Bush Administration OKs United Arab Emirates Company to Handle US Port Operations

2 years
10 months
26 days
14 hours
17 minutes

 

First, where's the link? Are you ashamed to post the source of this?

Secondly, his position is full of half-truths. Yes, companies who lease terminals at ports (quite different that how he says they "control" ports) will have their own rent-a-cop security type people. This is not the same as overall port security. That still lies with the Coast Guard, DHS and local police. There was a nice article in the WSJ yesterday that broke down the various levels of security.

Lastly, Ervin is not an unbiased source. He clearly left his position as Inspector General on bad terms with the Bush Administration. Now that he's away from the job, it's pretty easy for him to pander to the ignorant masses and scream about the dangers of the Arabs (nevermind that almost 100% of the employees at the ports are still going to be US citizens...) to make Bush look bad.

Weak points all around from Ervin. Sour grapes.

by the way - what's with all his typos? Giff, please provide a link. tia

 

You're not questioning Clark Kent, are you texx??

Just because he wears tights and changes in a phone booth doesn't mean he's a liberal.

 

Osama, Saddam and the Ports

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times
Friday 24 February 2006

The storm of protest over the planned takeover of some U.S. port operations by Dubai Ports World doesn't make sense viewed in isolation. The Bush administration clearly made no serious effort to ensure that the deal didn't endanger national security. But that's nothing new - the administration has spent the past four and a half years refusing to do anything serious about protecting the nation's ports.

So why did this latest case of sloppiness and indifference finally catch the public's attention? Because this time the administration has become a victim of its own campaign of fearmongering and insinuation.

Let's go back to the beginning. At 2:40 p.m. on Sept. 11, 2001, Donald Rumsfeld gave military commanders their marching orders. "Judge whether good enough hit S. H. [Saddam Hussein] @ same time - not only UBL [Osama bin Laden]," read an aide's handwritten notes about his instructions. The notes were recently released after a Freedom of Information Act request. "Hard to get a good case," the notes acknowledge. Nonetheless, they say: "Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

So it literally began on Day 1. When terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration immediately looked for ways it could exploit the atrocity to pursue unrelated goals - especially, but not exclusively, a war with Iraq.

But to exploit the atrocity, President Bush had to do two things. First, he had to create a climate of fear: Al Qaeda, a real but limited threat, metamorphosed into a vast, imaginary axis of evil threatening America. Second, he had to blur the distinctions between nasty people who actually attacked us and nasty people who didn't.

The administration successfully linked Iraq and 9/11 in public perceptions through a campaign of constant insinuation and occasional outright lies. In the process, it also created a state of mind in which all Arabs were lumped together in the camp of evildoers. Osama, Saddam - what's the difference?

Now comes the port deal. Mr. Bush assures us that "people don't need to worry about security." But after all those declarations that we're engaged in a global war on terrorism, after all the terror alerts declared whenever the national political debate seemed to be shifting to questions of cronyism, corruption and incompetence, the administration can't suddenly change its theme song to "Don't Worry, Be Happy."

The administration also tells us not to worry about having Arabs control port operations. "I want those who are questioning it," Mr. Bush said, "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."

He was being evasive, of course. This isn't just a Middle Eastern company; it's a company controlled by the monarchy in Dubai, which is part of the authoritarian United Arab Emirates, one of only three countries that recognized the Taliban as the legitimate ruler of Afghanistan.

But more to the point, after years of systematically suggesting that Arabs who didn't attack us are the same as Arabs who did, the administration can't suddenly turn around and say, "But these are good Arabs."

Finally, the ports affair plays in a subliminal way into the public's awareness - vague but widespread - that Mr. Bush, the self-proclaimed deliverer of democracy to the Middle East, and his family have close personal and financial ties to Middle Eastern rulers. Mr. Bush was photographed holding hands with Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (now King Abdullah), not the emir of Dubai. But an administration that has spent years ridiculing people who try to make such distinctions isn't going to have an easy time explaining the difference.

Mr. Bush shouldn't really be losing his credibility as a terrorism fighter over the ports deal, which, after careful examination (which hasn't happened yet), may turn out to be O.K. Instead, Mr. Bush should have lost his credibility long ago over his diversion of U.S. resources away from the pursuit of Al Qaeda and into an unnecessary war in Iraq, his bungling of that war, and his adoption of a wrongful imprisonment and torture policy that has blackened America's reputation.

But there is, nonetheless, a kind of rough justice in Mr. Bush's current predicament. After 9/11, the American people granted him a degree of trust rarely, if ever, bestowed on our leaders. He abused that trust, and now he is facing a storm of skepticism about his actions - a storm that sweeps up everything, things related and not.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022406Z.shtml

 

This is really hurting Bush Administration. Latest poll for the first time has Dems in Congress 43% more trusted than Bush on national Security 41%

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/2006/February Dailies/Dubai Ports.htm

 

This is getting too easy. Bush caugh in another lie.


President Bush, on Tuesday.

Today

Paper: Coast Guard Has Port Co. Intel Gaps

WASHINGTON - Citing broad gaps in U.S. intelligence, the Coast Guard cautioned the Bush administration that it was unable to determine whether a United Arab Emirates-owned company might support terrorist operations, a Senate panel said Monday.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060227...cx.9SSs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

 

once again bush lied to the american people.

 

BTW

Is it true that the UAE doesn't recognize Israel’s right to exist?

 

are you afraid mark, because bush has told you to be, or are you afraid because there are people out there that want to blow your ass up, and have a demonstrated capability to do so?

 

The only thing I'm afraid of right now is paying my Discover bill after dropping some serious scratch on doggie oral surgery today.

 

mmmmmm, doggie oral

 

none of the gulf countries do i dont believe.

by the way yall do realize taht the reason for dp world's acquisition of p&o wasn't the US ports by india and china which obviously are growing lucratively right now...

im sickened by having to use national review to articulate my stance...but here it is none the less.

nro

 

So we'll give contracts to them but not speak to Hamas.

interesting...

 

hillary wants to do the opposite- fund hamas, but won't give contracts to moderate arabs.

interesting...and stooopid.

 

Ooooo that brittle Hillary!

 

Ports deal dead


Dubai withdraws from ports deal

DP World International has announced it will divest itself of its U.S. operations, after House and Senate Republican leaders declare the deal 'dead' in Congress.

Senator John Warner (R-VA), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, announced that the United Arab Emirates company had withdrawn efforts to take over control of 21 U.S. ports on the Senate floor.

http://rawstory.com/news/2006/CNN_Dubai_deal_shut_down_0309.html