During the Bush administration's initial review of the $7-billion United Arab Emirates ports deal, the Coast Guard sounded the alarm by citing "intelligence gaps" that made it difficult to determine if the Dubai Ports World company--the state owned UAE entity which bought the port operations from Britain's Peninsula & Oriental Steam Navigation Co--could safeguard America's homeland security and prevent terrorists from infiltrating its ranks.
"There are many intelligence gaps concerning the potential for DPW or P&P assets to support terrorist operations, that precludes an overall threat assessment," the Coast Guard report said. The document was part of a report by the inter-agency panel with the unwieldy acronym of CFIUS--the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (which includes Homeland Security, Treasury and other departments)--which approved the sale. The report was released Monday at a Senate briefing.
So lo and behold, the Bushies have lied once again. They approved the deal, they said, because it met the rigorous scrutiny of CFIUS and has been deemed a non-threat to the United States. Yet all the while it knew about the Coast Guard's major concerns and failed to tell us about it. Another bungled affair? You betchya.
As for the Bushies' assessment of the Coast Guard itself, the truth is mangled even further. The president keeps telling us it's not the UAE or Dubai Ports World that will be charged with safeguarding America's gateways, but the Coast Guard. True. The Coast Guard is principally responsible for protecting our ports and the roughly 100,000 miles of waterways. But according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the Coast Guard has been faced with resource challenges that leave our ports quite vulnerable. According to Kim Petersen, president of SeaSecure LLC, the nation's largest maritime-security consulting company, the Coast Guard cannot fulfill all of its regulatory, security and search-and-rescue missions. He said the Coast Guard "doesn't have either the people or the necessary physical resources to provide the in-water patrols that are so desperately needed."
It's utterly mind-boggling that Bush has for 4 1/2 years now drilled into our heads that we're fighting a war on terror, and that "we must fight the terrorists over there so that we don't have to fight them over here", yet he's approved the sale of port operations to an Arab nation--one with a drug-trafficking, money-laundering, terrorist-connected recent past--under the flimsiest of circumstances while lying about the true risk.
3 comments:
And why were customary safeguards purposefully left out of the agreement. Namely that the company keep records in the United States and that a person (agent) be appointed to deal with the government.
Why allow this company to operate so secretively? Something stinks, again!
Bush is gonna lose this one and it's gonna hurt.
This deal does STINK, but it is another example of this corrupt administration and it's nepotism and Cronyism. The only reason why the other Republicans are saying anything is that they are scared...REAL SCARED about the Nov. elections and Bush' sagging poll numbers.
So our fearless leader that claims he'll guard us against the GODLESS MUSLIM THREAT is gonna sell us out to them?? Business as usual at the Bush Whitehouse or F&^k the American People if we can make a couple of Bucks
The last bid against UAE's port bid was on February 10, by Singapore. So why were we told that the deal was speeded up to 30 day review instead of 45 mandated? It wasn't even 30 days. I suggest that it was to cover over the real story behind the Cheney shooting of Harry Whittington.
It's alot worse than anyone in the media is saying. At least four Bush biographers have committed suicide, a statistical impossibility.
Harry Whittington was not only involved in the FUNERALGATE cover-up in Texas, which had then Governor Bush's Chief of Staff, Joe Allbaugh (appointed after the 2000 election to head FEMA bringing Michael Brown from Edmond, OK. with him) and Attorney General John Cornyn intervening for SCI, Service Corporation Inc. home to not only key Iran-Contra assets (remember that 18 planners of Iran-Contra have been resurrected to Bush's administration including the indicted John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams) , but SCI is also home to Al Gore's former campaign manager, Tony Coelho, a leading offender in the House Post Office scandal (THIS AIN'T REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT...IT PERVASIVE...REMEMBER THAT IRAN CONTRA NEEDED CLINTON'S APPROVAL TO USE BARRY SEAL'S AIRPORT AT MENA, ARKANSAS). SCI was manipulating the funeral industry and has a history in Florida and Texas of dispicable practices. Whittington was also a member of the Texas Department of Correction's Board whose healthcare program had about a $16,000,000 dispute. Prisoner healthcare was split between UT and Texas Tech Medical Schools in Galveston and Lubbock. Ambassasor to Switzerland, land of secret bank accounts, is Pam Willeford, whose husband was appointed to the Dept of Correction's health care commmittee overseeing prison medicine in May, 2000.
So you can see the problem.
The sheriff of Kenedy County deferred to his predecessor, former Sheriff Medellin who lives on Ambassador Armstrong's ranch. Kenedy County like most of the counties in the Nueces Strip, between the Nueces River and Rio Grande, are a moral no man's land. People get very rich from what crosses the grasslands....and it ain't all cattle. It was in Whittington's Goliad County (he has a ranch there on I-35 where his daughter is married to one of the County Constables. The Minute Men recently assembled because of complaints by ranchers that the county is a launch site for smuggling illegal aliens north to Houston up the famous Corridor 69 created by GATT/NAFTA).
Kenedy County is home to the Sarita Kenedy Foundation which has been a focal point of bitter disputes and dark intrigue. The foundation was in the news not long ago when Texas Catholic Bishops were angry over the use of Foundation funds, which were susposed to spread around the state, but were horded by the Bishop of Corpus Christi, Rene Gracida, a former USN aviator who delivered the benediction at the Thursday night of the 2004 Republican National convention when Zell Miller told Chris Matthews on HARDBALL that he'd like to shoot him..."I wish I lived in the time when we still had duels."
Hey, Zell. WE DO! You go hunting with Cheney next time!
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