Thanks for the link. I’ll note that we’re discussing a state owned company, linked with an Arab country that has links with Al Qaeda notwithstanding (reported) current cooperation by that government with the US.
The link also provides another answer to Sam Stone’s question:
“… it’s not far-fetched to think that terrorists might gain key knowledge to port operations and layouts through private or state-owned foreign companies.”
All the same, I’m currently not seeing a lot of additional risk from this deal. True, as RTFirefly points out, our port security (and infrastructure security for that matter) is rather lax, the jaw-jaw following 9/11 notwithstanding. But the issue is how much extra security we would get by blocking this sale. For that, I’d like an expert opinion, by one such as Prabir Bagchi Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at George Washington University, who offered guidance to the columnist at Slate who explained what a port operator does. To take an arbitrary example.
What we need is vetting by a set with a professional mentality.
Okay, so we’ve done lots of talking about the potential risks of the deal. But equally important is the consequence of NOT allowing this.
Frankly, the reason I think it’s a good idea to allow this is because forbidding the UAE to have this will be a public relations disaster for the U.S. It will be ‘proof’ that the U.S. is actually against the Arab world and not just terrorists. It will be an example of how they want the Middle East’s oil, but when people in the middle east attempt to do business in the other direction, they are stopped. It will be spun as racism. And, it will be a smack in the face to one of the best friends the U.S. has in that part of the world.
This ‘war’ is a battle for hearts and minds. It won’t be won on the battlefield, it will be won when people in the Muslim world see another way forward other than oppression, poverty, and the appeal of radical Islam.
If the U.S. disallows this, it will make all the rhetoric about democracy, living together in freedom, and becoming partners instead fo enemies ring hollow throughout the Middle East. It won’t be a small thing - it will be a disaster.
That’s why Bush is fighting this so hard. Unfortunately, he’s got an uphill battle because Republicans are playing to their base, and Democrats are sensing an opportunity to get to the right of Bush on security and erase their major electoral liability. So it’s good short-term politics to oppose this, but it’s terrible in the long term.
Politicians have to act like statesmen here and put the interests of the country ahead of their short-term political interests. A few have done so. Jimmy Carter, John McCain, a few others.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the US already fumbled this one with the ill-advised and meaningless invasion of Iraq. The notion that approving the UAE deal will do anything to turn that deficit around is ludicrous outside of the right-wing echo chamber.
He certainly had an opportunity to go “oops, the bureaucracy snuck this through while I wasn’t looking.” But he didn’t.
Because maybe they believed Bush??
I mean, for four and a half years, Bush has been telling us we can’t take any chances - we’re in an existential conflict, and if it’s a conflict between Constitutional protections and protecting ourselves against the terrorists, refraining from torture and protecting ourselves from the terrorists, not detaining Muslims and A-Rabs in large quantity who might know some trivial shred of information about actual terrorists, then treating them like terrorsts, and protecting ourselves from the terrorists - well, by God, we’ve got to do everything we can to protect ourselves from the terrorists.
That’s been the relentless public message, whether we’re talking the Patriot Act, Gitmo, renditions, NSA wiretapping, or whatever.
Now, all of a sudden, it’s OK to hand over the operation of our major ports to a company owned by one of the three nations in the world to recognize the Taliban, a bunch of whose princes buddied up to Osama before 9/11 made that not OK anymore…but after the Kenya and Tanzania embassy bombings. And apparently the UAE has continued to be a transfer point for terrorists, nuclear technology, etc., in the years since 9/11.
Two problems with that:
Exactly how many people knew that, and would have thought that was a good idea, in a post-9/11 world?
A British firm is likely a good deal more removed from the world of Muslim terrorists than a UAE-owned firm.
That’s what Congress is apparently thinking. (You don’t like it, take it up with them. I’m trying to see the world through the eyes of a small but influential tribe that’s been at Ground Zero for White House Bullshit Bombs for the past four and a half years.
Maybe he can’t.
It sure isn’t. But I think it’s a bad assumption to assume that this has had a proper review. These people just don’t care about government actually working, so they’re bad about insisting that it does - even when they haven’t hired a flock of Heckuva Job Brownies to gum up the works so that agencies can’t do their jobs.
I’m not doing their scaremongering, because as I’ve said in both threads, I don’t know what the real risks are, and there’s no way I can educate myself in the available time to learn them. This is a job for people who are already knowledgeable about ports and port security, not for amateurs like me.
What I have a high expectation of being wrong is due diligence (or rather, its absence) by the Administration in this matter.
But, you know, this is his day job. And he can pick up the phone and find out who exactly was supposed to vet this deal. If someone did their job, finding that out shouldn’t be hard. If nobody did their job, then he’s surely getting the runaround.
No, I expect this is a very real mistake. Maybe not a mistake in terms of security, but a mistake in terms of its not being a security mistake only by dumb luck, rather than because people did their jobs and made sure it wasn’t a security mistake.
And how many of those can you afford? Eventually one of them will be a security mistake.
God Bless the Straight Dope. I’ve followed this story in the “left-wing-biased mainstream media” which has, to put it mildly, been having a cow. I come here to find all the “fellow travelers” siding with the administration, and providing cooler heads. Shit, I mean, I am in agreement with Sam Stone!! As if that isn’t bizarro enough, NPR ran a piece explaining that no, we’re not going to have people with bombs in their turbans off-loading containerized anthrax, all of which gives me a warm fuzzy.
The only thing I find puzzling, even scary, is that Bush came out swinging, threatening to veto legislation (for the first time in his administration) something that, by the White house’s own admission, he didn’t know a thing about…whence the hard-on for this, George?
The Washington Post has been pooh-poohing the whole business. Guess it’s not the entire left-wing media. But righty papers like the New York Post have been rather inflammatory.
Rumor has it that it’s about a free-trade agreement with the UAE. Bush and his ‘base’ supposedly want one, and this deal’s supposed to either grease the skids, or (if it goes down) break the momentum.
Dunno how much truth there is to that, but such is the rumor. Makes as much sense as anything else I’ve heard, but that isn’t saying much.
It wasn’t “snuck through” and you have provided no evidence that it was.
What an utter load of bullshit that is. We have not curtailed our relations with any of our Arab allies, and no one, including Bush, has said we must do
“everything we can” (in the sense you are implying) to protect ourselves against terrorists. We could just expell all non-citizen Muslims, so why haven’t we? If you have an argument, let’s hear it. Bloviating about your dislike of Bush and his policies, and making ridiculously absurd claims about them is not an argument.
So what if they recognized the government of Afghanistan. You have no idea what their reasons were. And I suppose you can substantiate those other claims you keep making? For crying out loud, the US could be called a “transit point” for terrorists.
I have no idea. Why don’t you do some research and tell us.
Why?
I hate to tell you this, but the deal is done. Once Congress tries to hammer out the details of a law, it’ll realize they would have to single out the UAE in order to change the deal. They may slow down the process of transfer, but they won’t stop it. We simply don’t have enough domstic companies willing to operate all our ports.
More bloviating. If you have any evidence that the proper procedure wasn’t followed, lets see it.
And that’s because the UAE has what, exactly to offer? Dates? Oil? Phillipino servants? Not being snarky, not being cynical…just curious, cause on the face of it, it makes not sense. Why Now? What’s changed?
Perhaps this is why Bush is so adamant. A secret deal with all the records kept off-shore and out of reach of scrutiny by the courts, the People and Congress. Too convenient for me.
What if some faction of the IRA had decided that it would attack Brits in America? What if the filthy A-rabs don’t need to own the company, what if they have a Japanese company buy it and then have the Japanse Red Army take it over and attack America for them? What if yet another American goes postal, and it so happens that he works at the docks for the Japanse company?
AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Mindboggling!
Dude, chill, you’re just having a bad trip.
RTFirefly was stating a hypothetical cover story. This appears to be a misunderstanding.
From Bomzaway’s link:
“The reason this deal is attracting so much attention is that Dubai Ports is owned by an Arab government that has links to terrorism. The United Arab Emirates was home to two of the Sept. 11 hijackers and was a financial base for the operation. UAE has also been implicated in a nuclear smuggling ring: It was identified as a transfer point for nuclear components from Pakistani scientists to Iran, Libya and North Korea.”
This material has been in most news articles on the subject, in my experience.
How many nations recognized the Taliban?
Let’s see what Wikipedia has to say:
I would say that this demonstrates links between Dubai and the Jihadists.
Nonetheless, Sam Stone’s and John Mace’s point regarding the PR of this certainly should be weighed in. It’s just that this concern isn’t necessarily decisive, absent vetting by a serious-minded analyst.
Look, here you were talking the politics of it - and this was a political ‘out’ for Bush, had he wanted it. Since he didn’t know of the deal in advance of its approval, it was close enough for political purposes.
You asked:
That’s the question I was answering. So don’t bother to rebut this logic, OK? It’s not the argument I’m making. I’m trying to think what’s running through the brains and guts of Congresspersons, especially the otherwise pro-Bush Congresspersons.
If you think it’s improbable that this is the basis of their response, then feel free to argue that. Just don’t argue against the argument itself; you’re missing the point of your own question. Of COURSE it’s bloviating. I’m imitating CONGRESS here.
See above.
Ditto.
Megadittoes.
Well, at least now you’re responding to what I’m saying as myself again, rather than my projection of what Congress might be thinking.
Let’s see: Rumsfeld was part of the group that supposedly unanimously approved it, but he didn’t know about it until afterwards. Nobody else has stepped forward to say, “My department vetted this deal.” Nobody’s stepped forward to explain whether the 45-day investigation was done, and if not, why it didn’t need to be.
Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence, but it’s often the best you can do. But the main thing is, some minimal burden of proof is on the Administration to show they looked at this deal to make sure they weren’t handing our ports over to the terrorists. If they actually conducted the normal reviews, it shouldn’t be too hard for them to produce the responsible parties, a memo, something. So far, we’ve got nothing, AFAICT.
[Analogy time:]
George gets offered a great job in another part of the country. He goes out there to buy a house, while his wife and kids stay at home. When he gets back, he shows his family pictures of this great new house he just closed on, and his spouse asks him questions like, “Did you have an inspection done? Did you get someone to do a title search? Did you shop around to get a good rate on the mortgage?” And he gives rambling but unspecific responses that mean neither yes nor no. For some reason, they’re upset.
He tells them, “If there’s something wrong with this house, what is it? Prove that there’s a problem, or shut up.”
The spouse says, “Of course I can’t do that. That’s what I expected you to do - to hire the experts that could tell me if the roof leaked, or if the wiring was out of date, or if there was a problem with the title. I can’t see that you did that due diligence on our behalf.”
A friend of George’s who’s stopped by says, “How do you know that he didn’t have these things done? Show some evidence, or stop your bloviating.”
Spouse looks at George’s friend like he’s from another planet.
This is the first time in a long time I have agreed with Bush and I am SHOCKED that I’m one of few. I’m watching and read things in the States, and I just don’t get the uproar.
I’ve been searching for why this is a problem. Yet, it comes down to, it see seems to me, this: election year .
That the US and many state governments have outsourced many operations to the Third world? How does that grab ya? The state of MA. has outsourced its medicare call system to india; JETBLUE is having its aircraft serviced in Honduras. Nobody bitches about that.
But i agree, the whole regulation of oceanic shipping/ports, etc. is a mess. i don’t see how we can be secure with poorly-maintained ships registered in places like libera, pananma, etc. crewed with 3rd-world seamen. I would think it would be extremely easy for some terrorist group to buy a ship, register it, and turn it in to a floating bomb. have it take on some cargoe (bound for NYC), and while it is in port, set the whole thing off.
I don’t think it would take too much to bribe a Liberian maritime official to do this.
Depends on what the operation in question is, and what the downside is if there’s a fuckup.
In the case of outsourcing a call center - if there’s a fuckup, you make another call. No biggie.
Actually, I have heard some people express concerns about this. Concerns like, maintenance and repair of U.S. passenger aircraft is fairly tightly regulated under U.S. law, and it’s a bit harder to inspect and observe the work at repair facilities in other countries.
I don’t want to get into a debate about this issue, but (justifiably so or not) people are in fact bitching about it.
I am struck by the fact that several posters have made the point that “this is just a business deal.” What is the point of that statement? No one that I noticed claims that the agreement for Dubai Ports to manage these facilities was for the purpose of sabotaging them. How does it being “a business deal” shield the whole thing from criticism and questioning as to the wisdom of it?
