Posted on 07/20/2007 7:19:48 PM PDT by plain talk
Former Inside the Ring co-author Rowan Scarborough has written a new book revealing a key reason the Bush administration pressed hard for the 2006 deal for the United Arab Emirates-based Dubai Ports World to take over management of several U.S. ports. According to Mr. Scarborough, the administration wanted the deal to go through because the UAE government had agreed to let the United States post agents inside its global port network who could report on world shipping.
Dubai Ports currently runs port facilities at key U.S. intelligence targets, including Venezuela, China, Pakistan, India and Saudi Arabia. "Dubai Ports, in essence, was going to become an agent of CIA," Mr. Scarborough said in an interview. "The arrangement is helping us detect whether any kind of terror contraband was being moved around." The management deal to run ports at New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Orleans and Miami was initially approved by the Treasury Department-run Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, but was eventually scuttled in 2006 after pressure from Congress. Both Republicans and Democrats raised concerns that the deal would affect U.S. port security since al Qaeda had used UAE as a major financial base for its terrorist network.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Those against the Dubai Ports deal (for the most part) simply looked at the situation (foolishly) through a straw-size peep whole at thought that was a clear enough view to make a strategic decision from....They were wrong.
“Thats what the Bush administration gets for not coming out and stating the facts. “
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. . . and that would have helped our COVERT operations how?!
[Rowan’s EXCELLENT book — SABATOGE — details the ways in which LEAKS of this nature (purposely revealed to various news organizations by the CIA) have undermined our security. If some ‘talkers’/Freepers can’t think strategically, that’s their problem NOT the President’s . . . BTW: Rush called this one.]
The UAE could have wanted to plant double agents of their own. Playing spy games with the Arabs.
UAE is a better ally than Saudi Arabia (of course this neither means we bomb the Saudis nor we don’t put any pressure on them) and I bet there are more domestic Al Qaeda terrorists in America than in the UAE. And regarding the recognition of Taliban Afghanistan, the US and other nations are actually in the minority for not recognizing the Talibans as the liegitimate government. MAny nations, let alone Arab/Islamic ones, recognize the Tallies as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. So, yeah. I do believe this story.
Right...Prove it...
Even if this story is true, the response to this is simple: the Bush Administration should have found a different way of paying the UAE back than allowing them to manage our ports.
Of all the quid pro quos possible, giving away any form of access to our port management to an islamic country was and is just plain stupid, from both a security and political standpoint.
And to all of you who are backslapping yourselves since you "knew" there must have been some kind of reciprocal agreement going on with the UAE behind the scenes: don't you thing the terrorist and evil governments out there suspected the same, based on Bush's hints? And wouldn't that affect whether they used the UAE & affiliated companies for shipping?
Did you even think about this before you wrote it?
The administration should have told everyone that they wanted the deal so they could post secret agents in the Dubai Ports operations?
What part of "Secret Agent" don't you understand? I mean, seriously!
FYI: Scarborough’s Previous and Current Works
I state no such thing. Re-read my post, with an emphasis on comprehension this time...
Precisely. A poor reason to let Islamists anywhere near our ports.
Of course, the same lack of care is shown on our Southern border, almost six years after 9/11.
And, I don't! I find it hard to believe much about Bush any more, except that he's a globalist and he's destroying our country!
Any wonder why Chuckie and Hill played this too the hilt at the time? They want to own the ME for the Marxist crowd. No loss for freedom is too great for these people.
IIRC, Michelle Malkin, whom I usually admire, also called this one wrong. The irony for me was that at the time of this whole bruhaha, my ship was inport Jebel Ali, UAE.
Cool! What’s the place like?
Hey, Jimmy Carter leaked the existence of the Stealth program in order to burnish his national security credentials, why should this leak about the UAE being so cooperative with the CIA surprise us? Who benefits from this story? Answer? The Bush Administration.
If this was in fact the motivation behind the Dubai ports deal, the Administration should have done better prep work behind the scenes to get the damn thing passed.
If (as some have suggested) this is just an attempt after the fact to spin things in a favorable manner for the Administration, it didn’t (and won’t) work.
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