Inside the Ring [Why Bush wanted Dubai Port deal]

Washington Times ^ | July 20, 2007 | Bill Gertz

[SevenMinusOne]

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.

[DrDeb]

“That’s 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.]

[Abcdefg]

The UAE could have wanted to plant double agents of their own. Playing spy games with the Arabs.

[Killborn]

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.

[stevie_d_64]

Right...Prove it...

[Yossarian]

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.

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?

[CMAC51]

That’s what the Bush administration gets for not coming out and stating the facts.

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!

[Killborn]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/002-7443342-7970430?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Rowan%20Scarborough

FYI: Scarborough’s Previous and Current Works

[TeddyIke]

Bwhahaha. This and Miers and Immigration and election 2006. All super secret plans. Rove you magnificent Bastard. Haaa!

[TeddyIke]

Why couldn’t we have put secret agents on post anyway? Don’twe anyway? I mean seriously?

[Sudetenland]

Oh, I see. You already knew all about this from "Bush's hints." Riiighhht!

I think I'll believe Scarborough before I believe that.

[Sudetenland]

You obviously are not familiar with the New York Times theory of national security...when you make a covert action public then everybody knows about it...then...well there has to be some logical follow up.

I mean, you know black is white and up is down or something like that, you know? Like, that's like why I'm like a brilliant like Liberal, like, you know?

So I guess Rush was right once again and the knee-jerk xenophobes around here were wrong...again. I didn't think that being knee-jerk reactionary and being Conservative went hand in hand very well. I thought that in order to be a Conservative you had to have a rational reaction to everything...at least that has always been my definition of a Conservative, one driven by reason rather than emotion.

[Yossarian]

Oh, I see. You already knew all about this from "Bush's hints." Riiighhht!

I state no such thing. Re-read my post, with an emphasis on comprehension this time...

[1COUNTER-MORTER-68]

No,No,No,,,BS Sez Me,,,No RagHeads "Owning" American Ports !!!

[exit82]

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.

[NRA2BFree]

If you believe this story.

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!

[Earthdweller]

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.

[GATOR NAVY]

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.

[Killborn]

Cool! What’s the place like?

[mkjessup]

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.