Posted on 02/23/2006 6:06:12 AM PST by bobsunshine
The tide is shifting under all those who ran to the cameras or spouted of uninformed about the UAE company Dubai Ports World as more and more people research the topic seriously. Sister Toldjah has the best round up of recent, factual writing on this. From the revelations much of the hype is bought and paid for by contributions from some unions and a US competitor to Dubai Ports World, to surgical debunking of the myths surrounding this subject by Dick Meyers of CBS. If you read anything today read her path from doubter to supporter. I would add Tony Snow to the list of thoughtful, careful people who have gone out and researched this subject to find all the things UAE has done for us in the war in terror, and all the things we stand to lose if we let fear drive us and not think this out.
Unfortunately, the damage is done. As I guessed and proposed in an earlier post, this deal had some classified national security angles to it.
The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions. … As part of the $6.8 billion purchase, state-owned Dubai Ports World agreed to reveal records on demand about “foreign operational direction” of its business at U.S. ports, the documents said. Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment.
People need to pay attention when we learn something is ‘classified’, as we know this deal was. That is a hint to think twice because there is something having to do with national security in the mix. That is why we make things classified. This is appears to be a leak to provide us another hint. There could be more aspects of this deal than instant visibility into all the ports DPW manages around the world - ports that ship material here in vast quantities.
Lot’s of people think the White House should have seen the response coming, but I am sorry - that would require having little respect for people. I never thought I would see people so afraid of the word ‘Arab’ in my life. Over and over again I hear or read ‘but, in this case Arab…’. I know I had a lot more respect for this country before this issue hit. I know people have some legitimate security concerns. But if someone has read the details and now understand 99.99% of the people will still being doing what they have always been doing, that Port Operations does not do security, and if DPW or the UAE wanted to ship a weapon here they run plenty of ports to get the thing here without doing this, then I cannot understand what is left to worry about.
The remaining intangible is simply fear. It may be xenophobia, fear of the unknown, or a fear of Arabs or Muslims from the Middle East. And to expect the White House to assume so many people are shaky with fear after all we went through is not fair to the White House. It is not fair to Bush to hold him responsible for our initially wrong reactions. It is not fair to Bush to put it on him because we responded emotionally without the information we needed.
The reason I say this is we need to watch what we are doing. We are in a 24 hours news/blog cycle and when stories hit we start down a path immediately. If we start down the wrong path because we were misinformed or uninformed there will be repercussions. In this case there are major divides in the conservative base. But there just as well could have been permanent damage to our national security and diplomatic efforts. Busting the DPW deal could erase all we worked for since 9-11 and set us back to a point were we are worse off than we were prior to 9-11.
So we need to be on our guard and to watch ourselves and to not blame Bush when we go off half cocked on something. We have responsibilities in this great public debate too.
"the myths surrounding this subject by Dick Meyers of CBS."
Who still believes CBS?
Great read!!!!!! I totally agree that there were far too many knee jerker's.
"Lot’s of people think the White House should have seen the response coming, but I am sorry - that would require having little respect for people. I never thought I would see people so afraid of the word ‘Arab’ in my life."
Not afraid; wise is the word. Fool me once - your fault. Arab/Muslim me twice: my fault.
ROFL!
I still think it is terribly naive to think that any company/govt that spends $7B, is not going to be able to do pretty much anything it wants with that business, and that they will say/promise anything, to finish the deal.
I don't think it about "having so little respect for people", because as many times as Bush has had to stress we are not at war with Islam, the "religion of peace" - the White House should have seen this response coming and at least gotten Hannity and FoxNews on board right away.
Right Wrong or whatever the author of this piece is a fool to think "the tide has turned" on this. It most definately hasnt. Very few people have been convinced by the WH and in fact congress has gotten its back up. I am guessing a show down is coming over this and the President is going to lose.
And the author can spare me the intimations that it's racism. You want to live in la-la land where Islam has nothing to do with terrorism be my guest I'll pass thanks.
I think the problem is not so much that the White House should have seen what was coming, but that they should have gotten out faster, certainly with other republicans, to quell the hysteria. Leaving your own people in the dark so that they end up siding with the democrats is NOT a good thing. They let this go on for days before they got serious about an explanation. Poor judgement.
Puh-lease. Most of the critics allowed for the possibility that there may well be nothing to worry about. What was concerning was the absence of sunshine, the apparent lack of forethought and investigation, and the angry pronouncements by the same President who gives us open bordrs and Harriet Miers-- saying in effect not only "trust me" but "don't ask questions" and "I'll veto any effort to stop this-- the day before the WH announces intelligence agencies have even looked at this.
The President is naive if he thinks the Democrats are interested in doing what's best for the country, as opposed to what's best for their party.
Republican politicians are not necessarily blasting Bush because they disagree with the deal. They blast him because they think his handling hurts the GOP chances in November.
The President's job is not to do what is best for his party, it's to do what is best for the country.
As much as I do not like the fact that a Dubai governent-owned company will have access to our ports, I don't see any better alternative for the near future.
"Lot’s of people think the White House should have seen the response coming, but I am sorry - that would require having little respect for people. I never thought I would see people so afraid of the word ‘Arab’ in my life. Over and over again I hear or read ‘but, in this case Arab…’. I know I had a lot more respect for this country before this issue hit. I know people have some legitimate security concerns. But if someone has read the details and now understand 99.99% of the people will still being doing what they have always been doing, that Port Operations does not do security, and if DPW or the UAE wanted to ship a weapon here they run plenty of ports to get the thing here without doing this, then I cannot understand what is left to worry about."
Worth repeating.
It has "turned" like the water sometimes backs up before a tsunami.
Of course, that doesn't mean the U.S. needs to continue it's contract with that company after the sale. But I don't have a clue as to how many companies might do this kind of work.
After beating CUpchuck Sleaze to a pulp, these great heroes will send the Hildeb!tch on a one way broom ride to hell.
Clintons committed treason. Treason is punishable by death.
Which is why I'm not that interested in convincing Congress Critters at the moment - he does need to go over their heads and prove to the American public that he is doing what is best for the country - who knows, maybe this will become his Reagan Moment.
That's right. Let's welcome a branch of another foreign government into the American business mix.
Since we have the communist Chinese running the port in Long Beach, California,it makes perfect sense to have a nation recently tied to terrorism against Americans running ports on the East coast.
These aren't companies.They are governments at work on our shores.
It's the Bush business model. It makes it more cost effective for our enemies to conquer us.
Knee jerk, that phrase sounds much like the crap that Rush was pushing yesterday in the administration's full court press to green light this travesty. I have lost respect for Rush during the past three dayhs. He sounded more like a "W" press secretary than does Scott McClellan.
The only thing the arab world has proven themselves to be is untrustworthy. A friend today is an enemy two years from now.
Having learned that lesson it would be wise of us not to allow them to own a single damn thing within the U.S. that could be used to attack us and if any idiots out there are thinking of saying "but they wouldn't be in charge of security" save it.
Having control of the port operations would undoubtedly lead to a thorough understanding of any and all security processes and how they could be defeated thereby opening the possibility of some nutjob docking an a-bomb either in or close to all the downtown cities involved in this deal simultaneously. Something that the muslims no doubt drool about.
I do not think Muslims in general can be trusted. Here is why. Any foreigner coming to America and not dissimulating does not want to become an American,they are becoming hyphenated Americans that are trying to change our culture and our country. But saying that. These idiot politicians and especially Congress critters do more damage to our National Security than do most spies. The Bush Administration probably has something to do with it but instead of going into the public trying to make a name and getting on camera these people should contact the White House when in doubt for a set-down. But even at that there are so many in Congress that I would not trust with the key to my storage house and that is their fault. To be honest I do not know of a Democrat in leadership that I would trust and that makes it almost impossible to handle this way. But there has got to be a better way than spouting off in the Junk Press.
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