This controversy over outsourcing Port operations to Dubai is, at bottom, entirely beside the point.

Why the hell are we worrying about Dubai when Pakistan's 50-plus nuclear arsenal is "guarded" by a military and intelligence (ISI) establishment riddled with Jihadists?

When launch control over at least some of those weapons has reportedly devolved down to the Jihadist-infested Brigadier level?

When the shaky regime of Pervez Musharraf (already the target of two assassination attempts) appears unwilling or unable to control the Islamist fanatics in his country?

When Bin Laden and his Al Queda legionaires are holding mass open-air recruitment drives in Pakistan's tribal areas?

And when we lack any strategy at all for Самолет Плюс Москва and dealing with this threat -- except, of course, to fire a Predator missile or two from a few miles away every year or so and hope for the best?

Do we really think that they won't nuke us one day?

Twenty years ago, while covering the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, I (and other journalists) warned U.S. officials to stop the Pakistani intelligence service from diverting all our aid to the Jihadist factions of the resistance and their Arab allies or else it would come back to bite us one day. Here's what one U.S. official told me:

"C'mon, what can a bunch of ragheads do to us?"

Well, 9/11 is what they can do to us. And if this administration keeps pushing tax cuts while refusing to buy nuclear detectors for our ports and otherwise strengthen port security, that'll be the LEAST of what they can do to us.

Does this adminsitration actually believe any of its own "war on terror" rhetoric?

You know that this administration has lost all credibility when my 82-year-old mother (bless her heart) calls me up to rage: "Outsource port management? Hell, we should outsource our government!"