<p>The right to approve business deals is pretty much the Exec’s right. Period. Bush had let it be known that some delay is OK. </p>
<p>I think you overlook the very large national interest in maintaining the best possible ties with one of our very few allies in the ME. Sometimes taking care of an ally means doing things that are a little hard–it’s not always a perfect match of interests.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/01/port.security/index.html[/url]”>http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/01/port.security/index.html</a></p>
<p>business deals that have to do with national secuirty, yep give it to your crony friends</p>
<p>they didn’t even check about dubai and al queda, yet if we look at the wrong book at the library…egad</p>
<p>CGM, this is beating a dead horse. There are technology programs in both private and public sectors that check alliances and search for name matches in seconds - literally - and these programs check everything from OFAC to BOE, EU, UN, denied persons, terrorists lists, etc. I’m sure that level of checking was done - but - even if it wasn’t - to reach that level of security specific to ports, you’d have to also run the same “checks” or “investigations” of all of the names of all foreign exporters, all U.S. importers, all crews of both container and passenger ships, as well as all of their land-based employees, all employees of the thousands of ports in those 230+ countries we trade with, all employees of all of the service businesses at port sites, etc. </p>
<p>You’re talking about zillions of names, and in every conceivable language - a dicey task considering many foreign names romanize o.k. but not really. And even if such checks are done today, or 30 days ago - you’d still have to run the same checks almost daily, given the additions to all the lists, and the employee turnover at any or all of these companies. </p>
<p>So this linked article is just more meaningless, useless hysteria.</p>
<p>no, they didn’t even ASK Dubai, even say, hey, dudes, you STILL connected with those terroorists like you were a couple of years ago?</p>
<p>that is the MINIMUM needed</p>
<p>CGM, glad to know that you are so connected that you know exactly what levels of comminications were conducted as part of this investigation. Very impressive, indeed.</p>
<p>However, as to your assertion that they never asked, “are you still connected with terrorists”, first, to what extent were they ever “connected” to terrorists? And don’t give me that BS that 2 of them came from there - using that logic we shouldn’t allow anyone from California to be involved with national security either. Afterall, remember the American Taliban from Marin?</p>
<p>Secondly, don’t you think actions speak louder than words? The fact that all those directly involved with the war against radical Islam say that UAE has been the best of allies - that they really took the “you are either with us or against us” speech to heart and decided to be “with us”. They have proven that with actions against terrorism, support for our troops in the area and even provided $100 million in Katrina aid - more than the rest of the world combined.</p>
<p>Bill Clinton helped UAE</p>
<p><a href=“Bill Clinton helped Dubai on ports deal”>Bill Clinton helped Dubai on ports deal;
<p>
If Clinton were a Republican, I’m sure the claims from left would be that he is a paid stooge, I wonder what the Clinton lovers will say about this.</p>
<p>FF.Are you saying the Wild Bill wasn’t a paid stooge while in office, and now is stooge?</p>
<p>anyone ever hear of free markets? econ 101.</p>
<p>why would we block an ally from gaurding our ports… we have military bases in their country… they have all the incentive (read tons of investment) to PREVENT any terrorist attack</p>
<p>EDIT: forgot to add… I strongly dislike Bush… I think all the Arab haters are surfacing with this attempt to block a company from purchasing another company… you didn’t care about this until the media shoved it down your throat</p>
<p>There is no reason to reject the Dubai Ports World deal, but I do find some merit in reviewing the case more carefully (and openly) until further details come up. Until then:</p>
<p>x. Even if the UAE is not exactly democratic and a huge supporter of human rights, look at these other countries that we are extremely friendly with - namely, China. If you want to talk about no tolerance for women who get pregnant out of marriage, the forced abortion policy that China has is also abhorrent. Add in suppression of dissident voices (which I believe both do), figure in the amount of rebellions/demonstrations suppressed a year, the amount of people in labor camps in China, the fact that there really are no legitimate trials and it seems just as bad, if not worse (look at Yahoo and the censorship deals; Tiananmen Square in 1989, etc.) than the UAE. Yet we have no qualms in being in a very buddy-buddy trade relationship with them…sure they don’t own our ports (even though they do incredible amounts of trade through ports on the West Coast), but they do have 1) a huge trade surplus with the US and 2) own huge amounts of our currency (which is one of the major things holding up our economy right now). This means that sometime in the distant future, if China (now the biggest holder of foreign currency) decides to divest all their investments in the US or cash in their bonds, the dollar will plummet, the debt will explode as we will be forced to pay back China with more borrowed money, the economy with suffer a huge blow…etc.
(see WP article: <a href=“http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600450_2.html[/url]”>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/16/AR2006011600450_2.html</a>)
So the fact that the UAE is not a model democracy is not a legitimate reason as to why we shouldn’t do business with them. </p>
<p>x. Dubai Ports World will not be in charge of Port Security. The previous British company also was not in charge of port security. Hence, the people who are doing port security (Coast Guard, Customs, and Homeland Security) are the same. If there are problems with security, they’re the ones to blame. </p>
<p>x. Dubai Ports services our naval war ships. Maybe we should all be worried about them blowing up our battleships too. </p>
<p>x. No terrorist attack has ever occurred in a port operated by DP World. </p>
<p>x. The Dubai Port, which is operated by DP World, is the only port where the US Navy doesn’t use it’s own security when it’s ships are docking there - they are that confident in the security provided by DP World and nothing has ever happened to make them think otherwise of DP World. So if DP World were ever in charge of port security, I’d say the ships and cargo and the country would be in good hands.</p>
<p>x. DP World would inherit a mostly American work force, virtually the same as under the British Company.</p>
<p>x. DP World is cooperating with the new security review. And obviously, now UAE has an invested interest in protecting their record at these ports because it is worth upwards of 80 billion dollars. (Since, as was pointed out before, the company is state-run.)</p>
<p>Unless anything else turns up, there is really no reason to reject DP World’s Port Deal. The British High Court didn’t reject it; US Intelligence Agencies accepted it; nothing much will change - holes in national security will remain the same, holes created and maintained by the US government rather than any company managing the cargo handling in the ports under a lease. </p>
<p>"That port, along with the five others Dubai Ports hopes to manage, are the last line of defense to stop a weapon from entering this country. But Mr. Seymour, head of the subsidiary now running the operations, says only one of the six ports whose fate is being debated so fiercely is equipped with a working radiation-detection system that every cargo container must pass through.</p>
<p>Closing that gaping hole is the federal government’s responsibility, he noted, and is not affected by whether the United Arab Emirates or anyone else takes over the terminals."</p>
<p>(<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/politics/23assess.html?ei=5094&en=c98f41020e08d417&hp=&ex=1140757200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/politics/23assess.html?ei=5094&en=c98f41020e08d417&hp=&ex=1140757200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print</a>)</p>
<p>Note: I hate Bush too, but that’s no reason for punishing a company that legitimately made a business deal just because it is run by a Middle-Eastern nation. Rejecting the bid, without any other reasons except this tenuous “terrorist transactions happened in the country” (yeah, they happened in the US too) link is something I find, quite frankly, racist.</p>