Here's something I don't like Bush for...

Yes, quite correct BTA. Bush was not involved as five of our major ports were leased to a foreign power. Didn't know a thing about it until the deal was done. Then supported it completely and without reservations. And without pause for thought, either. Correct too that all the "i's" were dotted and all the "t's" were crossed. Nothing illegal here. But I still think there's room for a minor quibble.

First, let me say that I haven't bothered to read any of the explanations/justifications for this deal because I think they ignore the basic point and are therefore just so much crap.

Secondly, like most Americans, I was not aware that a British company had been running these ports until this current deal was struck. Had I known, I would not have approved of it. But it's more than a little naive--to put the kindest face on it--to argue that "Dubai is just another foreign company.", as I'm sure is being done. The same can be said about the easy, sunny optimism about security concerns.

Great Britain has been our ally for about a century now, and our relationship has always been close, in one way or another. And while I don't like it that they've been operating major U.S. ports, they are more or less family. Common background, culture, and so forth. They even speak the same language.

The same cannot be said for Dubai. Different culture, different background, different language, located in a part of the world where our popularity varies from uncertain to verminous. Where radical sects hating us abound and have wide influence. It has been reported, with what truth I don't know, that members of the Dubai royal family have met recently with the leaders of Al Quida. If so, these people should have nothing to do with the operation of our ports. (I hope there will be no silly posts that members of the Dubai royal family could hardly influence the operations of a completely separate Dubai company.) The fact that Dubai is vulnerable to terrorist infiltration is really sufficient here.

Security. It is naive to believe that people on the inside, as Dubai would be, could not breach security if they desired to do so. Not that security is all that great to start with. Only 5% of the cargo containers arriving in this country are currently inspected. How hard would it be, if you were unfriendly, and running the port, to arrange that your particular container(s) was not inspected?

If a nation wishes to be secure, it should run its ports itself, and conduct proper inspection of what comes in. To argue that this agreement is "legal" is to miss the point. Yes, it's "legal"; and the Titanic was "unsinkable". Give me a break. This goes beyond mere negligence.

Question: Who lives in a fool's paradise?

[ March 02, 2006, 07:11: Message edited by: Cernak ]

 

With all respect, Blackthorne, I completely disagree with you, nor do I believe you've refuted any of my arguments. Your refutation is essentially legalistic. The deal being, apparently, legal--as I conceded--your arguments are unanswerable, on that basis. My argument was on quite a different basis, as a reading of it would show.

You do say, at one point, "Again, I think it is naive to think that you know more about national security...than the members of CFIUS." It's true that I'm no expert on national security. On the other hand, we're speaking here of the people who failed to prevent 9/11, despite numerous warnings; the people who did such a marvelous job with Hurricane Katrina, despite numerous and timely warnings; the people who had no viable plan for postwar Iraq. Against this appalling record you offer their meticulous plans for port security, as written on sheets of paper. They say actions speak louder than words. Personally, I wouldn't trust them to babysit my daughter. She's too old for it anyway.

Ships that pass in the night. C'est la vie.

[ March 05, 2006, 05:01: Message edited by: Cernak ]

 

I believe that was Cernak's point, actually. I further believe I can sum up the problem with three words: the Bush Administration.

 

P & O had an American partner, a company named Eller and Co. based in Miami. Eller was and is attempting to purchase the operational rights for the 6 ports that would be turned over to DPW...unfortunately they were blocked from further action in the US due to the speedy decision by CFIUS and left with no other option but to challenge it in a UK court, were they have no viable legal grounds according to the presiding magistrate.

That's why the deal sucks. I understand it's probably completely legal, but it still sucks.

Maybe Eller should have been an ally in the War on Terror...

 

This is not another answer to Blackthorne, it's more of a musing on this whole situation, which seems to me to be very strange.

We have here a President who has in earlier times always known how to take the common pulse and not so much respond to it as play on it. Yet now, in the case of this port deal, he deliberately takes an intransigent stand on a deal that is wildly unpopular, at a moment when his own popularity is practically in freefall, when the issue is risks to our national security, when his own talisman for four years has been national security at any and every cost. When, by his own admission, he was not told of the deal until it was done, and he could easily have repudiated it with no cost to himself; indeed, with popularity, at a time when he could use some. So why this relentless forging ahead, as though only Dubai, and no one else in the whole wide world, could possibly run our ports? Why this implacable insistence in pursuing a dubious and unpopular course?

 

@BTA
It's been hard to find any concrete and succinct information on Eller's involvement in this entire deal. My tenuous understanding of the situation has come from piecing together bits from literally dozens of news stories. For some reason the "Eller" factor has been incredibly under-reported.

I do know that now the number of ports affected has jumped from 6 to 21 and it has something to do with the partnership agreements that existed between P&O and Eller...I'm trying to find out if this is effectively going to squeeze US based Eller out of the port management part of their business...which is why they were fighting it in the first place.

I still think the deal stinks...but I guess one man's steaming heap of poop is another man's rose .