Port Blogging

Mary Katharine Ham | February 23, 2006 12:57 PM

Frank Gaffney writes at NRO about the port deal. He has predictions:

If this drama is allowed to play out fully, several things are predictable:
Legislation will be enacted by veto-proof margins in both the House and Senate to block the DP World takeover of the port terminal and other management contracts currently held by the British company, P & O.

If so, the president will be unlikely to cast his first veto in a futile attempt to block the legislation. The deal will, therefore, be aborted.

Relations with the UAE, which has been helpful in some aspects of the War for the Free World post-9/11 â€” the factor that seems to have trumped all others in the secretive deliberations of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) about the DP World takeover, will be damaged unnecessarily.

Frank is also blogging, here, and looks to be updating fairly frequently. May be a good place to look in while this drama does unfold.

Peggy Noonan on the port issue:

So we're all talking about port security this week, and the debate over the Bush administration decision to allow an United Arab Emirates company to manage six ports in the United States. That debate is turning bitter, and I wonder if the backlash against President Bush isn't partly due to the fact that everyone in America has witnessed or has been a victim of the incompetence of the airport security system. Why would people assume the government knows what it's doing when it makes decisions about the ports? It doesn't know what it's doing at the airports.
This is a flying nation. We fly. And everyone knows airport security is an increasingly sad joke, that TSA itself often appears to have forgotten its mission, if it ever knew it, and taken on a new one--the ritual abuse of passengers.