The Real Deal on The Port Deal

As I have already said I am against this. Not because it is the UAE I just don’t think it is a good idea to let any foreign government operate portions of our ports. A lot of information has come out since this was first blatantly misreported.  Today Wizbang and Big Lizards have some very interesting information and supposition.  That when combined with what I have learned from several sources including an excelent interview on Hugh Hewitt’s show with Robert Kaplan (transcript here, audio here)  and two fantastic posts by All Things Beautiful (the second here)  has me much more open to allowing this deal to happen.

My position was and is We should not allow foreign governments or foreign companies to operate parts of our port system.  However we already allow Chinese companies (owned by the Chinese government) a and several other foreign companies to operate parts of our ports all over the country. So I will now say I am open to allowing DPW to operate in this 6 ports if we are going to continue to allow other foreign companies to do the same thing.

Now on to Wizbang and Big Lizards.  In Jay’s post today titled Enemies to Port says a wise crack he made got him to thinking:

After I heard a few details, I felt a little better about the deal. I dismissed the security concerns, saying that the UAE wouldn’t be running security. The docks themselves would continue to be run by the Mob, and I wasn’t concerned about their ability to affect THAT. Little did I know how significant that wisecrack was.

So, just what was behind this explosion? What are the bigger issues behind it? And what have we learned about it?

He goes on and poses a question:

It took a few days, but the main actor behind the scenes might have overplayed its hand, and come to the forefront. I hit on it earlier in the week, but didn’t realize it at the time.

Could this all have been a ploy by the Teamsters? Could this have been a huge PR ploy aimed at intimidating the new port management company, who they feared would be tougher to negotiate with?

Considering that it was largely Democratic politicians who first started raising a stink, and the unions are one of the most powerful constituents of the Democrats, I think it’s a distinct possibility.

Honestly I never thought of that but it makes sense. This is exactly the kind of tactics that Unions pull particularly the Teamsters.

Then Jay leads us to Big Lizards

I’ve been a bit troubled by one element, and that’s that the Democrats tend, as a national party, to not take the War on Terror seriously. In this case, though, they’re making that THE deciding issue, and that discrepancy bothered me. That’s very out of character for them. They don’t usually work the big picture.

And thanks to Dafydd Ab Hugh, my suspicions were confirmed.

and this link

Look at the map Dafydd provides and you tell me if the little UAE doesn’t look like a pretty damn strategic place to be when facing the real threat of a conflict with a bunch of Iranian mullahs hell bent on starting world war 3?

Now the Bush admin’s handeling of this was about as bad as it gets politically. Could their poor planning or new information end up scuttling this deal? Absolutely.

I have to think that once the American public learn the facts a lot more of them are going to have an open mind about this deal.

This post is also available at The Real Ugly American

related posts:

The Port Deal Just Doesn’t Make Sense