The PR machine of Dubai Ports World has been in full swing, with company executives taking to the airwaves to convince the American people that the U.A.E. company truly has American interests at heart.  First, the company claimed it was not owned by the government of Dubai, even though it is, and even though the Emir of Dubai chairs the company's Board of Directors. Second, the company claimed it 'volunteered' for a 45-day security review, but it has refused to delay the deal. Tomorrow, unless Congress takes action, DP World will take over P&O.  Most disturbing is the fact that DP World has essentially used its influence to hijack our national security process.

Let us first examine the original P&O - DP World contract.  Review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is purely voluntary. Here, both parties contracted to a CFIUS review. Yet DP World included the following in its contract:

In regulatory papers, the companies said either the committee must agree not to formally investigate the purchase or Bush must not move to block the sale for national security purposes

Read that again. DP World insisted that a Exon-Florio 45-day investigation not be initiated, and that Bush could not block the sale for "national security purposes."  The decision of whether a deal should be blocked because of national security should be made by the President and OUR government, not by the DP World and the government of Dubai. Yet the government of Dubai explicitly demanded that it essentially be exempted from a national security review.

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From Egypt to Afghanistan, when terrorists and gangsters need a place to meet, to relax, maybe to invest, they head to Dubai...

[Dubai] serves as the region's criminal crossroads, a hub for smuggling, money laundering, and underground banking. There are Russian and Indian mobsters, Iranian arms traffickers, and Arab jihadists. Funds for the 9/11 hijackers and African embassy bombers were transferred through the city. It was the heart of Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan's black market in nuclear technology and other proliferation cases. Half of all applications to buy U.S. military equipment from Dubai are from bogus front companies, officials say. "Iran," adds one U.S. official, "is building a bomb through Dubai." Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents thwarted the shipment of 3,000 U.S. military night-vision goggles by an Iranian pair based in Dubai. Moving goods undetected is not hard.

 -- U.S. News & World Report (Dec 5, 2005)

President Bush has made it clear that he hadn't a clue about the events unfolding within his Administration surrounding the management takeover of 6 U.S. Ports by the United Arab Emirates.

We've also learned that very few others in the administration seemed to know anything about the transaction prior to the media blow-up -- certainly those who should have known about it were unaware. By their own admission, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Treasury Secretary John Snow, and Homeland Security Czar, Michael Chertoff were left completely in the dark.

Normally, that would be no big deal, but here we're talking about a post-911 world (as the administration feels constantly compelled to remind us) coupled with arguably the nation's most vulnerable points of entry.

It's a little unnerving when the base of both parties voices the same opposition to an issue. It's a bit too close to Bizarro world. But where both sides may agree on the broad principle that DP World should not control U.S. ports, our basis for opposition differs radically. Where the opposition in some corners is the result of xenophobia, the issue deserves a more nuanced analysis.  Over at DailyKos, I've been stressing that opposition to the deal should be narrowly focused on the implications of allowing a foreign government--friend or foe--to operate our vulnerable ports.  

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