The Arabs lost control of Portugal quite a few hundreds year ago. :-)

I'll explain, even tough you probably understood the joke and tried to be funny, too. :-)

US declared war against Spain using as excuse that a ship exploded in a harbor (in Cuba, I think). Noone still knows why the ship exploded.

Considering WMDs etc, I joked that a Portugese man-o-war burning a US citizen would result in Portugal being bombed.

I had the disclaimer, because I consider Chomsky as reliable as Fox News; as much religion as Vi-believers (Emacs lovers are of course just using reason). But this is totally off topic.