WOrse -- the contract that no american company bid for was let back in 2000. These leases have been out there for years.
The leases are not expiring, and there is nothing really involving the U.S government here. Stockholders of the British Company O&P, which won the leases in 2000, have decided they want to sell their company. They put it on the market, there were two interested parties but in the end only one company even put in a bid, that was DP World, a company owned by the UAE (as so many companies are in this business -- Israel owns it's port companies for example).
Since the O&P company owned U.S. leases, the government had obligation by law to evaluate the sale for security issues. Note we are not selling anything, the administration didn't ASK for this, they had nothing to do with who is selling, or who is buying. They simply had to make a legal evaluation of the security issues. There are several, one involving an independent agency and one with the Homeland Security department.
All evaluations came up clean. Now people are saying Bush should have ignored the law and rigged the evaluations. Congress is pushing to make new laws to make this transfer illegal (not the ownership by O&P, but the sale to a company owned by a government).
That is their perogative, but they can't fault Bush for not blocking the sale since no current law allows it.
I think such a law should be carefully considered, as it has many negatives as regards free trade. It shouldn't be adopted in a knee-jerk reaction to this sale, based on political opportunism.
I hear you and tend to agree. I guess many Freepers just think it's George Bush's fault because he should have bid on the contract himself...or whatever their convoluted logic is.