Posted on 02/26/2006 7:21:39 PM PST by Cornpone
President George W. Bush has declared that he would veto any congressional attempt to derail a contract allowing a Middle Eastern company to run six major U.S. seaports. His administration has approved the $6.8 billion deal between the London-based P&O (Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company) and Dubai Ports World—which is owned by the United Arab Emirates—to operate ports in Baltimore, Miami, Newark, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.
The opposition to the deal has been instant, vociferous, and unprecedentedly bipartisan. The resistance to the proposed transaction within his own party is likely to exceed the rebellion last fall over his nomination of Harriet Miers. Informed Washingtonians predict that Bush will be forced into yet another embarrassing retreat; the issue, it appears, is not “if” but “when,” and at what political cost to himself.
So far the critics have focused on the reliability of the UAE as an American “ally,” the extent to which Dubai Ports World could be used as a means of terrorist penetration of a highly vulnerable segment of the nation’s infrastructure, and the lack of transparency and procedural safeguards preceding the deal. Seven specific arguments have been advanced:
1. While nominally the paragon of Arab striving for modernity, Dubai and the rest of the Emirates are inhabited by people not only similar to their Muslim brethren elsewhere, but disproportionately inclined to Islamic terrorism. There are barely a million UAE citizens, but they included two of the 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks—including Marwan al Shehhi, who—according to the FBI—flew United Airlines flight 175 into the second World Trade Center tower.
2. Several of the 9-11 hijackers and planners traveled through the UAE or stayed there while preparing the attack, and its banking system was used to move funds used in the operation. This has prompted critics to call the Emirates “an operational and financial base for the hijackers” who carried out the 9-11 attacks.
3. Only three countries in the world recognized the Taliban regime in Afghanistan: Saudi Arabia, Pakistan—and the UAE. Entrusting the running of America’s ports to a company owned by one of those three governments is inherently unsafe.
4. According to a bipartisan congressional letter of protest sent to the Administration last week, the UAE has been a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran and North Korea. If such shipments, many of them bulky, passed undetected, the UAE government is guilty either of gross negligence or of complicity.
5. The management structure, hiring policies, and external supervision of the company itself are flawed. “There are conditions, which shows they had concerns, but it’s all procedural and relies entirely on good faith,” according to Rep. Pete King, a Republican from New York and the House homeland security chief, but “there’s nothing those conditions . . . nothing that assures us they’re not hiring someone with bin Laden.”
6. The plan was not subjected to any proper evaluation by the Department of Homeland Security. Its administrators obediently rubber-stamped it, but its senior security analysts were surreptitious bypassed. They “were never told [about it] and they don’t like it now.”
7. The Dubai firm has unnaturally close ties to the White House. Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose department heads the federal panel that approved the deal, was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to Dubai Ports World for $1.15 billion in 2004—one year after Snow left for President Bush’s cabinet. David Sanborn, currently in charge of Dubai Ports World’s European and Latin American operations, “was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.”
To all that, the President responded with an ill-tempered challenge: “I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard than a [British] company,” he told reporters. The idiocy of such thinking, rather than any specific security threat, is the real reason why this deal must be called off. It reflects his enduring ideological commitment to the fiction that there are good Muslims, who are our friends and allies and whose countries are every bit as “normal” as Great Britain, Canada, or Japan; and then there are some bad apples who have “hijacked a great religion.”
Bush’s logic in defending the right of a Middle Eastern company to enjoy the same access to America’s strategic infrastructure as a British company is the same logic that has granted millions of Muslims equal access to this country’s green cards and passports, thus creating the main terrorist threat that America faces today. It is the logic of globalization and anti-discriminationism. It is not merely flawed, it is evil, and it presents a mortal danger to our civilization.
"it presents a mortal danger to our civilization"
Agreed
Think about the BS level of the original story ~ the port facilities in New York's Manhattan Island alone are worth most of a TRILLION BUCKS, or a thousand billion.
What kind of firesale would pass them off for far less than 1% of their value?
It's not the PORT of New York, or the PORT of Baltimore that's for sale. Rather, some containership terminals are being sold.
I can't believe that a week after the first story somebody is still writing about the deal as though it involves entire harbor operations!
Author has a scrambled logic, and a scrambled name.
This deal is a triumph of globalism and big business over security. This is a betrayal of our trust.
I suppose logic defined by innuendo and the hint of racial denigration is better? Point holes in the logic. Explain yourself.
THERE!
This story has reached the Gear-Grinding stage. No one's mind is going to be changed from this point on, and as we already see on this thread, people are just showing up to spout at each other.
What else is in the news, Robin?
I certainly don't claim to know every little detail of this transaction, but there is so much disinformation and outright lies out there that it almost causes one's head to explode.
When I want comedy...I turn to the Washington Post.
But seriously, after all the initial brouhaha surrounding the ports deal has subsided somewhat, these are my thoughts.
I was one of the ones who initially joined Hillary! and Chucky 'Tec-9' Schumer in the outrage over "selling America's ports" to Dubai. Then I found out that rumors of the selling of our ports were exaggerated. False, even. So now, it seems much more benign and ridiculous than before.
However I haven't changed my opinion that the UAE is an Islamic state where only 14% of the population likes us. And I don't trust them a lot. We do have our military bases there, but still...trust? No.
Finally, the process of vetting and communicating foreign deals such as this one is clearly broken and murky. When the President and the head of Homeland Security and the Senate didn't even know about the deal, something is wrong with the process.
And when I find myself aligned with Hillary! and Chucky, something is wrong with the truth.
Q: Mr. Secretary, I'd like to ask you about government -- the U.S. government's decision to have a company from the UAE run six U.S. seaports. Is that a decision that the Defense Department weighed in on? And what, if any, national security issues do you think that raises?
SEC. RUMSFELD: First, let me say I'm not expert on this subject, and it -- my understanding that I've been told secondhand by others is the following: that there's a process that exists in the government; that six departments and agencies are involved, and five or six offices in the Executive Office of the President and the White House are involved; and there's a time limit of something like 30 days during which this process is to be executed; that the process worked; it was chaired by the Department of Treasury -- the deputy, Bob Kimmitt, is -- was the chairman -- and they -- in the normal order of things, what they do, as I understand it, is they select a lead agency or department based on the substance of it -- and in this case, it was Homeland Security, obviously, because the Coast Guard has the responsibility for the security of ports -- and that the process went forward; and in the course of it, the Department of Homeland Security and the interagency process negotiated a letter with the company that had purchased, I believe, a British company, setting forth exactly how security would be handled. I've not seen it, so I can't describe it, but that's my understanding.
And the -- I guess the only other thing I'd say is that we all deal with the UAE on a regular basis.
It's a country that's been involved in the global war on terror with us, it's a country that we have facilities that we use, and it's a country that was very responsive to assist in Katrina, one of the early countries that did that, and a country that we have very close military-to-military relations as well as political and economic relations.
Do you want to comment?
GEN. PACE: Sir, the military-to-military relationship with the United Arab Emirates is superb. They've got great seaports that are capable of handling, and do, our aircraft carriers. They've got airfields that they allow us to use, and their airspace, their logistics support. They've got a world-class air-to-air training facility that they let us use and cooperate with them in the training of our pilots. In everything that we have asked and work with them on, they have proven to be very, very solid partners. And as the Secretary said, they were the very first country -- a hundred million dollars is what they offered to Katrina victims.
God, not this crap again. Ok time to look at the tap point by point.
1) Which is the greater threat. The place where someone is born or the place where they start thinking its a good thing to kill innocent people. I go with the second. Shehhi didn't start becoming radical until he was living and studying in Germany. It was in Germany that Shehhi started getting serious with people like Atta (pg 162 9/11 report). So it was not the enviroment of the UAE that made him into an innocent killing terrorist.
2) Several of the 9/11 hijackers (4)lived together in Germany. Money was funnelled to them through German banks. Planning and flight training for some of the hijackers went on in Germany. Yet Luftansa is allowed to fly into airports all over the country several times a day without a mention.
3) Supporting the Taliban provided an external threat against "iranian dangers" (pg 139 9/11 report). Also the UAE picked our relationship with them over theirs with the Taliban and tried to get the Taliban to turn over Bin Laden.
4) The UAE has the 3rd largest GDP in the Arab world. Not to mention they're near the opening of the persian gulf. The government has never been linked nor accusing of weapon transfers.
5) The DHS concerns were addressed by the "secret agreement" with DPW. Also of DPW's 9 top people on its management team 4 are Americans (including 1 ex naval officer). Odds are a P&O person will make it to that group after the take over.
6) same as 5. DHS's concerns were raised and answered voluntarily by a company that has taken on restictions other companies do not have.
7) They're too close? WTF does that matter? Bush is going to be an accomplise in an attack? Snow became treasruy secretary BEFORE CSX was taken over. Former CSX management people are on the DPW management team. That would give Snow great access to the internal workings of DPW.
Sorry we don't see eye to eye but they were also the first and second largest contributor to the Saudi's fund for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. They contriubuted $150 million to that one. Of course I can provide documentation but I grow so tired of doing so.
You obviously read the post from last night.
"Author has a scrambled logic"
It's not quibbling. Besides the ilogic of the article the author is working from a position of ignorance.
I question whether the money was designated solely for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. The Saudi Arabian government has paid out at least $33 million to families of Palestinians killed or injured in the 17-month-old intifada and in December 2001 earmarked another $50 million for the payments. Saudi Arabia sets aside $50M for 'martyrs'
The US and Western Europe were the biggest aid givers to the Palestinians. All money is fungible.
If we want to run massive year to year trade deficits we better get used to foreigners (Arab and all other) owning formerly US assets."
In other words, we should all become dimmies.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.