I’m hardly a Bush apologist, but the Port deal was Xenophobic america at its worst. Christ on a pogo stick.
This is one where painful as it is personally, I’ve got to stand up for Dubya.
Geez, pick up a newspaper once in a while! Nuclear arms are not part of the deal.
The standard argument goes that DPW (unlike its British counterpart) is a state-owned corporation. The state, UAE, has terrorist connections. This is so objectionable to so many Americans that the deal blew up.
Yes, China controls some of our ports and no one’s made a major issue of it.
In this country, we have a foreign investment committee with philanthropic tendencies. India wanted our undersea cables, so we sold them to her for pennies on the dollar.
There’s even talk of teleporting our Great Lakes to Libya for $1.37/Lake. The Libyans , you see, are thirsty.
The term may not be to your liking, but…
The agreement was for civilian nuclear technology. It certainly was not a nuclear weapons deal.
Including our own version of Karl Rove? You really wanna win that way?
But the worry is, I’m told, it can be turned to weaponry technology rather quickly and, secretly.
Define quickly… you can enrich just about anything… if you try hard enough… but not with the equipment in the ‘deal’… you would need some additional equipment (ironically some of the ONLY equipment we found Iraq that we were looking for)… and a new facility (since you dont want civilians knowing what is up)… oh and NOT have IAEA track things like… incoming and outgoing fuel…
isn’t that what Kerensky said to Lenin?
The MEK has been registered by the State Department as a terrorist organization for the past 10 years, but now neo-conservative factions of the Bush administration are lobbying hard to remove it from the list. Should the MEK end up benefiting from US pro-democracy largesse, it would send a clear message to people inside Iran that Washington funds groups that engage in terrorist activity. Some reports quote unidentified US officials as saying that the MEK would not receive any of the new funds.
“Most of the groups which will be suckling from this new taxpayer teat include designated terrorist organizations such as the MEK and ancien regime agonists, all with their own agendas which are not limited to outreach to Iranians, as these groups have little if any traction or credibility in Iran today,” said Donald Weadon, an international lawyer specializing in Iran.
oops-wrong thread. see you over in Iran…
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Heaven forbid an opposition party actually do some opposing…
It does?
Popularity doesn’t make an objection reasonable.
You can give 'em Lake Michigan, but the other four half-belong to us.
Except that it wasn’t. Not at all. It is my personal opinion that Dubai Ports World ought not to have ceded their interest in the US Ports. It is just blatant racism that such a fuss was made over a Middle Eastern interest owning ports. I don’t seem to recall such a fuss being made over P&O owning our ports. It’s not like DPW was buying the ports from the government, they’re already owned by a foreign interest!
President Bush’s support of this deal was one of very few things that I could give him credit for. Dubai may be, if the world is lucky, the future of the Middle East. By investing their money from that gift of nature, oil, into sustainable investments they are setting a precedent that would serve other oil-rich countries well. Why deny this deal that could be potentially positive for all parties. We would benefit from ports being run by somebody with a vested interest and Dubai would have the beginning of their logistics empire.
Security isn’t the question. P&O doesn’t manage security in those US ports… the government does. That is the way that it works… the government manages security at our ports. It doesn’t matter who happens to own the port, because they aren’t responsible for keeping things safe.
I am rather upset that they ceded this. I think they should have fought tooth and nail to be able to have those ports.
I wouldn’t be surprised if DPW withdrew over Bush’s objection. Had they forged ahead, there would’ve been a near certaintly that Congress would have ended the deal, one way or another. It’s probably a better business decision for them to sell those leases on their own terms, rather than be forced to do so at a later date on someone else’s terms.
Interestingly, DPW owns the leases right now. They are running those former P&O port terminals. Yet everyone now feels “safe”. I don’t hear anyone clamering for extra securty on those port terminals until they manage to sell them.
Stop making sense. Honestly!