It's A Sad Day When I Find Myself Agreeing With Schumer

[Annie]

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw...,0,2941202.story?coll=ny-uspolitics-headlines

More are questioning port transfer
BY JOHN RILEY
STAFF WRITER

February 17, 2006

New York Sen. Charles Schumer won new allies in Congress and the media yesterday in his campaign to raise national security concerns about a planned transfer of port operations in Newark and other key East Coast cities to a company controlled by the government of Dubai.

Dubai Ports World, already a global player in port operations, acquired a stake in terminal operations in New Orleans, Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Newark on Monday when shareholders approved its takeover of the British firm Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation. Critics fear the deal increases the risk of weapons or terrorists being smuggled into the United States.

The takeover was approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., an interagency panel headed by the Treasury Department that can block foreign acquisitions that threaten national security.

But Schumer, who first raised questions Monday, was joined yesterday by an array of six congressmen, including Republicans such as conservative Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, in a call for a second look. Rep. Peter King (R-Seaford) has also raised questions, and The New York Times yesterday editorialized against the deal.

"Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with a dubious record on terrorism is a homeland security and commerce accident waiting to happen," Schumer said.

The Bush administration has portrayed oil-rich Dubai, part of the United Arab Emirates, as an ally in the war on terror. But Schumer and other opponents noted that one of the Sept. 11 hijack pilots came from the UAE, and the plotters moved money through that country's financial system.

While the alarms have attracted media attention, a Treasury Department spokesperson said yesterday that the approval can't be reconsidered and the White House defended it. And some outside experts noted that foreign companies have long been dominant in maritime shipping and major players at many U.S. ports.

Regardless of the national pedigree of the terminal operator, noted Stephen Flynn, a maritime security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, the U.S. Customs agents will still screen containers, and patriotic American longshoremen will still work the docks. The key to better port security, he said, is more attention to needs such as better technology to screen incoming containers.

"The ownership of marine terminal operations by foreign companies is not at the top of my list," Flynn said. "It distracts us from much more worthwhile efforts to build security."

 

[William Joyce]

So...

Jews like Schumer all of a sudden become attentive to the issue of outsourcing now that Arabs are the recipients. That's what I call good timing.

 

[007]

So...

Jews like Schumer all of a sudden become attentive to the issue of outsourcing now that Arabs are the recipients. That's what I call good timing.

There's more than just him that's "voiced concern". He can just stand back now and say, "ha ha, they think I took the lead on this". It's political, nothing else.

 

[Annie]

There's more than just him that's "voiced concern". He can just stand back now and say, "ha ha, they think I took the lead on this". It's political, nothing else.

Would have been a good 'political move' for a Republican to have done it.

 

[007]

Would have been a good 'political move' for a Republican to have done it.

Sure can't deny that.

Wish they would have, but from Bush down, I swear, it looks like they're all asleep at the wheel when it comes to infiltrating this country.

 

[dilloduck]

Sure can't deny that.

Wish they would have, but from Bush down, I swear, it looks like they're all asleep at the wheel when it comes to infiltrating this country.

I imagine congress will still have a shot at this one. I'm still not sure making a political statement against the UAE is going to ensure that our ports are any more secure.

 

[Annie]

I imagine congress will still have a shot at this one. I'm still not sure making a political statement against the UAE is going to ensure that our ports are any more secure.

Nope, it's not even a start.

 

[archangel]

I cannot believe that the 'Treasury Department' okayed this deal...what the hell are they thinking? as if we did not have problems before...now they are multiplied! I sure am glad I served when we had real men in charge of my old alma mater...this sickens me...are you listening GW? :read:

 

[Annie]

I imagine congress will still have a shot at this one. I'm still not sure making a political statement against the UAE is going to ensure that our ports are any more secure.

Dems are taking the lead:

http://www.nj.com/news/gloucester/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1140261333277550.xml&coll=8

Sale of ports to Arab country worries Capitol Hill
Saturday, February 18, 2006
By Bill Cahir
[email protected]

WASHINGTON -- Members of Congress are sounding alarms about the Bush administration's determination to let an Arab government buy a London-based ports company and thereby assume control of port operations in six U.S. cities, including Newark and Philadelphia.

Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates, has proposed to buy a London-based company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation, for $6.8 billion.

A special U.S. government panel -- the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States -- has reviewed and approved the sale on behalf of the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security, Defense and State, among other agencies.

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., on Friday said they were planning introduce a bill that would block the UAE or any foreign government from purchasing a company that runs U.S. port operations.

"We wouldn't turn the border patrol or the customs service over to a foreign government, and we can't afford to turn our ports over to one, either," Menendez said in a statement.

U.S. Rep. Frank LoBiondo, a South Jersey Republican and chairman of a House subcommittee on maritime transportation, did not go so far as the Democratic senators. LoBiondo, R-2nd Dist., claimed he would "further monitor this arrangement to ensure Dubai Ports World complies with all U.S. port security laws."

The U.S. government in recent years has struck free-trade agreements with Australia; with six nations in Central America; and with Chile, Israel, Jordan, Morocco and Oman. The Bush administration also has launched free-trade talks with South Korea.

During Bill Clinton's presidency, Congress extended favored-nation trading status on a permanent basis to China and implemented a free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico.

Sentiment in Congress, however, may be turning against free trade.

Outrage among lawmakers last year effectively scuttled the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company's $18.5 billion bid to purchase Unocal, the ninth-largest U.S. oil firm.

Now, the UAE ports deal is provoking outrage in both political parties.

U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., has complained about the proposed sale.

Likewise, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., has written to the White House to object.

"By permitting the performance of port services by an entity with a checkered past in combating radical Islamic extremism and corruption, the U.S. is in essence outsourcing its vital port functions and security services," Santorum wrote.

The UAE, a wealthy Arab state slightly smaller than Maine, served as a financial channel for some of the money used by the 9-11 hijackers. Mohammed Atta, their leader, studied in Hamburg, Germany, while registered as citizen of the UAE.

The sale of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation to Dubai Ports World would give the UAE control over container port operations in New York, Newark, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia.

Allowing the sale of U.S. ports to the UAE constitutes a bad strategic move, members of Congress say. The UAE is "engaged in active negotiations with Iran to increase trade opportunities at a time when we're trying to deal with the threat Iran poses to the entire world," U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., said during a budget hearing on Wednesday.

 

[dilloduck]

cool---well let's have Haliburton do it then.

 

[BATMAN]

Well, the Chinese controll the locks on the Panama Canal, why not have another country control port security?

I don't see the reasoning in this - but I don't think Schumer is concerned for the right reasons. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

[007]

Well, the Chinese controll the locks on the Panama Canal, why not have another country control port security?

I don't see the reasoning in this - but I don't think Schumer is concerned for the right reasons. Maybe I'm wrong.

And heeeeere's your picture...

 

[BATMAN]

And YOUUUUUU need the definition of the word sarcasm:

FIND IT HERE

I'm sure you know it already, I'm sure you were just looking for an excuse to post that pic. :

 

[Annie]

This is getting more attention, the administration should start rethinking this:

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/393078p-333282c.html

U.S. ports in a storm

Bushies hit over lease to terror-linked Dubai

BY MICHAEL McAULIFF
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Manhattan's cruise ship terminal, which forms just a part of the $6.8 billion package secured by Dubai Ports World. The company cut the deal with a British firm last week.
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration gave control of six crucial ports to a 9/11-linked Arab nation after a flimsy investigation and with weak guarantees the company in charge can stop Osama Bin Laden from infiltrating, the House homeland security chairman said.

"There are conditions, which shows they had concerns, but it's all procedural and relies entirely on good faith," Rep. Peter King (R-L.I.) told the Daily News. "There's nothing those conditions ... nothing that assures us they're not hiring someone with Bin Laden."

The firm, Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, cut a $6.8 billion deal last week to buy control of the ports — including Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's giant container port — from a British firm.

A source with knowledge of the purchase echoed the chairman, telling The News that while Department of Homeland Security administrators rubber-stamped it, senior analysts at the agency were never told, and they don't like it now. News of the sale, approved by a secretive multiagency panel headed by the Treasury Department, has sparked a growing outcry from both political parties.

"It's unbelievably tone-deaf politically at this point in our history, four years after 9/11, to entertain the idea of turning port security over to a company based in the UAE, [which] vows to destroy Israel," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told "Fox News Sunday."

Hearings on the deal have been called for this week in Congress, and Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) have proposed a law to ban such takeovers.

Schumer demanded that President Bush personally intervene.

"The President must act," he said at a news conference with New York Harbor as a backdrop. "Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with long involvement in terrorism is a homeland security accident waiting to happen."

But the administration is defending the port transfer, pointing out that even though Dubai was an important base for the 9/11 plot, the emirate is now an American ally.

"You can be assured that before a deal is approved, we put safeguards in place, assurances in place, that make everybody comfortable that we are where we need to be from a national security viewpoint," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told ABC's "This Week."

But King, who was briefed on the deal by top officials last week, disagreed.

"Our investigation was very superficial," he said. "We're talking 20 to 25 days of work, and that includes all the financial aspects and everything else."

King said a huge blind spot was the identity of the firm's employees.

"All we know are principals and people at the top level," he said. "We don't even know the midlevel guys, who are the ones who will be doing the work, really running things."

 

[KarlMarx]

It's a sad day indeed when I find myself in agreement with not only Chuck Schumer, but Barbara Boxer...

well, perhaps there is still hope for these idiots, although I believe their statements are primarily political, after all, they are in the business of selling their souls to the highest bidder

as for being asleep at the wheel, that's an understatement.... what gives with this administration? Allowing another country control of our ports is bad enough, but a country from the MIDDLE EAST?

Soon it will be Arabs running our ports, the illegals working the jobs and the government in debt for the next 50 years to the Communist Chinese... the rest of us can pretend it's our country....

Our enemies won't have to fire a shot....

 

[dilloduck]

It's a sad day indeed when I find myself in agreement with not only Chuck Schumer, but Barbara Boxer...

well, perhaps there is still hope for these idiots, although I believe their statements are primarily political, after all, they are in the business of selling their souls to the highest bidder

as for being asleep at the wheel, that's an understatement.... what gives with this administration? Allowing another country control of our ports is bad enough, but a country from the MIDDLE EAST?

Soon it will be Arabs running our ports, the illegals working the jobs and the government in debt for the next 50 years to the Communist Chinese... the rest of us can pretend it's our country....

Our enemies won't have to fire a shot....

If there is an American company that can even do the job, they will be required by law to hire people of all ethnic backgrounds to work for them. I personally see this as a big red herring.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

IT is sad. This whole thing saddens the crap out of me.

 

[Annie]

If there is an American company that can even do the job, they will be required by law to hire people of all ethnic backgrounds to work for them. I personally see this as a big red herring.

Ethnic backgrounds are one thing, for American citizens. Foreign ownership another.

 

[dilloduck]

Ethnic backgrounds are one thing, for American citizens. Foreign ownership another.

Why---it only takes one terrorist to infiltrate the network no matter who owns it--has anyone found a an American firm that can even do the job?

 

[dilloduck]

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/dpatton/2006/dp_02201.shtml

If it is right (and I believe that it is) to say to United Arab Emirates, which claims to be our ally in the war on terror, that they cannot be trusted with our national security, then why is it wrong to use the same logic when screening those who try to board our commercial aircraft? After all, it was Arabs on board American commercial aircraft that savagely attacked the United States on 9/11. So why do we continue to randomly search the luggage and the persons of little old ladies and blond-haired, blue eyed Scandinavians as if they were as suspect as those who look like Mohammed Atta? It is the same sort of dangerous reasoning that says we should stop monitoring phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States who are communicating with Osama bin Laden because we might happen to listen in on those who are not. Thankfully, the Bush Administration hasn't bought into that twisted thinking

More
I guess Hillary supports racial profiling now