Posted on 03/08/2006 6:21:12 PM PST by Reagan Man
"That Needs to Change"
by Phyllis Schlafly, Mar. 8, 2006
"That needs to change" was Oprah's reply to Nan Talese of Doubleday, publisher of "A Million Little Pieces." After James Frey's "memoir" was exposed as a tissue of lies, Doubleday had tried to escape responsibility by saying that publishers don't fact-check non-fiction books.
To President Bush's approval of the $6.5 billion sale of terminals at six of our most important ports to the United Arab Emirates, Americans are shouting, "That needs to change." We are fed up with the post-9/11 failure (i.e., the refusal) of the Bush Administration to secure our borders and ports.
Bush's defense is, "Trust me." Sorry 'bout that. Bush's constituency prefers the Reagan maxim, "Trust but verify."
Ports pose a vital security concern because fewer than five percent of the more than 14 million containers that go through U.S. ports every year are inspected. We hope the other 95 percent of containers don't contain bombs or contraband.
The fact that the UAE has been helpful in some respects since 9/11 does not trump the facts that two of the 9/11 hijackers came from the UAE and some money to finance 9/11 was laundered through that country's banking system. Dubai was the main trans-shipment point for the Pakistani nuclear engineer who ran the world's largest nuclear proliferation ring and shipped equipment to enrich uranium from there to Libya, Iran and North Korea.
In defending the sale and pledging to veto any bill Congress might pass to cancel the deal, President Bush said, "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 great British company." That's easy to explain.
In the first place, Dubai Ports isn't just a Middle Eastern company; it's wholly owned by a Middle East government. We oppose this deal for the same reason that we successfully blocked Cosco, a company owned by the Communist Chinese government, from taking over the port of Long Beach, California.
To those who are looking for a standard for U.S. decision-making, here it is: the ports are American property and we're fully entitled to make any decision we believe is in the best interest of the United States of America. No law requires us to treat all countries the same.
We've been friends with England since 1814, connected by history, common law, language and wartime alliances, and there is no reason why we can't prefer England over a country that votes against us in the United Nations 70 percent of the time, and whose total existence depends on selling us oil at exorbitant prices.
The Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States didn't do a mandatory 45-day investigation. CFIUS was so casual that it failed to require Dubai Ports to keep copies of its business records on U.S. soil where they would be subject to orders from U.S. courts, and failed to require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. requests.
Those obligations are commonly attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales. CFIUS merely asked Dubai Ports to operate our seaports with existing U.S. managers "to the extent possible" and to take "all reasonable steps" to assist the Homeland Security Department.
The UAE has resurrected three has-been politicians: Republican Bob Dole (KS), and Democrats Tom Downey (NY) and Carol Browner (Clinton's head of the Environmental Protection Agency), to lobby for the port deal. They have a hard sell.
Former presidential candidate Gary Hart was plucked from political limbo to sound off on television. He said the deal illustrates "the confluence of the age of terrorism with the age of globalism, and we're just going to have to get used to it."
No, we don't. The American people are ready to ditch globalism and free trade if that means we must acquiesce in a deal made in London to let a Middle Eastern government run our ports in New York, Miami, Newark-Port Elizabeth, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and Baltimore, and exercise some control over the great U.S. Army port at Beaumont, Texas.
Lacking logical arguments, those who back Bush's position try to tar their opponents with smear words such as "racism" and "scaremongering." David Brooks outdid himself in his New York Times column by hurling a torrent of ugly epithets: "xenophobic," "Know Nothing," "nativist," "isolationist," "mass hysteria," "hatemonger," "collective mania," "reactionaries," "panderers," "bogus," "blowhard," "America First brigades," "xenophobic hysteria," and ending up with "garbage."
In a national radio debate in which I participated, the pro-UAE-deal spokesmen's principal argument was that the Arab world would be terribly upset by a cancellation of the deal, and we should be sensitive to their concerns because we all have to live in this world together. Au contraire. They should be sensitive to Americans' patriotic feelings and quietly withdraw from the deal just as China National Offshore Oil Co. (in the face of U.S. opposition) last year withdrew its $18.5 billion all-cash bid to acquire Unocal, one of America's oldest oil companies.
It's bad news for Republican candidates that Bush has allowed Hillary Clinton to get to his right on a national security issue.
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Read this article online: http://www.eagleforum.org/column/2006/mar06/06-03-08.html
Good article by Phyllis Schlafly.
Easy to tell who is worried about the poll numbers. Instead of explaining it to their constituents, they panicked. Don't expect much more from them anyway.
Sorry islamists - the world has turned and moved beyond you. You just don't know it yet. We are on our way to a future without you.
Living for the political moment. How very Linseed Graham.
4,000 earmarks later and Congress get a backbone.... nice.
It sure is.
BS, it's a political issue and you want to keep your job.
What are we going to do ignore millions of people? It would be nice if it were that easy to solve this issue, but you cant wish away terrorism and ignore it remember Clinton already tried that.
Buh-bye Dubai. Don't let the door hit you on the *ss on the way out.
"Republican leaders are trying to block a vote on the ports deal through a procedural vote that could occur as early as Thursday. That tactic is likely to fail, which could prompt Republicans to pull a lobbying reform bill from the floor in order to avoid defeat on the ports measure."
Hmmm ...
there is so much on the surface that I don't understand it seems that SOMETHING has to be critical yet not obvious or relaated to port security ...
after all, they are ALL politicians
I first heard this story related on Fox News Sunday, Feruary, 19, 2006 edition. That makes 18-19 days of intense public debate on this issue, since that first reports. The public political debate here on Free Republic has been very spirited. Sadly, many FReepers who supported the DPW/UAE deal have continually engaged in sophistry, obfuscation and questioning peoples motivation. OTOH. Instead of sticking to the issues, many people on both sides have reverted to ad hominem attacks. All this has happened over the last three weeks or so. One thing I've not seen, is panic on the part of GOP Congress members. Some people have become hysterical over this issue. But I see no panic.
Republicans have just sealed the fate of the Republican party at the next election. The only way Dimocraps can win back the House and Senate is for Republican voters to stay home and that is exactly what will happen. The Dimocraps will win with no agenda, treating the war on terrorism as a legal issue and spending more money. No US company, without substantial political (Union) clout - from Dimocraps because Republicans cannot be trusted - can afford to purchase terminal operations in America.
The stupidity of the Republicans in letting Schumer use this issue to bolster his position in the Senate is simply shameful. That they play politics with issues like this is hundred times more dangerous to this country than DPW running a few of our terminals.
If the leadership is this stupid and banal and the public supports it, maybe we deserve a Democratic House and Presidency next time around.
Yep, we just cut our own throats. Now we better F***** kick China, Taiwan and Singapore out!
4,000 earmarks later and Congress get a backbone.... nice.
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Prescisely. And the Bush adminstration had better back off their globalist agenda, and start acting on behalf of this country, in its best interests, and for the people that put them into power in Washington.
I hope they got the message that the American public is not going to swallow any more elitist crap -- next stop, our borders and cleaning this country out of illegals.
There was significant movement toward the president's position by congresscritters after the first wave of "oh my Gods". Then came the poll numbers, buffeted by the consistently false MSM mantra "Arabs buying our ports".
Congresscritters saw the poll numbers and quickly scurried back to the "safe" position. Boehner was on Tony Snow. And frankly admitted it was political hide saving. It's a bogus issue.
If they want to make a law that says no foreign leasing or management of terminals in US ports, then fine. But singling out the UAE, our staunchest Arab ally, when China and the Saudis and numerous others manage terminals is plain ignorance.
DPW runs terminals in for major ports in China. Do you think that the Chinese are not interested in the security of their ports?
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