Big Problem, Dubai Deal or Not -looks at what this deal has put up front

[rodeodance]

mainly the fact that DHS has been slow in addressing problems of port security--the same dept that was asleep during Katrina.





http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/23/politics/23assess.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

February 23, 2006
News Analysis
Big Problem, Dubai Deal or Not
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22

.....Another is whether the White House's case on port security is harmed by the fact that the major player is the Department of Homeland Security, whose failures after Hurricane Katrina will be the centerpiece on Thursday of a White House-directed report on "lessons learned" from the multiple failures in the devastation of New Orleans.

"The management of these ports is the door which you walk through to get to all of these other questions," said Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, who, like Mr. Bush, used cargo ports as the backdrop for speeches about the post-Sept. 11 world in 2004. "It raises a lot of questions about the lobbying, the connections and the terms of the deal, and the security problems the administration has left unaddressed."

It is also convenient for the Democrats, who are able to sound more hawkish on domestic security than President Bush. Mr. Bush finds himself burdened with the more nuanced argument that turning down this deal would send a message to the entire Arab world that it is not to be trusted, no matter how friendly individual countries may have been.

The administration's core problem at the ports, most experts agree, is how long it has taken for the federal government to set and enforce new security standards — and to provide the technology to look inside millions of containers that flow through them.

.......

[formercia]

1. Go for it President Kerry

make that little weasel eat his words.