Bloggers Better Think Twice
Spare the mainstream media, or bring this dull work on yourself.

(The CIA World Factbook)

If you're a bookish type interested in boning up the port leasing flap rattling around Washington, you might be interested in browsing a few of the original documents that reporters, as well as government researchers and decision makers, are reexamining.

Here are five:

The State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor's most recent profile on the United Arab Emirates.

• Link
• Bonus: State Department Background Notes

The Rasmussen poll showing that just 17 percent of Americans favor the deal moving ahead and Democrats making big gains in public perception on national security issues.

• Link (Summary is free but you have to register for detailed data)

The former 9/11 Commission's Fall 2005 report card on the government's progress toward meeting the recommendations in its original report. They gave the administration and Congress a D for its progress in the task of improving baggage and cargo screening on the seas and in the air.

• Link

The 9/11 Commission's original report, which explicitly stated that "the vast majority of the money funding the Sept. 11 attacks flowed through the UAE"%, revealed that individual Emirati princes were suspected of being in close contact with Osama Bin Laden and introduced us further to Ali Abdul Aziz Ali^ and Mustafa al Hawsawi*, two Al Qaeda operatives accussed of aiding the hijackers financially and logistically from within the UAE.

• Link
  

The already infamous# "HELL NO!" letter written to President Bush by Congresswoman Sue Myrick (R-North Carolina)

• Link

% Footnote 32 on page 40 here
^ Last I heard, captured in 2003 (source) and currently held at an unknown location.
* Last I heard, captured in 2003 (source) and currently held at an unknown location.
# Bill Kristol called it "idiotic" on Fox News Sunday this morning.