how do you make the leap from Dubai Ports buying a British firm and “our tax dollars being put to work?” This has nothing to do with our tax dollars.

Memri backgrounder on Zayed Center here. Harvard charity scandal story here.

Am I the only one who finds all this curious?

The Zayed after which the Center is named is the president of the UAE, Sheik Zayed, who presumably owns the company which will be running our ports.

Anyway, here’s a little wrinkle that may change some minds, from a commentor quoted by Frank Gaffney over on National Review:

“As a former employee of the DP World I can offer a unique insight into the goings on of this company, and I’m afraid if you scrape beneath the surface, it’s not all its cracked up to be.

Did you know that several times a year, staff receive a company memo informing them that, for that particular month, one day’s salary will be deducted and given to a Palestine “charity”!!! Staff are allowed to refuse by informing Human Resources Department, but no one ever did – knowing that this would lead to being over-looked for promotions and/or not having your contract renewed. I recall one poor Indian dock-side labourer on [a] $500-a-month [salary] complaining that he couldn’t afford to make the payment as he had his wife and three children back in India to feed. He promptly was fired!

Granted it’s an anonymous source, which means a wait & see attitude is called for, but it doesn’t seem that farfetched for a Middle East firm to act this way. Do we really want to be doing business with a firm like that? Is this how you want your tax dollars to be put to work? Should we be giving billions to terrorists once removed?

Just a business deal.

What is “owned” are freight terminal facilites within ports. O&P “owns” (lease with long enough term to justify investing a LOT of money in freight handling infrastructure) a 50% interest in the CONTAINER terminal in the Port Newark/Elizabeth Marine Terminal. There are several other large freight terminals in that port. There are several other large ports – the PATH of NY/NJ includes of seven Marine Terminals each of which have several freight terminals. Nobody owns the ports other than the city/state where the port is located.

In the Port of Baltimore they own the lease on two container terminals. There are four other “public” freight terminals and eight “private” ones in the Port of Baltimore.

What DPW, partly owned by the UAE government, would “own” is not “American Ports!” but a portion of the container terminals in a handful of US ports. Foreign corporations (China, Singapore, etc) “own” various freight terminals in various US ports. Regardless of who owns them the Coast Guard and the US Customs Service are the ones responsible for the “security” of the ports. Whoever owns the terminals has to deal with the same security operations and if they don’t they’ll be our of business. I don’t know a single person in the UAE or from the UAE but I am absolutely sure the UAE does not want to see a $6B investment go up in smoke in one of their container terminals in the US.

We don’t.

However, why let Schumer and old media mis-represent the DP World deal as national security risk, and kept key persons in the dark? When the storm was gathering strength, why not invite Senate/Congressional heads and relevant committee heads to clear things up? Then it won’t come to the present sorry state that Frist, Haster (sp?), and all kinds of ambitious lefty and righty persons (Lindsey Graham, for example) publicly oppose the deal, with a strong majority of Americans behind them. Why let this thing go for so long till both lefty and righty bloggers have hissy fits over misinformation?

Karen Hughes used to have a very good grip on the regular Americans’ pulse. Now that she’s in charge of PRing US image overseas (ME), it seems she’s out of her depth. I don’t know where Karl Rove is doing, somebody in WH is definitely “tone deaf”. And this is but another example of this kind of reacting to un-necessary hysteria, both ìtoo little, too lateî variety.

At the risk of sounding cynical:
I wonder how long before the ACLU feels inclined to intervene on behalf of the poor Dubai based company which doesn’t get the same shake as Chinese, Singaporian and European port owners…

Far from encouraging anti-Arab xenophobia this president has pandered to them as well as Muslims in general. Bush has been an outspoken opponent of racial profiling (a disgrace in my view) and he and his cronies have attacked those of us who oppose his MidEast democratization policy as bigots with low expectations of Arab Muslims.

I find it odd that the masses who are quiet when it comes to not singling out suspicious Arabs getting on planes are suddenly upset about this innocuous ports contract. Perhaps liberal Democratic opposition to the ports deal has provided cover for an explosion of suppressed anger regarding political correctness. I see nothing wrong with a UAE company running the ports as they’ll be subject to the same regulations as the previous company. Chuck Schumer and company seem to be engaging in the kind of profiling that Al Gore was recently sounding off about in Saudi Arabia.

Why would anyone expect the president of the US to personally negotiate contracts?

Because they have no idea about how anything complex gets done?