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But how do you KNOW that blocking the deal "erred on the side of security"?

If there were payments to the officials making the decision, your "side of the almighty buck" might have credence. But since there is not, how do you know that completing the deal would be worse for our security than scuttling the deal?

BTW, think about this. The opponents originally called for terminating the deal. That is what Schumer wanted, it's what Clinton called for, its what opponents here said -- have Bush cancel the deal, don't approve it, make it go away, stop DP World from buying P&O.

OK. I don't think opponents would disagree with that last paragraph, that this is what was called for.

The result of that action, stopping the deal, would have meant that the terminals in question would still be handled by P&O, a foreign company. No congressional legislation would be passed to revoke any OTHER ownership deals (meaning that wasn't part of the original reqeust, just Bush rejecting this deal). We would go back to the status quo before the deal was announced.

Now, here we are 3 weeks later. P&O HAS been bought by DP World. The deal was not stopped.

Instead, DP World has a firm announcement that they are selling the companies that run former P&O operations in the U.S. to a U.S. company, hopefully in the next 6 months or so.

I still don't think opponents can prove this will make us safer, but CERTAINLY the opponents will agree that THIS outcome is MUCH BETTER than the outcome they originally wanted.

By NOT stopping the deal, these terminal operations might be fully in the hands of an american company, whereas by STOPPING the deal they would be in the hands of a foreign company.

But I have not seen a SINGLE opponent of the deal acknowledge that, by allowing the deal to go through, things worked out BETTER, and from their perspective we will be MORE SECURE, than we would have been if they had gotten their way originally.

So to summarise:
1) There is no evidence that rejecting the deal would "err on the side of security", because there was no way for those of us on the outside to really know which owner would make us more secure.
2) Because the deal was completed, we will end up with wholly-american-owned companies running these terminals, rather than the P&O company. Again, there is no evidence this makes us more secure, but it is better from the opponent's perspective than rejecting the deal would have been.