Selling our Country!

[Oldtimer]

Paul Harvey was commenting on this today- that the new Arab port owners will have complete control over the ports and that the US will not even be able to have any say into who they hire in these high security areas......

Selling our country- piece by piece- agreement by agreement--all for the almighty dollar.....

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Arab-owned American ports?
TODAY'S EDITORIAL
February 15, 2006


Some of the country's busiest ports -- New York, New Jersey, Baltimore and three others -- are about to become the property of the United Arab Emirates. Do we really want our major ports in the hands of an Arab country where al Qaeda recruits, travels and wires money?
The U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, a Treasury Department-dominated group which reviews foreign investments, allows such purchases. The committee approved a $6.8 billion transaction between the ports' current British owners and Dubai Ports World, a government-owned United Arab Emirates firm. The United Arab Emirates was home to Marwan al-Shehhi, a September 11 hijacker; the country is a transit point for al Qaeda, including several other September 11 hijackers; al Qaeda's financing activities have involved the UAE; al Qaeda finds sympathizers there with ease, as it does in other Arab countries.
The Bush administration calls the United Arab Emirates an ally in the war on terror. But the UAE plays the same game Saudi Arabia does of quelching terrorists at home and turning a blind eye everywhere else.
It would be easy to caricature this sale: The purchase doesn't entail young Arab firebrands replacing longshoremen, nor would it displace American ownership. The storied British firm that currently owns them, the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co., probably isn't much better equipped against terrorist infiltration than Dubai Ports World. But then, the poor state of port security is precisely the point.
We should be improving port security in an age of terrorism, not outsourcing decisions to the highest bidder. The ports are thought to be the country's weakest homeland-security link, with good reason. Only a fraction of the nation's maritime cargoes are inspected.
This deal appears to be all about money. Dubai Ports World is "a business and its money is the same color as everyone else's, only it's got more of it," one banker told the Baltimore Sun. Where does the money come from? As a private company, Dubai Ports World's claim of 20 percent annual growth since 2001 is all but unverifiable, and its inner workings opaque. For all we know, Dubai Ports World is an undeclared arm of a foreign government.
The root question is this: Why should the United States have to gamble its port security on whether a subsidiary of the government of the United Arab Emirates happens to remain an antiterrorism ally?
The Committee on Foreign Investment is the wrong place for this decision to be made; it appears to be little more than a rubber stamp.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, New York Democrat, among others, is asking tough questions about this deal. For once, we agree with him: President Bush should overrule the committee to reject this deal. If that doesn't happen, Congress should take action. The country's ports should not be owned by foreign governments; much less governments whose territories are favored by al Qaeda.

[kolanuraven]

I think the Bush Admn refuses to discuss this take over w/ anyone...they are all for it.

Just another outsourcing of this country.....this is WRONG.

[reader (the Second)]

GOP Governors of Maryland and New York oppose the action of the Bush administration. I posted an article separately in this Forum.

Really outrageous. While we spend billions of homeland security and have no-fly lists.

[Oldtimer]

[mlsfarms]

Just another sellout by the BUSCHZSCHZSCHZ WHACKER and his administration to the highest $$$$ offered. No doubt that this group of vandals will go down as the most corrupt in recent times.

[Steve]

[Oldtimer]

I suppose next week we'll be reading that the US government has contracted border security between Brownsville and El Paso to the Mexican government Since they already have troops there watching their side (and smuggling drugs and people) it would be cost effective to stop the duplication ....

Make as much sense as giving our ports to a Muslim country when we're at War with radical Muslims- Mexico is supposed to be an ally....

[Steve]

Many countries are supposed to be allies, yet when push comes to shove they will look out for thier own interests first...
which is why I am against all foreign ownership of American port operations and management contracts....

but I did hear we were opening a guest worker border agent policy, and had help wanted signs posted at almost every hole in the non-existant border fence .

I disagree with GW on the border issue...it is time to stop the onslaught...and bring all port operations and port management contracts back under American control......

port authourities are successful , and profitable in most cases...bring in legislation to allow thier creation and let them bid on the American port management contracts....

[Soapweed]

[Cal]

[Oldtimer]

I do have to say one thing-- This port issue along with some of the other issues lately are not gaining the President any Brownie points or helping the Republican party..

I'm an Independent that voted for Bush twice- live in an area that is strongly a red county- but it appears the winds are rapidly changing.....

Even today at the cattle auction- a couple cattle buyers, several ranchers and I were standing around at noon discussing vitamins and supplements that each of us took... I mentioned I started taking the Omega 3's since I figured if it was good enough for the President- it was good enough for me... First comment I heard came from a buyer ( solid Republican) was "He should choke on them"-- from there it was downhill from everyone with negative comments on the ports, Iraq (that buyers son is serving his second tour of duty), Sunni-Shite battle, illegal immigrants, USDA ineptness, etc. etc.

Definitely looks like in the last few months the Republican Party is losing ground fast.....

[reader (the Second)]

Republicans seeking showdown with Bush over ports deal

PAUL KORING

WASHINGTON -- Mutinous Republicans, citing security concerns and seeking to sink a deal giving an Arab company control of some of the biggest U.S. ports, manoeuvred yesterday to force a showdown with President George W. Bush.

In what may emerge as the most serious congressional challenge to Mr. Bush over his self-styled role as gunslinger in the war against terrorism, Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate are openly defying the President over the port takeover.

"We are going to send a very clear signal that we want to have American interests secured by leaders in America," said Jerry Lewis, a Republican who chairs the vital House appropriations committee.

A House committee supported 62-2 yesterday Mr. Lewis's poison-pill amendment to a $91-billion funding bill for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If passed, and a vote is expected next week, the bill would effectively kill the deal that would see Dubai-based DP World managing six major U.S. ports.

Mr. Bush, who hasn't vetoed any legislation during his five years in the White House, has threatened to refuse to sign any bill torpedoing the DP ports deal. But a veto could throttle the money flow needed to keep fighting the war.

Having failed to win congressional backing for Social Security overhaul, the centrepiece of his domestic agenda, and being forced to withdraw the dead-ended nomination of his own lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court, Mr. Bush now faces open Republican revolt on a national-security issue.

That has Democrats crowing.

"For 5½ years, anything that President Bush has wanted, this Republican-dominated Congress has rolled over for him," Harry Reid, the Democrats' Senate leader, said yesterday.

Deborah Pryce, a Republican from Ohio, a key swing state, has accused Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff of allowing the "nation's security [to] be sacrificed at the altar of free trade."

What Mr. Chertoff actually said was that rigorous security checks had cleared DP Ports and that the defence and security of U.S. harbours remained in the hands of the U.S. Coast Guard, not the company unloading containers. The United States must "balance the paramount urgency of security against the fact that we still want to have a robust global trading system," he said, only to add to the controversy.

Unspoken, but evidently underlying some of the opposition -- running at 80 per cent in some polls -- is the feeling that Arab nations or Muslims can't be entrusted with vital U.S. infrastructure.

"The kinds of questions I will ultimately want answered is, what did Dubai do when an innocent country, Denmark, had its embassies burned?" Christopher Shays, a Connecticut Republican, said yesterday.

"How did they try to temper the radical thoughts within their own societies? What did they do to speak out? What did they do to prevent it? What are they doing now to condemn it? Or are they just basically trying to placate us and pay political leaders in this country lots of money to make their arguments and then put gasoline on the radicals who want to incite anger against Denmark?"

Right-wing opponents of the deal acidly note that U.S. citizens can't even own a McDonalds, let alone a major company, in the United Arab Emirates.

State-owned DP World has emerged as a major global player, running container ports in Europe and Asia as well as the Persian Gulf. Its latest and most controversial deal, buying the port-operating unit from Britain's P&O, gave it control of facilities in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Miami and New Orleans.

In an effort to defuse opposition, the company has formally requested a full-blown 45-day review, something the security committee that first looked at the deal deemed unnecessary.

But the political calculus may be simpler than the security issues.

"There's nothing that the American people understand more than the Dubai Ports situation," Mr. Reid said. "Think about this: a foreign government owning our ports. The American people don't like it."