Bush will veto any bill to stop port deal

AP ALERT

[Brian Mosely]

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Bush says the deal allowing an Arab company to take over six major U.S. seaports should go forward and he will veto any bill that would stop it.

[Tulsa Ramjet]

But of course. I'm not some loon. maybe a sarcastic one, due to the hilarity of watching the psuedo, purposeful dialogue tripe here. There is a bigger "stratergy", as one poster put it. Whether it is Trialateral Commission, DLC, NATO, Skull & Bones, or other whatever, the goal is to maintain, as noted below, the international interests of the ruling elite, while the general populace have their patriotism whipped up, depending on what party. America's governmental ideas are currently the best, but our culture is also a cesspool, and our government is failing in protecting our security so that we can correct it.

"The Trilateral Commission was established in 1973. Its founder and primary financial angel was international financier, David Rockefeller, longtime chairman of the Rockefeller family-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank and undisputed overlord of his family's global corporate empire.

Rockefeller's idea for establishing the commission emerged after he had read a book entitled Between Two Ages written by an Establishment scholar, Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski of Columbia University.

In his book Brzezinski proposed a vast alliance between North America, Western Europe and Japan. According to Brzezinski, changes in the modern world required it.

"Resist as it might," Brzezinski wrote elsewhere, "the American system is compelled gradually to accommodate itself to this emerging international context, with the U.S. government called upon to negotiate, to guarantee, and, to some extent, to protect the various arrangements that have been contrived even by private business."

In other words, it was necessary for the international upper class to band together to protect its interests, and to ensure, in the developed nations, that political leaders were brought to power who would ensure that the global financial interests (of the Rockefellers and the other ruling elites) would be protected over those of the hoi polloi.

http://afgen.com/trilateral.html

[daybreakcoming]

Finally! A post that states my thoughts even better than I could.
Thank you

[Teacher317]

Dubai's got serious cash...

Luxury Hotel

Artificial beach

Golf club

Beachfront

waterfront district

[Tulsa Ramjet]

"Step up and EXPLAIN why a Company from a friendly Arab nation should be held to different standards than a British"

Hannity just read 18 reasons from the 9/11 report.

[FourtySeven]

I'm still wondering if, "we have a source (and if so what is the URL?) that tells us that security measures will not be handled by anyone in DP World, or O&P, or any other UAE controlled company?".

I wonder if anyone said (asked) that before? Oh yeah, I did recently.

Have people raised that question earlier in the thread? Maybe I should ask that. If so, please excuse my laziness. :)

To be frank, I'm shocked this is an issue, really.

[clawrence3]

I don't have a government site listing all the security measures (and I'm sure you are not asking that be posted in public), but someone above posted this report:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,185107,00.html

"DPW would not be responsible for cargo screening, which is performed by the Department of Homeland Security, but the port operator is responsible for securing cargo coming in and out of the port, the port facility itself and the hiring of security personnel."

1,432 posted on 02/21/2006 4:34:12 PM PST by La Enchiladita

[clawrence3]

OK

[clawrence3]

He got some "cover" from the ACLU too, don't forget that ; )

[Tulsa Ramjet]

Don't get me started on Nixon and Communist Red China.

LOL! Oh yeah, that worked out really well. Walmart is happy.....please pro-walmarters, don't go at me. Get our stuff anywhere else but China, is all I ask. They are building up their military with it, and Rumsfeld didn't have a clue.

[Paul Ross]

A Port Operations Company has ZERO security functions.

This is a potentially misleading conclusion. Frank Gaffney addresses this position cogently and convincingly:

Decision Brief	No. 06-D 09	2006-02-20

A Harriet Miers moment

(Washington, D.C.): The federal bureaucracy has made a strategic mistake that threatens to cost the President dearly. The question is not whether the ill-advised decision taken last week by the secretive Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (known by its acronym, CFIUS, pronounced syphius) will be undone. Rather, the question is: By whom -- and at what political cost to Mr. Bush?

The DP World Deal

In the latest of a series of approvals of questionable foreign takeovers of American interests, CFIUS has given the green light to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to acquire contracts to manage port facilities in New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans. The company, Dubai Ports World, would do so by purchasing a British concern, Peninsula and Oriental Steam Navigation Company ("P and O").

Experts have long identified America's sea ports as weak links in the chain of our homeland security. With their proximity to major U.S. population centers, expensive infrastructure vital to the regional and, in many cases, national economy and their throughput of large quantities of poorly monitored cargo, they are prime targets for terror.

As a result, a case can be made that it is a mistake to have foreign entities responsible for any aspect of such ports, including the management of their docks, stevedore operations and terminals. After all, that duty affords abundant opportunities to insinuate personnel and/or shipping containers that can pose a threat to this country. Even though the company in question may not be directly responsible for port security, at least some of their employees have to be read in on the relevant plans, potentially compromising the latter irreparably.

At least the previous foreign contractors were from Britain, a country that was on our side before September 11, 2001. The same cannot be said of the United Arab Emirates, whose territory was used for most of the planning and financing of the 9/11 attacks. While the UAE's government is currently depicted as a friend and ally in the so-called war on terror, its country remains awash with Islamofascist recruiters and adherents -- people all too willing to exploit any new opportunity to do us harm.

New Grounds for Disapproval

Since a column raising an alarm about CFIUS' decision appeared in this space last week, three new factors have come to light that compound the strategic folly of the UAE deal:

• First, in addition to the six affected ports mentioned above, two others would also have part of their operations managed by DP World -- on behalf of none other than the U.S. Army. Under a newly extended contract, the owner of P and O will manage the movement of heavy armor, helicopters and other military materiel through the Texas seaports of Beaumont and Corpus Christie. How much would our enemies like to be able to sabotage such shipments?

• Second, while advocates of the stealthy CFIUS decision-making process point to the involvement of the Defense Department in its DP World decision, it is unclear at what level this bizarre proposition was reviewed in the Pentagon. Many top jobs remain unfilled by presidential appointees. Past experience suggests the job may have fallen to lower-level career bureaucrats who give priority to maintaining good relations with their foreign "clients," like the UAE.

• Then, there is the matter of financing the DP World takeover of Peninsula and Oriental. The UAE evidently intends to raise nearly all of the $6.8 billion price for P and O on international capital markets. It must be asked: Who will the foreign investors be, and might they have malign intentions towards the U.S.? If American sources of capital are being sought, will the possible danger this transaction may create for this country be properly disclosed? For that matter, will the underwriters, Barclays and Deutchebank, reveal to prospective funders the real risk that the deal will ultimately fall through?

  In fact, that seems virtually certain now that talk radio, the blogosphere and the public have become aware of -- and white hot about -- this transaction. Members of Congress on both sides of the aisle and of Capitol Hill have made known their determination to prevent the transfer of control of U.S. ports to the UAE. In particular, Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer have been quick to seize on this issue as an opportunity to burnish their national security credentials at the expense of President Bush and his party.

  The Bottom Line

  So, the question recurs: How long will it take before Mr. Bush cuts his losses? This could be accomplished in one of three ways: He could reverse the decision himself (perhaps by directing CFIUS to reconsider its initial recommendation). He could encourage and sign into law legislation barring foreign ownership or management of U.S. port facilities (akin to the rules governing other critical infrastructure). Or he could quietly encourage the UAE to do as Communist China did last year with respect to the Unocal purchase -- withdraw the offer itself, sparing the country in question (and its friends here) the embarrassment of having its behavior carefully scrutinized and its offer spurned in a high-profile way.

  Call it a Harriet Meirs moment. Politics being the art of the possible, it is time to recognize that the Dubai Ports World deal is neither strategically sensible nor politically doable. It is time to pull the plug, and to reform the secretive interagency CFIUS process that allowed this fiasco in the first place.
  
  

[DoNotDivide]

You could put the UGLY TRUTH about the reality of today's America in NEON FLASHING LIGHTS here and some people would mock you.

[alarm rider]

For the life of me, I cannot see any logic in this.

[E-Mat]

"I think American ports should be owned and run by America. No prejudice here--it's a matter of protecting our own ports. We need to keep our eye on the ball."

Amen.

[ARealMothersSonForever]

Exactly how does this deal compromise US security? Please be as specific as you can.

CBP is responsible for security at ports and borders. Your conclusion that there would not be substantial changes is valid. For me, this deals with trust. Not that I mistrust the President. I deeply mistrust the UAE. Because of their support for terrorism. There is some validity to the notion that "if they are invested it is less likely that they would allow an attack". This same thinking brought us September 11th. CBP has not exactly done a stellar job on the Texas side of the Mexican border. The economic benefits of allowing UAE government ownership of port operations have not been made clear. My concern is that the owners of the port operations will determine that cost cutting measures are important. Why pay Longshoreman wages, when there are UAE citizens that will do the exact same thing for less money? These will simply become "jobs that Americans won't do". I do not advocate pulling the plug on the whole deal. I do desire open discussion, and propose divested interest of US port facility operations. If the UAE really needs to run these, they should have no problem establishing a legitimate US business. It would only be "fair".

[sinkspur]

The Trilateral Commission

[DoNotDivide]

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot about the Communist Chinese (that knocked our recon plane out of the sky and held our servicemen and women hostage under Bush's watch) and Unocal.

[sarasota]

What about the indoor ski area? And the islands they are building representing all the continents in the world? Got those pics?

[eyespysomething]

Won't the Port Authority of NY and NJ still run and manage their ports?

[ConfederateAmerican23]

It seems that Bush has shown his Turbin.... It was there all the while... But to some... To follow Party Lines has been more important, to them, the the National Security of this Country... If Bush does Veto this... He will have compromised National Security

[Blogger]

Savage seems to still be against, but willing to hear the other side out and change his mind if necessary. His main beef is that we don't have public hearings about this and the decision is made by non-elected officials.