by Michael Snyder, End Of The American Dream:

In recent days there have been a lot of prominent voices in the media that have been boldly proclaiming that the western hemisphere is “our hemisphere” and that it is our right to exercise dominion over it.  But I don’t think that they have really thought this through.  In order to have the right to control what goes on in a particular piece of territory, the United States must own it first.  The territories that we own fall into two very specific categories.  Our 50 states fall into the first category, and each state has certain rights and privileges.  The second category is made up of “U.S. territories”.  There are five permanently inhabited U.S. territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands), and there are a number of uninhabited Pacific islands and atolls known as the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands.  Needless to say, U.S. territories do not have the same rights and privileges as the 50 states.