In Defense Of Dubai

[Wordie]

This piece is by Dick Meyer, the Editorial Director of CBSNews.com, who also occasionally blogs at HuffPo. Here's a link to his HuffPo bio: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dick-meyer/2005/09/

He says, in the article, that there are a number of myths floating around about the DPW deal, and he debunks them. Here's his list of myths:

Myth #1: An Arab company is trying to buy six American ports.

Myth #2: The U.S. is turning over security at crucial ports to an Arab company.

Myth #3: American ports should be American.

Myth #4: The United Arab Emirates has "very serious" al Qaeda connections.

He debunks each one of those myths in his piece.

Here's some excerpts from what he says about Myth #1: An Arab company is trying to buy six American ports.

No, the company is buying up a British company that leases terminals in American ports; the ports are U.S.-owned. To lease a terminal at a U.S. port means running some business operations there -- contracting with shipping lines, loading and unloading cargo and hiring local labor. Dubai Ports World is not buying the ports.

Several companies will lease terminals at a single port. In New Orleans, for example, the company Dubai Ports World is trying to buy (P&O Ports) is just one of eight companies that lease and operate terminals.

P&O Ports does business in 18 other countries. None of them are in righteous lathers about the sale of the business to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates. Dubai Ports World already operates port facilities all over the world, including such security-slacker states as China, Australia, Korea and Germany.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/02/22/opinion/meyer/main1335531.shtml

He also says this about Myth #4: The United Arab Emirates has "very serious" al Qaeda connections:

Politicians have been quick to point out that two of the 9/11 hijackers were from UAE. And we're turning over our ports to them? Well, by that logic, we shouldn't let Lufthansa land in our airports or have military bases in Germany, because that country housed a bunch of the 9/11 hijackers as they were plotting.

The entire article is well worth reading.

[Kagemusha]

1. People just want to hoist Bush on his own hysteria-mongering.

I don't agree with doing so on a facts basis but hey, I'm not naive, I know that approach will win me no sympathy here or elsewhere. We'll just see how 'public anger' will be stage managed because um legally speaking there's not a hell of a lot that can be done to block this deal that would have any legitimacy...

[Wordie]

2. You might also be interested in this recent Will Pitt post...

This flap over the ports is pretty simple to understand.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x504839

[sarcasmo]

3. The new talking point is Racism, LMFAO.

[Lithos]

4. Not quite

Myth #1: An Arab company is trying to buy six American ports.
Myth #2: The U.S. is turning over security at crucial ports to an Arab company.
Myth #3: American ports should be American.

These are three shades of the same issue.

The CBS correspondent is overlooking quite a bit here which suggests great naivete concerning this issue.

- What was exposed was not the notion that ports are foreign controlled, but just how little the active US oversight is of US ports five years after 9/11. The lack of due-dilegence, communication, and obvious quid-pro-quo makes it obvious Bush is continuing on in a 9/10 mentality w/r to security. Not only does this show the great lie in the false war on terror (hint: his actions here alone demonstrate the war on terror is a non-event save for the political ammunition it gives him when he chooses to push that button), but that it's all about the money to him.

To this latter end:

- The UAE company is a nationally owned company, whose controllers (the Royal family of UAE) would be obtaining a position of trust within the US trade framework. It is not just an issue of a foreign company, but a foreign government obtaining this position of "trust". This trust includes the ability to provide paperwork which allows the easy entrance of material and people bypassing the nominal security that is in place.
- This same company has demonstrated its willingness to overlook international sanctions (apparently at the direction of its owners) to ship nuclear processing material to countries like Iran and N. Korea.
- The fact they obtained this was more to do with their financial ties to Bush than in any fact checking done by the US government.

Myth #4: The United Arab Emirates has "very serious" al Qaeda connections.

He omits
- The US calls off of a recent attack against Bin Laden because a good portion of the Royal Family was in attendance at a gathering in Afghanistan.
- UAE banks (who operate under controls established by the royal family) handle much of the financial transactions which have kept Bin Laden and many of the other terrorist groups afloat. They suffer from an extreme lack of transparency.

I would agree with him concerning Lufthansa provided he could demonstrate the CEO was seen in attendance with Bin Ladin.

[Wordie]

6. There is a lot of misinformation circulating...we all need to be careful.

(I'd like to see the source material for the points you make, because I do question some of it. Let me add here that I know you to be generally highly fastidious about sources; I am asking because I want to be able to read the info myself.)

I think there is a lot of misleading information out there. I think we should be looking at things as they exist today, rather than bringing up info from pre-9/11, when just about everyone saw things much differently. Some of what you cited seems to be misleading in this respect (although let me say that I don't believe it's your intention to mislead). For instance, the UAE instituted new stringent anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering laws after 9/11. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=504839&mesg_id=517238

But some of the other things you mention seem to me to miss the mark a bit as well:
- What was exposed was not the notion that ports are foreign controlled, but just how little the active US oversight is of US ports five years after 9/11. The lack of due-dilegence, communication, and obvious quid-pro-quo makes it obvious Bush is continuing on in a 9/10 mentality w/r to security. Not only does this show the great lie in the false war on terror (hint: his actions here alone demonstrate the war on terror is a non-event save for the political ammunition it gives him when he chooses to push that button), but that it's all about the money to him.

You are presenting the information above as a reason for nixing the deal with the UAE company. However, it seems to me that the actual issue is different and far larger. The US (as Kerry urged in the '04 election, btw) has not devoted sufficient resources to port security. That's undeniably true. We need to take a serious look at port security, for all ports. I think that would be a far more sensible approach to the issue, rather than nixing this one deal. I agree with you completely that Bush has used "terra terra terra" as a cynical vote getting manipulation. It appears this has now come back around to bite him. The thing is, somebody is going to have to run those ports. The RFP for this contract had only two bidders; one was Dubai World Ports, the other a Chinese company. So where does that leave us? And as a significant portion of our ports already are being managed under similar deals with other foreign countries, I would have to ask, why the outcry now? In some ways it may be a good thing that we are having this debate, as perhaps the outcome will be that we finally start acting on the long-overdue strengthening of security of our ports, but again, it seems to me that either we disallow all foreign governments, or we allow all who meet the established criteria. It would seem to me that since so many of our ports are managed by foreign companies now, that we need to establish better security measures that would apply universally, no matter who was managing the port (it's not a deal for ownership, btw; that's another bit of misinformation). Should that be done, specific security issues regarding the UAE deal would no longer be of issue.

And while a quid-pro-quo has been implied, I would like to see additional info on that too. Does the UAE typically make large donations, throughout the world, for instance? It would seem that may be the case. What other donations have they made. What were the dates? We just need more information before we can know for sure what's going on. I don't trust Bush any more than you do, but I'm concerned about the reasons why this particular deal is getting so much more scrutiny in the blogosphere and elsewhere than other similar deals, and I am afraid that the underlying reasons why that is so may not have much to do with any of these concerns that are being raised. Why didn't these same people, for instance, raise a ruckus when the Chinese, who would also be a country of concern, it seems to me, finalized similar port deals in the past?

You've presented a lot there and I really cannot at the moment deal with all of it, but let me just mention one other thing, and that's the report about how we halted a plan to bomb bin Laden, because he was in the company of royals from the UAE. Again, for me, it's a question of dates. That incident occurred in 1999, well before 9/11. At the time, bin Laden's reputation as a terrorist was not as well established or known. He had been considered a hero in the middle east, for his efforts in expelling the Soviets from Afganistan. We ourselves had considered him an ally until not long before that, and had supported and even funded his work in Afganistan. I can't tell you what information might have been supplied to the UAE royals at that time, or what their take on bin Laden was and why. But it does seem to me that their actions within a few days after 9/11 speak volumes about where their true loyalties lie. Immediately after the 9/11 attacks, the UAE withdrew its recognition of the Taliban. This article is from September 21, 2001:

UAE withdraws recognition of the Taliban

(CNN) -- The United Arab Emirates has cut diplomatic ties with Afghanistan, reducing support for the hard-line Taliban rulers.

...The official Emirates News Agency on Saturday quoted an unidentified foreign ministry official as saying that the UAE has tried to convince the Taliban in recent days to hand over suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.

The official said that the cuts to relations would take effect immediately.

http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/21/gen.america.under.attack

And here's a recent report that goes into a little more detail about the reasons for the earlier recognition:

UAE Taliban recognition likely pragmatic

By TAREK AL-ISSAWI
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates --
...The recognition came in part because of a request from Pakistan, the Taliban's main sponsor, one analyst said. The Emirates also wanted to see a stable Sunni Muslim government in Afghanistan to balance mainly Shiite Iran, a top rival of Arab Gulf nations.

...He said the recognition also was aimed at putting an end to a civil war that ravaged Afghanistan following the withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1989, and that the Taliban appeared to be in the best position to control the country.

...Abdulla said the UAE recognition likely would not have happened without at least tacit approval from the United States, which had worked closely with Pakistan and Afghan fighters against the Soviet occupation.

"Islamabad and Washington have been close allies, and the United States at the time saw the Taliban as the group that could control Afghanistan and stop the fighting," he said.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1107AP_Emirates_Taliban.html

[Violet_Crumble]

8. About Bin-Laden in 1999...

Even though it was before Sept 11, he did have a reputation as a terrorist. It was 1998 when he issued a fatwa calling for attacks on US civilians, very few countries were willing to give him a haven, and the attacks on US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya had happened. I think it's safe to say that by 1999, even though he hadn't hit the stratosphere of superstardom as the ultimate terrorist, he was definately carrying out terrorist attacks...

Violet...

[Wordie]

13. So, what do you think is the significance of that, then, Violet?

Do you think the deal should be nixed on that basis? Is that a "smoking gun" as far as you are concerned regarding the UAE? I've been reading about all sorts of things that are said to have happened in that period between the end of the Afgan/Soviet war, in the late 80s (and the toppling of the Soviet puppet, in 1992), and 9/11, and there appears to be a lot of rather contradictory information about bin Laden's activities during that time, so it's hard to tell what was the middle eastern view of him, and why, at any particular moment. He was clearly thought to be a hero for his efforts in Afganistan at the start of that period.

What do you think that hunting party tells us about the UAE royals? Do you think that means that they supported bin Laden's fatwah against the west? Could there be other explanations? Do you think that means they can't be trusted now?

With so many claims and counter-claims about them, I'm having a difficult time trying to understand what they're really all about.

[Violet_Crumble]

18. I don't think there's much significance to it at all...

If he'd been wined and dined in the UAE after Sept 11 it'd be a whole different story, but that didn't happen....

He wasn't just thought of as a hero for Afghanistan, where the mujhadeen were viewed as heroes by the US for beating the Soviets and it was conveniently forgotten that they murdered Afghan schoolteachers who defied their edict that girls and boys must be educated separately. He was viewed as a hero because he used his wealth to help ordinary people while living an austere life himself. The American population, of course, being in general self-absorbed and insular, find it easy to use Sept 11 as a reason to tar and feather everything and everyone Bin Laden touched prior to it, and demand that the entire world feel their outrage and pain, while forgetting that the US navy crew of trigger happy murderers who shot down an Iranian airbus with 290 civilians on board (over 60% of them children) in the 1980's was not greeted on their return to the US with condemnation, and not even a subdued reaction, but were lauded as heros and given medals to commemorate their heroic feat. There was no empathy at all for the pain felt by Iranians, who's troops were already suffering under numerous poisonous gas attacks by the best buddy of the US, Saddam Hussein...

Some of our ports are affected by the deal, but there's no fuss being made about it. Some of it's probably down to the fact that we're very familiar and comfortable with publicly-owned companies, because I've gotten the impression from reading a few posts at DU that some people think the UAE govt is going to turn up at some US port and start governing the UAE from there. While the Democrats in the US decided to make this thing an issue, our opposition party may have seen that playing the 'Arab terrorists' card may have been the death knell for the party and lost it what's left of its traditional voter base. And we're more used to multinational companies running their operations in our country. It's a fact of life....

Violet...

[mtice]

16. The other bidder

... wasn't Chinese, they were Singaporean.

I do think we need to take into account that DPW is owned by a non-democratic Islamic state. IIRC slavery is still legal and still practiced there.

[RagingInMiami]

5. The deal was shroud in secrecy and stinks of cronyism

And that's no myth.

[T_i_B]

7. There are loads of Myths springing up about this

Mainly because the people pontificating about this issue do not, by and large know the first thing about how the shipping industry works. We are hearing a lot of gibberish being spoken about this from people who have never imported or exported even a thimble's worth of goods in their entire lives and who until this week had never even heard of these people and simply do not have the slightest idea if DP, PSA or Hutchinson Port Holdings would provide a better service to the shipping and forwarding industries.

[Wordie]

9. I found what appears to be a good thread on this...

"International Port Operations, a short primer"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x493956

[T_i_B]

14. That's an excellent thread

If I could have got here in time to reccomend it for the "Greatest" page, then I would have done that. That thread is a breath of fresh air!

Thanks Wordie :yourock:

[Coastie for Truth]

10. I am opposed to the deal for reasons of the lack

of attention to Port Security, and the position of Dubai Port World in our shipping infrastructure.

By the way, I was a Lieutenant in the United States Coast Guard - in the busy Port of New Orleans. I worked in ship safety (with ABS and Lloyds), and in Port Security - especially bulk shipment of petroleum and chemicals (see my book - I was project officer for the red leatherette bound, loose leaf, first edition).

I still have my GROL with Radar Endorsement, although my Third Mate's License lapsed about 30 years ago.

[Wordie]

11. If those are your reasons, why didn't you inform us when China started

buying up leases for ports? If you are a port security expert, then surely you would have been aware of the increasing trend toward foreign leases in port management. Why only now, with this deal with an arab company, is there attention to port security?

It appears that port security in general is a legitimate issue for us to focus on. But if we've allowed China to participate in similar deals, then I have a hard time understanding the rush to condemn this one.

I think we should spend time beefing up security requirements for all port management companies. We should increase funding for federal security efforts and develop standards for internal security procedures that all will be required to follow. Let's hope that someone decides to do so, now, while the issue is at the forefront.

[T_i_B]

15. Port security is being beefed up

Certainly over here since the July 7th bombings certain ports have really tightened up security. (mind you, I should hope so given what they all charge for port security).

Plus things should get better as new improved scanning machines come on stream to allow for more efficient X-ray examinations of containers. And I believe that the number of containers being examined in the US has more then doubled since 9/11! (if The Economist is anything to go by). It's annoying for importers because if your container gets scanned then you automatically get charged for it and it holds up delivery of the container but that's the price you pay for having people like Al-Quaida in this world I guess.

And I share your exasperation with the people who are screaming blue murder about this deal Wordie. Loads of ports around the world are under foreign ownership and nobody bats an eyelid and all of a sudden DP propose to move into the US market and everybody decides, on the basis of little or no evidence (other then that they are based in Dubai) that they must be terrorists! I can't tell you if DP or PSA would do a better job but all this fuss and pallaver almost makes me want to start rooting for this deal to go through!

[salin]

17. Raises a question about privatization in general

So there are numerous corps (foreign) bidding to *make money* off of operating the ports. Why are we not doing as is done in LA where the port authority is (local) govt run - as a seperate entity in the sense that it pays for itself.

Perhaps in this era of high deficits some of these potentially Money Making endeavors should be run similarly - where they either pay for themselves or generate some needed revenues - and keeps oversight of operations and security in our hands?

[Coastie for Truth]

12. Here is an interesting collection of items on Port Security

This is only the index - the complete collection - with Commandant Instructions and Commandant Notices - takes up a bookshelf.