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.
The US needs to know what will happen if an anti-American sheik takes over Dubai. And that could easily happen.
What will we do then? Where does that leave our Ports?
Dubai is the most liberal of the Emirates, the others are much more ... shall we say, not. Let's do the deal right. Neither side is desperate.
The same thing happens to the ports that happened to German-owned properties in WW2
Then put it in the deal. That would make it better for me.
Assuming it's not already too late.
Hypocrites
Cornpone, thanks for posting the article.
I'm just an armchair expert, and I am not for the port deal.To me the reasons are obvious, as an Islamist nation who agrees with an ideology that favors the destruction or servitude of me and my family should not be in charge of any part of any point of entry of any thing into my coun try.
From your homepage, it is apparent that you are one who knows whereof you speak. Please continue to share your point of view. I know that it can be frustrating and all, and that there is a certain smugness on the part of those who seem to favor this deal because of their supposed superior logic and understanding of the facts. You know, the kind of superior intellect that would brand my way of thinking on the port deal as xenophobic, racist, or just plain uninformed.
Having seen the effects of Islamist ideology first hand in NYC,well, too bad.
ping
"And there in is the problem with this administration. They still don't understand the history of Islam and the fact that it is political and religion is the face it hides behind."
its a religion of peace!!!!! stop being so hateful of this incredible religion. maybe if the jews would just give up israel and the entire world would allow sharia law to be imposed on itself, we could see that!!!
/sarcasm
Chronicles Magazine apparently can't write the truth either. The ports are run by the US. The terminals at the ports are leased to shipping companies. DPW will be acquiring the leases to 21 terminals at 6 ports via the purchase of a UK company.
It's really not hard to write the truth.
This says all that needs to be said.
The answer is still NO.
Nice summary. More generally, it is the logic of political correctness, once abhored by Republicans but now embraced by the Bush administration.
LOL!
I should change my name to ThreadKiller. Where did everyone go?
They don't even own the terminals ( warehouses ) they manage; they lease them. The ports, themselves, are OWNED by the states and cities where they are located.
If one was to use your description of Dubai and substitute America, it would be just as true; as far as it goes.
Yes, that's a point frequently lost on the "Bush-can-do-no-wrong" crowd here.
That area of the world is not particularly stable. There's certainly no guarantee (and in my mind, not even a good chance) that the UAE will be pro-American for the foreseeable future.
General Pace is a good man. I have posted some very favorable reviews of his testimony and I agree with most of his logic and strategy. In this case, considering more facts than I'm willing to discuss in this response, I trust a thorough review by congress representing all the American people more than a 'trust me' from an elected executive and a handful of apparently ill-informed bureaucrats tied to an executive tit.
I see you're up on all the issues.
You missed the point...his whole "conspiracy" film was about the Bush families connections to Arab kingdoms. Clearly, this is mostly a British run company, but the ownership is the Kindgom of this U.A.E. nation. I personally don't see the problem if Pakistan ran it, it simply flies in the face of the whole administrations position.
Sorry. When I replied to you, I didn't know that you were talking about his "conspiracy' film.
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