Dubai Ports to Have Played Intelligence Role for CIA

The Washington Times ^ | 07-20-2007 | Bill Gertz

[RTO]

Former Inside the Ring co-author Rowan Scarborough has written a new book revealing a key reason the Bush administration pressed hard for the 2006 deal for the United Arab Emirates-based Dubai Ports World to take over management of several U.S. ports. According to Mr. Scarborough, the administration wanted the deal to go through because the UAE government had agreed to let the United States post agents inside its global port network who could report on world shipping...

... "Dubai Ports, in essence, was going to become an agent of CIA," Mr. Scarborough said in an interview. "The arrangement is helping us detect whether any kind of terror contraband was being moved around."

[Right Wing Assault]

So, what is the secret hidden reason W was in favor of Harriet Myers? And what is the secret hidden reason W was in favor of the immigration bill?

How are we supposed to know if there is a secret hidden reason or if W is just plain wrong? It’s hard to tell. Are we supposed to trust everything he supports without question?

[CMAC51]

I hope someone passes this on to hannity, rush and ingraham. I heard their big mouths persecuting Bush over this as they do when they think he’s too dumb to know what’s he’s doing.

I believe you are wrong about Rush. If I remember correctly, he tried to clarify what the deal involved and how it would be harmless. Of course he did not know the beneficial side.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Sorry, I didn't mean to shoot the messenger and I apologize if you took it that way. My arena of contention is strictly: "Is/was this a good idea?" It might have been. It might not have been. There was really no way to tell. But so soon after 9/11, even with the surveillance opportunities it probably would have created, it seemed to me like a very high-stakes gamble. Perhaps it was reactionary to nix the deal; We were entitled to that vigilance, IMO. Conceptually, it was astoundingly dissonant to grant a franchise to folks who had just attacked us. Given that so many of the 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, a so-called ally; and given that with Islam, we are dealing with a culture that has demonstrated a ready willingness to shift allegiances over stuff we flat out do not understand, I don't think it was wrong to err on the side of caution. After all, a major theme of 9/11 was to turn our technology and infrastructure against us.

[Neu Pragmatist]

You’re right . I think it’s BS as well. Bush came out the other day saying we would “regret” not swallowing the Amnesty bill, for a whole host of reasons .

This Ports story is just a way of saying that the majority of Americans were “stupid” for getting in the way of the “Global Economy and Free Trade” under the guise of gathering Intel ....

[CMAC51]

Yeah, fine. Under the deal, they’re our ally until they’re not our ally. Some ally. Except by then, they would have owned the ports and would have had permanent physical presence. IOW, they would have been able to express their non-alliedness any which way they might have wanted to. I’m not convinced by a single data point.

Your comments show how ignorant you are of the deal. They would not have owned the ports. It involved operation of terminals and would in no way have compromised the ports. A little knowledge of the facts would help you out quite a bit.

Just the fact that Chuckie Shumer opposed it should have been good enought reason to support it. That guy is a putz who is wrong 99.9% of the time.

[RTO]

Well, sir, you have a valid point... and the immigration fiasco did nothing to improve the President’s credibility with the American people, nor his core constituency.

This is what happens when Washington refuses to level with Americans, and rather treats us as children, whom must neither be seen or heard. Double edge sword that will cut us all to pieces, if it keeps up.

RTO

[jackv]

Yes, You are right. Rush did come around, but I was real shocked at the beginning, He must have thought about it tho and was much more conciliatory than the others.

[CMAC51]

I think he came around but was critical in the beginning.

No, Rush got his facts straight before expressing an opinion. Early on he pointed out opposition was based on incorrect perception of what it involved.

[drjimmy]

The United Arab Emirates is our ally just like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are our allies. When we outsource our intelligence efforts to other countries, everything we get from them will serve their interests ahead of ours.

[TexasTransplant]

Who wudda thunk that?

[jackv]

The immigration thing is a fundamental difference. It’s obvious.
I thought the outrage over Harriett Myers was cruel and uncalled for. I love Alito, tho, so....
As for the UAE, it was a knee-jerk reaction to not trusting anything Arab or in the middle east.

[jackv]

No he did not...I remember very clearly him raising the question on the air as if Bush had lost his mind. Then he settled down.

[shield]

It was insane the way all acted. Jerks all of them.

[CMAC51]

If all of your decisions are going to be us against them, with them being anyone who practices Islam, the only alternative we have is to wipe them out.

Our opponent is radical Islam. Any opportunity to promote involvement in world trade, other than oil, among the Islamic nations works to our benefit.

If you study the history of the Middle East, you can see that much of the current situation stems from the fact that Jimmy Carter pulled the economic rug out from under the Shah’s feet.

True solutions to the problems of the Middle East are going to involve economic progress, outside of oil, and the smaller contries like UAE, Kuwait and Omaan will lead the way.

[RTO]

Could not agree with you more on that thought... The problem is how do you make an ally with a culture that is required to lie to “infidels”... They may be your friend one day, and slit your throat the next. There is no way to be sure if they are on your side for the long haul. How many times has the House of Saud double-crossed us?

RTO

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

I wouldn’t characterize it quite that way. The tree-clearing and thinning deal is, as far as I’m concerned, 100% demonstratable and observable. You can look at cleared and uncleared forests that have burned and see multiple examples of thinned forests recovering remarkably soon after a burn while uncleared forests are charred and dead nuclear bomb zones for years and years after a fire. You can see unremoved dead trees as insect-pest breeding grounds in dozens of examples.

I agree there is some similarity if you work backwards from the specious Sierra Club objections: Logging roads induce more logging roads; clearcutting is the work of the devil; making money on the poor trees is capitalism run amok.

With the ports, there was really no (scientific) way to tell. Yeah, the objections to the port deal were alarmist, no doubt. But we had every reason in the world to be alarmed and as far as I know, no particular reason to trust the UAE so we could surveil all the other Arab countries who we suddenly realized we could no longer trust. If you’ll recall, one dominant chant at the time was “we have to be right 100% of the time...they have to be right only once”. To me, the port deal was an open invitation to give our enemies multiple shots at attacking us. Let’s also not forget that many years of evading sanctions and surrepititious weapons smuggling had given the other side plenty of experience getting around ex/im controls.

[gov_bean_ counter]

they’re our ally until they’re not our ally

WADR, please tell me how this differs from France and Germany. Countries don't have friends, the have interests.

[CMAC51]

This is what happens when Washington refuses to level with Americans, and rather treats us as children, whom must neither be seen or heard. Double edge sword that will cut us all to pieces, if it keeps up.

Self justification; much as a child would do. The fault was not with the administration. They were consistently on message describing what the deal involved, why it did not compromise security and the benefits of stroking an ally. They cannot be blamed if the children reacted emotionally and ignored the facts. But, isn't that what children do?

[jackv]

“...we had every reason in the world to be alarmed and as far as I know, no particular reason to trust the UAE ...”

I think the Bush administration knows a lot more — and you can never fully trust ANY country.
I don’t trust China or Russia as far as I can throw them but we work deals with them all of the time. Same with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
“Trust but verify”...yea, right. When you can...

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

It doesn’t matter if I’m ignorant of the details because I’m not making a semantic argument. What matters is if granting or selling or renting the UAE or Dubai Ports control or purview or supervision or influence or whatever term you’d like to use equivalently grants them the single way they might have, should they choose to do so, to bring in enormously destructive weapons. If the dice landed that way, then we could use the terms dead, exterminated, destroyed, devastated, or anything else, and the semantics would be quite secondary to the result.

“If all of your decisions are going to be us against them, with them being anyone who practices Islam, the only alternative we have is to wipe them out.”

I disagree. They can be kept at a cautious distance in areas where they can do us serious harm. If we want to engage the Arab world, for the sake of argument, fine. Let’s do some cultural museums. Let’s work on joint projects to help some of the poorer Arab nations improve the lot of their people. Let’s help them develop some native industries so that their unemployment rate gets under 40%. Let’s see if they are open to Western Studies at their universities. Let’s not, in other words, start the engagement exercises at such an utterly critical point.