer this probably.
I think its iffy, on one side I agree with Bush in the sense that they've been probably one of the friendliest Arab states to us, we've always had good relations with them, and about the only things that had anything to do with 9/11 that involved them really were not something they could be faulted for. I think the biggest concern though would be one of two things - either Al Queda trying to get into their shipping ranks and work their company from the inside or, alternatively, if the Arab world's fundamentalist got irritated enough about their lavish lifestyle that they staged a military coupe and overthrew what was a friendly government to the U.S.
That said though, I think it could be done but the two safeguards we'd really have to look at most are information technology and internal controls. We'd probably want to be in very close communication with them at all times, probably RFID'ing a lot of the merchandise as well as helping them to screen it, make sure its free of the kind of stuff that concerns us, and I think the more automated that process got the more practical and easy it would be come - hence the internal controls. It seems like the best way to safeguard what's actually coming in the shipping containers is to safeguard the contents at the port of departure rather than the receiving port (which of course was our biggest concern, piracy in the middle being more of a constant threat that doesn't get resolved on either end specifically).
21 Nov 2007, 7:01 pm
