UAE Port Deal

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I don't know whether to chalk this up to absolute incompetency and horrible judgment, or something more diabolical.

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I'm sorry but I can't see the problem. This is capitalism at work, as simple as that.

Money has no affiliation, principles, nationality or odor.

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Cyrus, the money aspect is the LEAST important part of the whole scenario. Just to extrapolate to the absurd, would you outsource our military command and control centers to a foreign entity? How about to a Middle Eastern foreign entity? Well if you wouldn't do that then you should have second thoughts about potentially further exposing our achilles heel with respect to terrorist attack, which is our ports.

Besides the UAE, President Musharraf of Pakistan has been a pretty good ally in the war against terrorism and Islamic extremism, and he too fears the Islamists. Why not then outsource management of our ports to Pakistan if they should happen put in a lower bid? Jeezus could anything be a bigger blunder or potentially more catastrophic.

[adios]

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Very low handed

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Their learning from the best

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Democrats are no stranger to low handed tactics to gain politically.

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Seems like there are enough Islamo-phobic right-wingers (see: this thread) to prove there's enough bi-partisan idiocy to go around.

I'd rather be an opportunist than a bigot (and as we're all poker players, we shouldn't hold opportunists in such disregard -- but I certainly agree that this is nothing more than coarse opportunism on behalf of the Democrats; I'll need help understanding the widespread Republican opposition, though, without resorting to explanations that rely on xenophobia).

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Points well taken. The Republicans in Congress are behaving no better IMO. It's an election year and they're putting their fingers in the political wind and seeing where they feel they need to be to get re-elected IMO.

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Very low handed

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Their learning from the best

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Democrats are no stranger to low handed tactics to gain politically.

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Seems like there are enough Islamo-phobic right-wingers (see: this thread) to prove there's enough bi-partisan idiocy to go around.

I'd rather be an opportunist than a bigot (and as we're all poker players, we shouldn't hold opportunists in such disregard -- but I certainly agree that this is nothing more than coarse opportunism on behalf of the Democrats; I'll need help understanding the widespread Republican opposition, though, without resorting to explanations that rely on xenophobia).

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Points well taken. The Republicans in Congress are behaving no better IMO. It's an election year and they're putting their fingers in the political wind and seeing where they feel they need to be to get re-elected IMO.

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I agree some politicians are no doubt "politicking" or "pandering" as usual over this issue, but it is not xenophobia or Islamophobia to have grave reservations about outsourcing management of our ports to a Middle Eastern entity. A phobia is an irrational fear, so "xenophobia" and "Islamophobia", to be appropriate terms in this instance, must hinge on the irrationality of the fear. To have fears or grave reservations in this case is NOT irrational and I defy anybody to show that it is irrational.

edited: Best anyone can probably come up with is to say, well, it was extensively reviewed and investigated by the administration, so we should have confidence in their assessment. Well... how good were the administration's assessments about Iraq's WMD program prior to the war? How good was the administration's assessment of capturing al-Qaeda and the Taliban when we had them trapped in Tora Bora? So why should we have full confidence in their assessment of this? Also there is no way they can know that the foreign company won't be infiltrated by terrorist operatives at some future date--and despite the friendly status of the UAE government itself, the UAE as a country is reputedly a fair hotbed of terrorist activity.

Bottom line is it can't save THAT much money to be worth the risk. We're talking what, 5 or 6 billion for the contract? But wiping out just one major port city would cost many, many trillions (and bin-Laden wants to wipe out 6-10 major cities simultaneously--coincidentally, a large number of the cities he wants to nuke happen to be our Eastern port cities). The cost differential, the savings, just cannot be worth the risk of an increased chance, however small, of terrorist infiltration into the body overseeing operation of our ports.

How much could it cost to keep operation of the ports in American hands? What would the deal with UAE save? Even if it saves a billion or two a year that is small potatoes in national budget terms. I'm going now to look at the figure again and more figures if I can find them (was just going on memory that the contract is for around 5-6 billion).

[Chromis]

This whole thing is being orchestrated and is a brilliant move by the republicans.

Bush gains brownie points with the Arabs.

Other reps look good to their constituents for opposing this obviously rediculous arrangement.

Call me a cynic.

[canis582]

Chromis,

Other websites have floated this theory too. GWB becomes the ultimate strawman for the 2006 congressional elections.

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM,

Scotty McC. said that various departments all signed off on it including, commerce, homeland security and the DoD.

When asked about it, Rummy said he hadn't heard about it until last weekend, even though the deal with signed feb 13...

The White House LIED!!! I AM SHOCKED, MY LIFE AS I KNOW IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AHHHHHHHHHHH

[elwoodblues]

This is exactly where I'm at. I don't know why this is disastrous. It looks to me like the Democrats are playing off of the fears of the Republicans on this one.

I actually tend to agree with Bush on this one --- if you withdraw now, you have set back relations with Arab countries in a HUGE way. That set-back is, it seems to me, a greater harm than the potential risk.

Perhaps the initial decision was incorrect, again I don't know, but to withdraw now...(this all sounds very familiar)

[Stu Pidasso]

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The deal calls for outsourcing the management of the ports, right? Howcan that not affect the overall security scenario? Even if the USCG supplies the actual security grunt personnel, if some of the management running the port were to be compromised by infiltration of terrorist operatives, they could look the other way when nukes or dirty bombs are brought into our ports--or worse. By the way, only 5% of our incoming containers are inspected anyway (compared to 100% in Hong Kong). Allowing those who are potentially closer to the enemy, to be in charge of operation of our ports, strikes me as highly imprudent.

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If a terrorist had a nuke they arn't going to risk letting it get discovered. Its going to detonate in the harbor before it even gets to the port. The only reason to bring a nuclear bomb into a port is if you wanted to transport it to some inland destination(unlikely targets becuase the likelyhood of discovery increases).

Containers are likely inspected at random and the people who manage the port will not know which containers will get inspected and which will not. I'm making that speculation based upon my own experience with govt' inspections.

I have worked for a federal contractor post 911 and the feds did my background checks. I suspect it will be the same with the Ports.

As far as infiltration goes, Title VII of the civil rights act of 1964 as currently amended makes that pretty easy already. This is a greater security vulnerability than allowing a British company that is a subsidary of a UAE company manage some of our ports.

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Allowing those who are potentially closer to the enemy, to be in charge of operation of our ports, strikes me as highly imprudent.


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A French company owns Target, when you walk into a Target store you don't see French employees. You see American employees from the CEO on down. The people doing the actual managing these ports are going to be Americans. They will report to people in Great Britian. The people in Great Britian are going to be the ones who report to the people in the UAE.

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Besides, why the need to do it all in the first place? Maybe save a bit of money? Looking at the total contract size it is small potatoes compared to what our country spends routinely on many other things.

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As a country we should honor our commitments and not snubb our allies. Allies who provide us bases to stike our enemies.

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And there are unacceptable risks, which even if low, are to be properly weighted very heavily because the disatrous result would be devastating. Look at it this way: odds vs. what we stand to win or lose. Even tiny increased odds of having nukes go off in our ports is unacceptable when it comes to saving a few hundred million dollars or even a billion, because losing those cities would cost us TRILLIONS. And that's just the financial cost.

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Lets turn it around. Suppose because of this the UAE stops letting us fly U2s and other aircraft out of its country. If this happens there is a chance one of our U2s will miss collecting valuable intelligence which we could have used to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Or perhaps becuase we we lost our base in the UAE, we weren't able to get that predator drone up in the air to kill a Yemeniese terrorist cell planing to suitcase nuke Phoenix. Although the risks may be miniscule the consequences utterly disastourous.

On the face of it, I don't like the ideal of a UAE government owned company purchasing the british company that manages our ports. However I'm not in a position to say its a bad ideal because I don't know enough facts to make an educated decision. I suspect anyone who has already formed a conclusion hasn't thought through throughly.

Stu

[elwoodblues]

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The message being sent by the outcry in the U.S. over this to the Arab world, America thinks all Arabs should be suspected of terrorism as well as not worthy of trust and cooperation. Xenophobia rears it's ugly head and the Democrats have found their winning hot button issue, appeal to it and fan it's flames. Very low handed.

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Can't say that I disagree with this at all.

[DVaut1]

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This is exactly where I'm at. I don't know why this is disastrous. It looks to me like the Democrats are playing off of the fears of the Republicans on this one.

I actually tend to agree with Bush on this one --- if you withdraw now, you have set back relations with Arab countries in a HUGE way. That set-back is, it seems to me, a greater harm than the potential risk.

Perhaps the initial decision was incorrect, again I don't know, but to withdraw now...(this all sounds very familiar)

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The 'potential risks' I've read about pretty much boil down to this:

The buyers are Arab and Muslim, and Arabs and Muslims are the people I see on the news associated with the terrorism I hear about and am scared about, therefore we can't do business with them.

Those who try a little harder to justify their opposition to the deal point out that some of the 9/11 hijackers were UAE citizens (as bobman points out, something on the order of 0.0000008% of their population) and that they're "linked" to terrorism, although no one seems to know how specifically, nor do many seem to know exactly what the hell the UAE would actually be doing at the ports anyway. Since no one has anything resembling specific details, most of the outrage seems to be something similar to "wait...I don't think America should be doing business with these rag-heads. I don't know why, but I don't like it." Sounds like irrational fear to me, unless of course you're of the school that thinks all Arabs and Muslims are deserving of such fear -- which is of course how all Islamo-phobes justify their unwarrented paranoia anway. It's just vicious circular logic that demands we fear all Muslims because they're Muslims, and they're deserving of fear specifically because they're Muslim.

Democrats seem to be saying something like "wow, look at all the peanut gallery outrage, we smell an opportunity!" And they're apparently right, because it's generating alot of emotion (for reasons I still fail to understand).

That's how it looks from my vantage point, anyway. Maybe some facts other than "but cmon, these guys are MUSLIM!!! Don't you see the danger?!?!?" will make me change my mind and oppose the deal. Until then...

[morphball]

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We can't just outsource our security to any country relying on that there is "ANY EVIDENCE that their proposed purchase is suspicious in any way." No, we need to be SURE--but we can't. So outsourcing our security to any foreign country is a bad idea, and outsourcing our security to an Arab Muslim country is a worse idea, and outsourcing our security to an Arab Muslim country that has a fair amount of terrorist activity going on is yet a worse idea.


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Hi MMMMMM,

Can you tell us exactly what is being outsourced. Apparently security of those ports has and will continue to remain the responsibility of the USCG. How much of an impact does this company's operation have on actual port security?

Stu

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The contract is for $6.5 billion...they are doing more than cleaning the toilets.

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Then since you oppose this deal, surely you can tell us what they'll be doing?

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I haven't made any opinions on this deal, I just heard about it yesterday, but it is silly to believe the Coast Guard handles all of the security at ports. The Coast Guard functions like the police, meaning they only come when they are called or when when someone does something illegal right in front of them.

So the question is, can we trust the company to call the police?