Despite the attempts by Time and Newsweek to extend the Cheney hunting non-story another week, it seems the biggest news this week will be the takeover of the British company (Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company) that operates many of the US's largest ports, by a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates (Dubai Ports World).
Personally, I have mixed feelings about this. Here are some points I've found most interesting.
-- 99.9% of America, including myself, had no idea our ports were being run by a British company in the first place. To me, any foreign institution, be it owned by a foreign government or foreign private enterprise, operating something so important to national security as our ports is a bad idea. We don't even allow airlines to be foreign owned (probably for competitive reasons as opposed to security concerns, but still).
-- The mainstream media hasn't exploited this point yet, but last month, President Bush nominated David Sanborn to be chief administrator of the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration, reporting directly to Transportation Secretary Norman Minetta. Sanborn's previous job: DP World's Director of Operations for Europe and Latin America.
-- 40% of our military's overseas movements are moved through the 6 ports involved in the deal.
-- The administrator of the ports, be it DP World or P&O, is simply that, an administrator. Individual shipping companies, many or most of which are foreign owned, own or lease the actual terminals in the port. We should not be relying on private concerns, the shipping companies or the port administrators, to provide security. It must be federalized as much as possible. Customs and the Coast Guard already do most of the work, but they need to be expanded. Private security didn't work at airports, why should it work at seaports?
--The biggest concern seems to be based on the hypothesis that being a UAE-based company, DP World is more liable to have Al Qaeda operatives and sympathizers in their management ranks, who would thereby hire Al Qaeda people in the US to work at the ports, who could use their positions to smuggle in nukes and dirty bombs. Again, the only way to truly prevent this is through federal security.
I think this is just a bunch of political grandstanding by guys in both parties during a congressional election year. What do y'all think?
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