Posted on 02/22/2006 8:31:23 AM PST by Kaslin
WASHINGTON — President Bush was unaware that a controversial deal to sell shipping operations at six major U.S. seaportsto a United Arab Emirates-owned firm was in the works until it was approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.
After Bush repeatedly
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The 45-day "investigation" is mandated by the Byrd ammendment. Call your congressman and ask.
He knew. The Bush family has been kissing up to arabs for years. They even personally knew the bin Laden family.
Wrong. Bush said he would be veto the bill after he was brought up tp speed on it.
Really. Please provide a link, since I'm unaware of any heroin shipments from Dubai intercepted at a US port.
Of course, I'll point out that American ownership and management of US ports has not resulted in a spotless drug interception record.
It requires an investigation in cases where...
It does not allow the 45-day review to be dropped if the process takes longer than 90 days - instead, the 45 day review should have been started IMMEDIATELY after the completion of the 30 day review in order to meet the 90-day timeframe.
However, the 45-day review was not done. Which means the review is imcomplete and does NOT meet the legal requirements.
Using your logic, any president could just not fulfill a process in a mandated timely manner and then say that it was done legally because it was not done in a timely manner. The fact that you are pursuing this line of thought means you are more interested in finding the loopholes than in having the intent of the law followed.
Is it too much to hope that he'll drop all the "religion of peace" nonsense once he gets the message that we don't trust even the so-called "moderate" ragheads? Or will he just blindly try to "lead" us to the position that ones who contribute to Republican campaigns are OK?
SCOTCH THE PORTS DEAL.
In two weeks time, the ports of New York and New Jersey, Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New Orleans will go under contract to a government-owned company in the United Arab Emirates. This must not stand. It's plainly obvious that a government-owned company from a hostile region should not operate American ports, whatever the assurances about security and however limited its involvement in day-to-day operations. What can be done?
The most immediate thing Congress can do is ask that President Bush put a hold on the deal and order the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States to conduct a 45-day investigation of Dubai Ports World. Mr. Bush yesterday vowed, with a certain heat, to veto a ports bill; firm congressional action may nevertheless lead him to reconsider. There is a chance the deal would dissolve with the tougher 45-day review -- this has happened to previous reviews by the foreign investment committee -- and in this case it is clearly warranted. Last week, it emerged that both Dubai Ports World and Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., the seller, specified that an agreement by the U.S. government not to make a formal investigation as a condition for the deal. This is exceedingly odd; this is enough to persuade Congress to push the review.
One of the most reasonable proposals comes from Sen. Charles Schumer, New York Democrat, who presented a bill yesterday with Rep. Peter King, New York Republican, to mandate a hold on the deal and obtain a better security review. He seeks a congressional up-or-down vote on the deal -- an open challenge to the closed and apparently lax security-review process the foreign investment committee ran for Dubai Ports World. The challenge is warranted. The Bush administration has not adequately considered the questions raised by this deal. A struggle between Congress and the White House over this deal would be the second-worst outcome. Permitting the contract to stand would be the worst.
There's much more needed than a review and a show of anger by Congress. Congress must compare the mandate of the foreign investment committee to what it has done. The committee was charged with handling national-security reviews by a 1988 law commonly called the Exon-Florio provision, which restricts foreign direct investment on the basis of national-security criteria. It requires the president or his designated agent -- the foreign investment committee -- to consider "the control of domestic industries and commercial activity by foreign citizens as it affects the capability and capacity of the U.S. to meet the requirements of national security." How well did the committee perform in this case? And in others? In its entire history, only a handful of proposed transactions have failed the foreign investment committee test.
Should there be a stronger process? That's a question Congress should be asking. What would a stronger foreign investment committee look like? For one, it might take a cue from the George H.W. Bush administration. Fourteen years ago, something called "passive ownership" entered the Exon-Florio debates, and it could help considerably here. In 1992, the state-owned French firm Thomson-CSF sought to purchase a missile unit from U.S. defense contractor LTV. Citing the obvious national-security concerns, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood said that Thomson-CSF would have to prove that its ownership would be "passive" -- meaning no operational involvement and no exposure to sensitive facilities, technology and information. It couldn't do that, so it withdrew the offer and eventually entered into a "passive" arrangement with a U.S. company.
The parallels here are striking. Dubai Ports World cannot help but be "active" in any deal for the ports contracts. (One difference is that in 1992 there were no French jihadis looking to strike at the heart of the United States.)
We hope this dispute won't rise to the level of intra-party acrimony we saw during the controversy over the Harriet Miers nomination. We finally have robust bipartisan agreement on an important national concern. Both Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, are outraged. This won't blow over, Mr. President. It's time to reconsider a bad idea.
Think of application software development; Third World countries can now do this better (READ: cheaper) than we can. Capitalism demands that we invest in innovation, not the past. Change is good. Change is opportunity. And Yankees are great at sniffing out future trends and new profits. Ports, shipping and containers are part of the past. The real money is finding niches of innovation.
It would make it much easier.
Amen.
Coop, what's you take on the port thing?
True and I believe it. This issue is more about perceptions and the less reasonable will see the worst. The port deal is just a poor idea. Isn't there anything we won't do for money?
However, you have to have pretty sweet equipment to make sure a dirty bomb hidden somewhere inside a stack of shipping containers 40 wide and 40 deep reliably goes off at the right time. Equipment that would probably not be very easy to smuggle into a secure facility or to openly operate. It ain't just making a cellphone call to an IED two open air blocks away.
No, you have to have either a concealed suicide triggerman or a sizeable number of people onboard the ship who are willing to die in order to position the cargo just right for a radio signal.
It is NOT mandated. The two criteria you listed have to be met to trigger the 45-day "investigation." The first obviously is, the second is not.
I agree it's a routine acquisition in the business world, however in the world of politics, and in a world where suspicion of Muslim incursion runs (nearly) to paranoia (in some cases), it's far from "routine". Bush (or his handlers) should have realized this. This is difficult to defend, politically, given the post 9/11 climate of our country. It's merely a small criticism. I can now see that the deal itself is nothing to worry about, but that's only because I took the time to research it with an open mind. How many people, not only here on FR but in the entire country are going to be able to do that? How many will want to put aside their preconceived notions and examine for themselves? Again, by not keeping abreast of this situation, or at the least not being advised of it, it was a political blunder.
Everyone is human, everyone makes mistakes, even Bush. That doesn't mean he's a bad president, I'm not saying that. But to get the message across that this is not a bad deal, I think we must be willing to admit that this should have been better handled. Perhaps some more preparation, perhaps at least a briefing or two of the committee's decisions before this all happened, that way at least Bush wouldn't have to say he didn't know about this until a few days ago. Saying that makes him look uncaring about national security. (even though of course, again, this isn't a security threat, in the minds of many it is, so saying he didn't know fuels that perception).
what angle of attack will be next pursued by the Dems, and how many ignorant Pubbies at all levels will fall for the bait.
And that's really the point. Since Bush wasn't informed of this, he's now playing catch up. In the grand scheme of things it's not a major mistake, I'm not saying that, but it's a mistake. He should have realized that "Dems [would attack] and many ignorant Pubbies would fall for the bait.". It's called politics. He's usually ahead of the curve in that game, but he simply wasn't, this time.
The UAE is a dependable friend. They have done more to help us in Iraq there any other country. Every person that has lived there, worked there, or visited there, that has posted here on FR or on their on blogs disagrees with the premise that the UAE is some rabid Islamic country. The Washington Times makes good points about the process. However, I cant think of any justification why this deal shouldnt go through at this point.
Yes, it was routine, and therein lies the problem. Just because something is handled routinely doesn't mean it should have been.
Delegation is, of course, a necessity. But there must be an understanding of what should trigger something being kicked upstairs. It now appears that not even the actual CFIUS committee members reviewed this deal--that was delegated too, to under under secretaries. They treated the DPW deal routinely, either failing to recognize the potential issues that should have been brought to superiors, or choosing to ignore them.
Whether or not you agree with CFIUS's DPW ruling, you have to acknowledge that things would be shaking out very differently had this been kicked upstairs before now.
We're actually talking about whether we really expect the President to be minutely informed about every detail of every single US government transaction.
I don't expect him to be, since I have a rational take on the situation.
You apparently expect the President to never delegate anything.
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