I have heard a lot of Conservatives and Democrats alike defend and condemn the DPW deal. Apparently the Port deal with DPW will be excellent for the economy and build politically correct trust with Arabic business in the Middle East.
On the otherhand, the UAE (or at least portions of Emirs) have a money trail that supports Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda and the Taliban (before their defeat by America). The money trail gives the appearance that infiltration by Islamofascists terrorists posing as DPW business personnel may cause 911-like havoc and death.
I suspect both sides of the argument are correct. If both sides are correct, I personally lean toward the infiltration position. I am not willing to allow Islamofascist Arabs disguised as friendly DPW personnel to slip into the country. There simply too many intangibles. Such as what you may ask?
Well for one thing Russia has not being keeping track of old brief case nuke bombs intended as potential weapons during the Cold War. They have misplaced the aged lethal weapons. Iran is near nuke WMD capability. Iranians work for DPW and could indeed be the very Islamofascist moles to pose as DPW or UAE officials. A nuke blast at a port (even small scale) would devaste the American economy and could push America over the edge to become appeasers or execute a nuke response - one extreme or the other.
That is my pitch. Now let's look at the Christian angle from Intercessors For America.
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PORT CONTROVERSY: 90 TERMINALS AT U.S. PORTS ARE ALREADY OPERATED BY FOREIGN GOVERNMENTS AND BUSINESSES
The United States has 95,000 miles of open shoreline with 361 ports. Annually, 7,500 ships make 51,000 port calls and unload more than 6 million containers.
On Watch in Washington, Editorial Team: Gary Bergel / Brian Miller / William Lee
February 22, 2006
Unless lawmakers can scuttle the Bush administration's port deal, the Dubai-government-owned Dubai Ports World (DPW) will join a growing list of foreign-owned entities that are heavily involved in port operations across the U.S.
U.S. companies continue to operate the majority of terminals, but no U.S. company made a bid on the purchase of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation, the current holder of the contracts.
Homeland Security officials scurried yesterday to compile a list of all terminal operators in 361 U.S. ports. The governments of China and Singapore own companies that hold terminal leases along the West Coast. Japanese businesses control dozens of terminals nationwide, and a Danish company runs nearly a dozen major ports on the East Coast.
Dubai Ports World (DPW)--which also has trucking operations, freight transportation logistics, and airport operations--is owned by a member of the United Arab Emirates. The $6.8 billion Dubai Ports World deal, which is scheduled to close March 2, would allow DPW to add six major U.S. ports to the 22 marine terminals it already operates in 15 countries, including China, India, Venezuela, and Australia.
To read the entire Washington Post editorial (Port Security Humbug), from which a portion of this article was taken, go to the IFA website, http://www.ifapray.org/, and click on "The New Face of War" or "Homeland Security."
PORT DEBATE: PRO & CON
PRO:
• The United Arab Emirates is a U.S. ally that has cooperated extensively with U.S. security operations in the war on terrorism, supplied troops to the U.S.-led coalition during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and sends humanitarian aid to Iraq. U.S. troops move freely in and out of Dubai on their way to Iraq now.
• A goal of "democracy promotion" in the Middle East, after all, is to encourage Arab countries to become economically and politically integrated with the rest of the world. What better way to do so than by encouraging Arab companies to invest in the United States?
• Work at the ports would continue to be done by unionized longshoremen and the U.S. Coast Guard, and Customs and Border Protection still would provide security at ports. The contract to manage the ports is not expected to involve large numbers of United Arab Emirates or foreign dockworkers, but it will involve some United Arab Emirates nationals who are Dubai Ports World managers to direct and oversee port operations.
• A Federal Election Commission investigation has turned up no evidence of campaign contributions by DPW or its employees in the U.S.
• The CIA operates a base in Dubai, and U.S. military unmanned aerial vehicles also fly out of the Persian Gulf state for intelligence-gathering missions. "It's a country that's been involved in the global war on terror with us; it's a country that we have facilities that we use," said Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.
• The port deal was approved by a U.S. Treasury Committee on Foreign Investment, in part based on the United Arab Emirates' support for U.S. government activities in the war on terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security was the lead agency in supporting the deal based on past United Arab Emirates cooperation with a U.S.-led shipping container security initiative in Dubai.
CON:
• Security fears about infiltration by terrorists... Intelligence and security officials opposed to the deal with Dubai Ports World said ports are vulnerable to the entry of terrorists or illicit weapons because of the large number of containers that enter the U.S., regardless of who manages them.
• A Persian Gulf state, such as the United Arab Emirates, could provide an infrastructure for terrorists to penetrate U.S. security as part of a major terrorist operation. One long-term worry is that al Qaeda terrorists will attempt to smuggle a nuclear device into the United States through a port via a shipping container. Allowing a Middle Eastern company to manage key ports "would be like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse," said one security official.
• DUBAI PORT CO. MAY HAVE TROUBLING TIES TO BUSH ADMINISTRATION (Washington Times, 2/22/06). Dubai Ports World (DPW) has several potential ties to the Bush administration, which approved the acquisition. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow was chairman of CSX Corp. before being appointed by President Bush to the Treasury Department. In addition, Mr. Bush late last month appointed David Sanborn, who runs DPW's European and Latin American operations to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.
• A shipping source said what is more disconcerting than the port deal is that foreign businesses and governments are sitting down with Homeland Security officials to create cargo security regulations. "As the government puts these security regulations together, also at the table are unregistered foreign agents of the government of China and Singapore, making recommendations to us on cargo security," the source said.
Prayer Points:
Pray that our national leaders would have the wisdom to address all concerns regarding our national security and that misinformation, rumor, and political advancement would not rule.
Pray that members of the Bush administration, Congress, and all U.S. Security Agencies would be able to consider fairly all facts regarding this national debate on our ports and points of entry.
Pray that management of all U.S. points of entry--borders, air, rail and sea--would be manned and managed by those whose guiding principle is the protection of all U.S. citizens.
Pray for overworked Customs agents, who have the right to open any container and inspect the contents; such procedures are conducted on about five percent of all containers nationwide. Pray for the lack of any screening for the thousands of truck drivers, many of whom are immigrants, hauling containers from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, CA., to railway lines.
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Port Security Humbug
February 22, 2006
You know there is something suspicious going on when multiple members of Congress -- House, Senate, Democrat, Republican, future presidential candidates of all stripes -- spontaneously unite around an issue that none of them had known existed a week earlier. That appears to be what happened last weekend after politicians awoke to the fairly stale news that the London-based P&O navigation company, which has long managed the ports of New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia, had been taken over by Dubai Ports World, a company based in the United Arab Emirates. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) called the deal "tone-deaf politically at this point in our history." Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) called for the White House to put a hold on the purchase. Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) seconded him, implying that Arab owners posed a major security threat -- as did everyone from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) to Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) to Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R).
At stake -- in theory -- is the question of whether we should "outsource major port security to a foreign-based company," in the words of Mr. Graham. But those words, like that of almost all of the others, sound, well, tone-deaf to us. For one, the deal cannot "outsource major port security," because management companies that run ports do not control security. The U.S. Coast Guard controls the physical security of our ports. The U.S. Customs Service controls container security. That doesn't change, no matter who runs the business operations. Nor is it clear why Mr. Graham or anybody else should be worried about "foreign-based" companies managing U.S. ports, since P&O is a British company. And Britain, as events of the last year have illustrated, is no less likely to harbor radical Islamic terrorists than Dubai.
None of the U.S. politicians huffing and puffing seem to be aware that this deal was long in the making, that it had been reported on extensively in the financial press, and that it went through normal security clearance procedures, including approval from a foreign investment committee that contains officials from the departments of Treasury, Commerce, State and Homeland Security, among other agencies. Even more disturbing is the apparent difficulty of members of Congress in distinguishing among Arab countries. We'd like to remind them, as they've apparently forgotten, that the United Arab Emirates is a U.S. ally that has cooperated extensively with U.S. security operations in the war on terrorism, that supplied troops to the U.S.-led coalition during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and that sends humanitarian aid to Iraq. U.S. troops move freely in and out of Dubai on their way to Iraq now.
Finally, we're wondering if perhaps American politicians are having trouble understanding some of the most basic goals of contemporary U.S. foreign policy. A goal of "democracy promotion" in the Middle East, after all, is to encourage Arab countries to become economically and politically integrated with the rest of the world. What better way to do so than by encouraging Arab companies to invest in the United States? Clearly, Congress doesn't understand that basic principle, since its members prefer instead to spread prejudice and misinformation.
~ © 2006 The Washington Post Company
SOURCE: The Washington Post
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