Reply #11: They tried for the ports on both sides of the Panama Canal in the 1990's

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

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Like other right-wingers and consistent with his obsession with missile defence, Gaffney was most preoccupied with threats from states -- particularly China, North Korea, Iraq, and Syria -- until the Sep. 11 attacks. Indeed, in an odd echo of the Dubai controversy, he mounted a major campaign against the leasing by Hutchison-Whampoa of two port facilities at either end of the Panama Canal in the late 1990s. He argued that the lease was part of a Chinese plot to close the canal to U.S. warships in a future crisis.
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