Powerful Stupid Port Management

Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the royal family that runs the United Arab Emirates (and which has been implicated in terrorist financing through its banking institutions), won approval for a $6.8 billion deal to manage six U.S. ports from a secretive U.S. panel that considers security risks of foreign companies buying or investing in American industry.

We here at Consider The Future think they ought to reconsider.

This decision is possibly the dumbest damn thing I've heard in my 30-something years of life.

And that's saying something, because I've heard some whoppers in my time ("We're not selling arms for hostages", "We don't torture people", "Nelson Mandela is a terrorist", "Trees cause pollution", "AIDS is a gay disease", "JFK was killed by a 'magic' bullet", "Star Wars Missile Defense works, give us more money", "Your water is safe to drink, ignore the arsenic in it", etc., etc., etc.....)

But giving control of our ports to a nation whose citizens helped kill 3000+ Americans on 9/11?

Jesus, that's powerful stupid.

As previously mentioned, with this deal, the United Arab Emirates would have control over significant operations at six major American ports. Additionally, this deal would place the UAE in control of shipments of military equipment for the U.S. Army.

Objections to this functionally retarded decision have THANKFULLY come from both sides of the political aisle.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and Chris Dodd (D-CT), and Reps. Chris Shays (R-CT), Vito Fossella (R-NY), and Mark Foley (R-FL) all objected to the decision, and two Republican Governors with effected ports in their states, George Pataki of New York and Robert Ehrlich of Maryland, threatened to block compliance with the deal. Even noted Bush Administration suck-up Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who will obediently twist himself into an ideological pretzel on command, is speaking out against this!

This one is too dumb even for Republicans.

According to the British paper Lloyd’s List:

P&O (the company bought by Dubai Ports World) had just renewed a contract with the United States Surface Deployment and Distribution Command to provide stevedoring (loading and unloading) of military equipment at the Texan ports of Beaumont and Corpus Christi through 2010.

According to the journal Army Logistician “Almost 40 percent of the Army cargo deployed in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom flows through these two ports.”

Thus, the sale would give a country that has been “a key transfer point for illegal shipments of nuclear components to Iran, North Korea, and Libya” direct control over substantial quantities U.S. military equipment.

Homeland "Security" Chief Michael Chertoff, just off his massive disaster prep and implementation "successes" during Hurricane Katrina, claims this decision was "extensively reviewed", but of course also says all those reviews are secret, so he conveniently doesn't have to defend the "thinking" behind the approval of this deal.

Yeah. Anybody else tired of the secrecy excuse being used YET AGAIN?