I'm kind of with Kevin Drum here, as I argued back in 2004 that low-tech port security was a much bigger goddam problem than Iran's five-year-away nukes that if they use will get the entire country evaporated (and if you're on of those idiots who say "Yeah, but Iran will then give the nukes to terrorists" -- how do you think the terrorists are going to get the nuke into the States? Take your time, I'll wait for you to do the math ...) and this UAE deal is just kind of a sideshow to much bigger problems.
Basically, if the Administration's stupid enough to be outsourcing your port security because they have a nigh religious belief in privitization that over-rides any common sense, nay, their sacred responsibility to the people who actually goddam voted for them, then the UAE company is barely any worse than any other company. It's like deciding to let your child drink bleach instead of lye.
However, it's memetically powerful, and if you're the type of person who's looking for that sort of thing, useful.
I was particularly comforted by the news lede on my MSN page this morning. You see, I'd originally been very pissed off at yet another example of rampant cronyism within the Half-Assed President's Administration (via Atrios):
Washington - The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House.
One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose agency heads the federal panel that signed off on the $6.8 billion sale of an English company to government-owned Dubai Ports World - giving it control of Manhattan's cruise ship terminal and Newark's container port.
Snow was chairman of the CSX rail firm that sold its own international port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left for President Bush's cabinet.
The other connection is David Sanborn, who runs DP World's European and Latin American operations and was tapped by Bush last month to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.
However, MSN this morning informed me with the slugline "Bush was in the dark on port deal":
WASHINGTON - President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.
Ah, thank God. The President's not corrupt, he's incompetent.
Phew.
(EDIT: Digby here makes a point I flail at in the comments to this post, and makes it quite elegantly.)
EDIT the 2nd: And then I have to turn right around and disagree with Kevin Drum. Bastich. Anyway, he indicates that jumping on this story isn't the sort of engage-the-average-Muslim attitude we enlightened liberals should be encouraging. He kind of misses the point that the UAE is a monarchy -- a particularly nasty one -- and that the massive amounts of monies from this deal will go directly into their coffers. The coffers of people who literally have lunch with Osama Bin Laden. Cut up his steak, refill his glass of chianti, that sort of pally-pal.
This deal isn't going to help the economy of a bunch of swing-voter type middle class UAE citizens who will use the money to send their kids to Western colleges. This will help enrich the already insanely rich royal family in Dubai who hang with Bad Guys. I mean, if we can't set as a standard "You know what, if you hang out with Osama, you don't get to do multi-billion dollar deals in our country", where the hell is the bar for repercussions? "Okay, you can enrich yourselves at our expense even if you hang with and support Bin Laden, but if you blow him, this deal is OFF!"
I'm not saying this deal is a bad deal because there's an Arab company involved. This is a screw-up because:
a.) The 45 day legally required investigation for such deals was completely blown through, yet another case of the Administration not really giving a shit about little things like the law of the land.
b.) This particular monarchy is a hinky bunch of bastards.
c.) Again, Digby's point.
23 comments:
Port operating companies, which are what P & O is in the US, are not responsible for security. Their role is to manage the port as a business and ensure that it operates efficiently and cost-effectively. All security duties are handled by US government agencies. According to an article on DailyKos:
The ports (in America) are all owned by the local governments, whether in Baltimore or Miami. They didn't belong to P&O and they won't belong to DWP [sic.]. The title on the deed down in the courthouse will still show the owner to be the local American government. Not only that, but as an international port of entry into the United States, the American government has full sovereignty and jurisdiction over all cargo and vessels entering the said ports. This means that there will be Customs and Border Protection (formerly U.S. Customs Service) agents working there. American law enforcement at all levels will have the same jurisdiction over these ports as they did six months ago when the British company operated them.
Any security lapses, thus, would be the fault of the U.S. government, not Dubai Ports World. Port security in the US is extremely lax, but that has nothing to do with privatisation, outsourcing or foreign companies.
Full text transcript via Vital Perspective: Bush talks about UAE port deal in rare Air Force One interview on Tuesday
Gag is right.
My girlfriend works for P&O in Baltimore and said the same thing.
HOWEVER
I work on an Army base.
If I want to keep that base secure, the last thing I'm going to do is allow a potential enemy to run ANYTHING on the base. No, the UAE can't run the cafeterias. Iranian companies can not handle our waste disposal.
Having an agent on the security team is optimal, but having an agent anywhere inside may be good enough to get you in.
I agree that the impact on our port security will not be great. However, I don't really care. I hope the Democrats pick this up and run with it. The GOP has shown time and again that the substance of something doesn't matter, as long as you can scream about how them Ayrabs will be shipping nukes in weekly, then that's what wins votes.
Oh and throw in the satisfaction of whacking Bush with the same "Ter'rist!" stick he's been using for the last 5 years.
Now, really, the President can be both incompetant AND corrupt at the same time, can't he? I mean, they're not mutually exclusive - one can be both.
I do get a bit of schadenfreude watching the President suddenly becoming aware that the rabid fools he's been whipping with the "terrorists are gonna getcha" stick for the last 4+ years are turning to bite his frat-boy ass, but on the whole I think the security implications of a for-profit company - controlling any aspect of port security is dangerous - I don't care if they're Arab-owned, British-owned, or, really, even US-owned. Security should not be a for-profit enterprise - its a necessity, not a profit center.
But, this is the MBA President after all, so I expect him to run the country like he did all of those companies that he's run...
Oh, I'm with you, Gag. It is worth pointing out, however, that, say getting fuel and supplies to our servicemen and women are the responsibility of the DoD ... my point being that security is such a tricky, nasty business, that it's difficult under good conditions. Adding the effect of a possibly bad actor into the equation (in the DoD equation it's halliburton, in the port situation its the UAE corporation) is adding carelessness to crisis. We all know how bureaucracy works -- some dude with ID from the port managing company and the clipboard wants to go pretty much anywhere in a port they manage ... hence moleboy's excellent point.
To wit, if we're all talking about how we're just supposed to toss out civil liberties out the goddam window, then I might suggest that restricting port management to corporations owned by governments that do not have long ties to terrorism isn't so outrageous.
Also -- hey schadenfreude is tasty. Let me lick it up for a little while before you take the ice cream cone away.
Such an interesting spin. "The President had no knowledge that his car struck and killed a man; he was asleep at the wheel when it happened."
To wit, if we're all talking about how we're just supposed to toss out civil liberties out the goddam window, then I might suggest that restricting port management to corporations owned by governments that do not have long ties to terrorism isn't so outrageous.
Which corporation has long ties to terrorism? I haven't heard Dubai POrts World having any connections to terrorists. Or is it that some of the terrorists are of UAE nationality? Timothy McVeigh was American, does that mean all americans should be suspected of terrorism?
I think that Bush is the worse president in our lifetime, but I have to side with him about this. I think it is just an over reaction and racism towards the middle east.
I'm sorry, I'm being unclear. The company is owned by the UAE royal family. The royal family is quite explicitly pro-Bin Laden, to the point of literally hanging out and having lunch with him. The UAE government -- by which we mean the Royal Family that owns this company (as I understand it) -- was one of only two governments to recognize the Taliban as the official Afghan government. I'd be as leery of this as I would be if it were a Saudi company, but have no problems if it were a Kuwait or Jordanian company.
I'm not slagging all Middle East companies or corporations. That would be racist. But I think because most people do NOT live in an oppressive monarchy, they don't get the entanglement with state actors that are -- in theory, at least -- anathema to our traditions.
If however I am misunderstanding the relationship between the Royal Family and the P&O, then I would immediately retract my statment and support the deal whole-heartedly.
Except for the bit about breaking the law, and not informing Congress, and the situation being symptomatic of the general half-assery of this amdinistration. And of course the previously mentioned point that if we're tossing my Constitution out the window, then this sort of thing being "no big deal" is the height of hypocrisy.
But I'd give apologies to the P&O elements, surely. If I'm misunderstanding that relationship.
The UAE's potential ties to terrorism is only a side argument, really. That's part of the vetting process. It's just insult to injury that this particular company DOES have ties to bin Laden. Oops.
The real problem, as I see it, is OUTSOURCING.
Foreign companies should not be managing our ports. Period. That's my take on it.
You worry too much, Benari. Soon, the sweet, sweet Peak Oil Storm will sweep all this away, and we can focus on our gardens and horse-drawn SUV's. It's just temporary.
What exactly are these connections between Dubai and Osama? And if the UAE royals are having lunch with him regularly, how come our Fuhrer hasn't been able to nab him? Or are all those reports about the lanky arab being in Pakistan/Afghanistan false? He's really hanging out in that fancy Dubai hotel we see so many pictures of?
And where were all you critics in the last six months while this deal was getting daily coverage in the newspapers? I didn't hear any instant arab experts then.
I have to side with ted's ghost here. I'm the last person to wish our "president" well, but I think he's right on this one. Coming on the heels of the rejection of the Chinese oil co's bid for Unocal, blockage of this deal would give the US stance on free markets a pretty hollow look.
What's really going on here, I paranoically suspect, is this: either the Singapore port company which was outbid on this deal has been doing some lobbying in Washington in order to get itself back in the game (at a lower -- and, by the way, much more reasonable -- price) or some US private equity group is aiming to get the US ports carved out and handed to them. Just you watch.
And where were all you critics in the last six months while this deal was getting daily coverage in the newspapers? I didn't hear any instant arab experts then.
Well, considering Rumsfeld didn't know about it until Sunday, I think it's a bit unfair to ask why the hell we all missed all that "daily" coverage. (Daily? Really?) The Kung Fu Monkeys are a savvy bunch, but asking them to be better informed than the Secretary of Defense and, apparently,the Senate and Congress, seems a bit unfair. Personally, I was wrapped up in my Olympic ice-dancing obsession.
To be fair, also, I'd hardly claim to be an Arab expert. You don't need to be one, though, to know the UAE Royal Family (Families, actually) is a snaky bunch. Instead, I'd rather ask where all this LOVE for them is coming from.
What exactly are the ties between the UAE and Osama? Hmm, well, I wasn't joking about them having lunch. Toss in the deep buddiness with the Taliban, child smuggling and being a spiffy piece of AG Khan's nuke ring, along with the banking industry of the UAE being a larger part of terrorist money-laundering ...
All this being a bit beside the point. If we'd done the legally mandated 45 day investigation, this all could've been brought out, discussed, and then dismissed. Then, too, Snow and Sanborn's very hinky connections would seem less ... hinky.
Here are my two points. Say this IS all on the up and up. (And even so, I hate that any of this management is being outsourced) If the Administration didn't have a long history of secretive weirdness and cronyism, we wouldn't NEED to be worried about this shit falling through the cracks. Let's just say I'd rather have the freakout that turns out to be unnecessary NOW, than be standing here six months from now going "Michael Brown's qualifications were WHAT?", if you catch my drift.
Two, for this Amdinistration to manufacture rampant paranoia in order to justify fucking the Constitution and the War in Iraq, but then get a free pass on this sort of carelessness -- fuck that. Petard, meet President. We've got 2200 dead Americans, 15,000 wounded all to put a Shiite governmne tin place (assuming the civil war doesn't start this week), illegal wiretaps and I'll bet you that within two years abortion will be illegal again. Let the smug bastich squirm.
However, I am totally with you, econoclast, on the paranoia. Somebody's outed this to get some business payback. We'll see if a "White knight" comes strolling in.
Econoclast:
What exactly are the connections between Dubai and Osama?
"Mustafa Ahmed al-Hisawi, believed to be Osama bin Laden’s financial manager, received a Dubai bank transfer of $15,000 two days before the Sept. 11 attacks and then left the United Arab Emirates for Pakistan, where he was arrested in 2003."
"The father of Pakistan’s nuclear program, acknowledged heading a clandestine group that, with the help of a Dubai company, supplied Pakistani nuclear technology to Iran, Libya and North Korea. The head of U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, has said the UAE was among more than 20 countries with a role in the nuclear black market."
For starters.
I think that's at least grounds for further investigation.
But I would be against this even if the company didn't have SPECIFIC ties to terrorists. Because we should not be outsourcing port operations. I'm pretty sure OUR government and OUR companies should handle that job.
For the record, there is no such thing as the "UAE royal family". The Emir of Abu Dhabi serves as president of the United Arab Emirates, leading to confusion between Abu Dhabi and the UAE as a whole. DP World, on the other hand, is owned by the royal family of Dubai. As far as I know, no Dubai princes have ever enjoyed Osama bin Laden's hospitality, whether in Afghanistan or anywhere else.
I just want to point out that the only thing this company is going to be doing is hiring the long shoremen who will be loading and unloading these containers, and they are all going to be Americans doing that. Only the very upper management types will be from the UAE. And as Gag pointed out none of these people will be responsible for security or inspection. Those people will be in the employ of the united states (federal and local government.)
If somebody wanted to smuggle in weapons of mass destruction into this country they would not put it in a large metal container and send it through the ports, hoping for the best. They would go through the thousands of miles of unprotected coast lines and thousands of miles of unprotected borders.
The real danger of the ports is that there are a lot of fuel depots, and if a suicide bomber got to one of these, they could shut down a port and cause massive ecological damage. The likeliness of this happening, however, will not be increased or decreased by DP World running the long shoremen.
Again, I am not a Bush supporter. He is the worse president since Nixon. If you want to accuse Bush about doing something wrong, it is about calming the fears of the American public. He should be doing all he can to get the facts out there instead of saying, "This is the way it is going to be, don't like it and I will veto you! Grrrr! Grrrrr!"
By the way, Mr. Rogers, if I made any accusations of racism it is not against you, it is just at the american public in general right now. This kind of stink was not raised when a british company was doing the same job. And it disheartens me to see the media make reports about things that are just not true. Too many times I have seen it reported that DP World will be taking over port security which is just not true.
Don't worry Rogers, why just the other day Jerome Corsi was telling us how there's no such thing as peak oil. Why there are oceans of "abiotic" oil under our very feet just waiting for a Jed Clampett to fire his squirrel gun into an embankment.
Just because in the last 100 years of oil exploration we've never found any of this magical oil doesn't mean its not true. I mean could Jerome Corsi steer us wrong? I think not!
Oh and if this SUV-saving oil never shows up its your fault for not clapping loud enough.
Ok, I stand corrected about Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktum.
For what it's worth, I've read (can't remember where) that DP World will probably sell P & O's US business because it's small and unprofitable.
The cynical, paranoid part of me wonders if this whole UAE Port Deal scandal isn't just a big propaganda operation. Lame duck Bush falls on the political sword so that GOP Congressman can blow and snort and be their own men -- and distance themselves from a troubled second-term Presidency in an election year.
Nobody really loses: Bush couldn't care less about his approval rating since he's not running for re-election, and the Republicans in Congress get to look tough on another simple, hot-button issue: "We won't let terrorists run our ports, and we'll override the President if he tries to stop us!"
KFM said:
Well, considering Rumsfeld didn't know about it until Sunday, I think it's a bit unfair to ask why the hell we all missed all that "daily" coverage. (Daily? Really?) The Kung Fu Monkeys are a savvy bunch, but asking them to be better informed than the Secretary of Defense and, apparently,the Senate and Congress, seems a bit unfair. Personally, I was wrapped up in my Olympic ice-dancing obsession.
If you want to stay up to date on the real news, you guys have got to start subscribing to some foreign newspapers. I personally like the Financial Times, which carried regular stories (OK, daily was an exaggerration) on the whole bidding process. Ports, in case you don’t know it, have been a very hot area for investment lately, the most active acquirers being, I think, the Macquarrie Bank in Australia. Oh yeah, Australians have connections to Osama, too: you know that sheepskin coat he wears to keep out the Afghan chill?
Speaking of ports, though. US ports are in a scandalous state. The newest container ships can’t even get into most US ports because the channels haven’t been dredged deep enough (45 – 53 feet is what the big ones draw, and most of our ports are under 45 feet). Quite a lot of money has been authorized for deepening projects, but our business-friendly Republicans haven’t been inclined to actually appropriate it. There’s even a Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, which brings in $1bn a year from an ad valorem tax on imports, with around $3bn sitting in it, but they don’t want to release the money because then it will count towards the deficit. (Also, they may want to get their hands on the cash for other purposes at some time, which they can do if they’re cunning about it). At some point, also, they’ll probably discover that the Army Corps of Engineers, which is responsible for our waterways, diverted a lot of money intended for these kind of projects to the ill-fated “rebuilding” of Iraq. But that’s another story.
My main beef is that you guys are all just falling again for the same old trick: taking the bait on the so-called “terrorist threat” so you’re distracted from the real fish – you know, the Florida recount, the Ohio election fraud, the Enron connection, the Downing St memo, the Abramoff connection, Scooter Libby, the wiretapping scandal, inordinate so-called “defense” spending – in short, the threat from the real enemies of USA, viz., White House Inc. Focus, gentlemen. Don’t be distracted. Stop worrying about these little things. Stirring up those vast reserves of American Xenophobia has ever been a useful ruse for ambitious US politicians. Don't fall for it. Stay on message.
This isn't sitting well with many Republicans, either. I was listening to Limbaugh while driving to work yesterday, and a guy called in to complain about Rush not being critical of this deal. The couldn't say why, really, but his gut told him the deal wasn't right.
Dubai comes off as just another Saudi Arabia in all this. What can give you more pause is that while the Saudi give us oil, Dubai is busy turning themselves into a literal oasis/tourist attraction.
For my part every person should read it.
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