No Safe Harbor Here
How a routine sale became a political gale—and what's next for Bush in the ports storm.
Newsweek
March 6, 2006 issue - It was talk radio's Michael Savage who first alerted the president's inner circle to the supposed Arab takeover of America's ports. One of Bush's closest aides tuned in to "The Savage Nation" just before Valentine's Day, to hear the shock jock's angry caricature of how a Dubai company was going to manage terminals at six major U.S. ports. In Savage terms, the country was simply handing over its security to an Arab country complicit in the 9/11 attacks. But the Bush aide knew nothing of the government's role in approving the deal and thought little more of the rant for another week. After all, there were other crises to fret over. Vice President Dick Cheney had just shot a man while hunting quail, and GOP senators were rebelling over legislation on the domestic eavesdropping program. Nobody—from the lower-level officials reviewing the deal to the White House aides handling Congress—saw the iceberg until it was too late.
How did an obscure maritime takeover turn into a political shipwreck? First, it's election year. For the past two campaign cycles, Karl Rove has successfully painted Democrats as soft on national security. The Dubai sale offered them a golden opportunity for payback. The GOP leadership on Capitol Hill did not want to get stuck trying to explain the sale to a public anxious after hearing how little had been done to protect U.S. ports. Besieged by calls from worried constituents, they publicly broke with Bush, rushing to delay or block the deal. The math wasn't hard to do: One Rasmussen poll registered 17 percent support for the deal, and showed Bush narrowly trailing congressional Democrats on his signature issue of national security.
The White House, meanwhile, was slow to read the signs. Nobody had tracked the bidding war for the venerable British ports company called the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co. (known as P&O). And nobody noticed an Associated Press story—on the day of Cheney's hunting incident—that aired the security concerns of a small Miami port operator called Eller. A disgruntled partner of P&O, Eller feared that an Arab government takeover could trigger a political backlash that might jeopardize its business. Its lawyers approached the Feds but were brushed aside; the security review was long complete.
more at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11570948/site/newsweek/
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
