Most people seem to forget that this deal was first announced in public more than two months before the PR nightmare materialized here in ths U.S. When the DPW acquisition of P&O Ports was announced in late November of 2005 and there was no adverse reaction to it from elected officials and other interested parties in the U.S. in December, January, and during the first two weeks of February, there was no reason for anyone to suspect that it would suddenly become a major problem in mid-February.
Apparently it took the public time to wake up to the transaction. I follow the news very carefully right here on FR and elsewhere, and I didn't notice it in December. A google search shows the first link regarding this deal was February 8th of 2006
And regarding the PR issue, the deal had an odour. With the right sales job, it mightn't have been a problem.
The idiot democrats simply stepped into a vacuum created by the deal planners when they (and all officials who successively put their stamp of approval on it) failed to visualize how the deal might look from a distance.
Ultimately, it isn't the deal itself that is so troubling as it is the stupidity of all parties surrounding it.
That's right. The deal may have been covered extensively in the general media for the first time in mid-February, but anyone who is familiar with the shipping industry knew about it in late November. And for a guy like Rep. Peter King -- the chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security -- to claim that he wasn't aware of this deal before mid-February means he's either an opportunistic, self-aggrandizing liar or he's too damned incompetent to serve in Congress.