Dodge Ball

As with all "breaking news", I find it imperative to sit back and wait for information to surface. We should know by now that initial reports are often laden with bias and purpose. The port issue is just another example. The headline, "Arab Country to Control Ports" was strictly a fear bomb. When the dust settled the dirt was on the critics faces. The real story, and to me the most disconcerting part, is that the administration did not manage this news. They let the opposition whip it into a scary sounding story. Then the President says, "I just learned about it." Maybe he did just learn about it. Maybe he doesn't need to be privy to this deal until it is done. But they underestimated the oppositions capabilities. And it gave people within his party opportunity to criticize.

Read this post at Mudville Gazette, an excellent, well established source for news and information.

The UAE port deal will have no impact on security. There are many "foreign" operated ports in the US. And the attacks on the deal are just ridiculous. NRO has a post about "organized disinformation" that sums up some embarrassing quotes. Like this one:

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Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton:

“Senator Menendez and I don’t think any foreign government company should be running our ports, managing, leasing, owning, operating. It just raises too many red flags. That is the nub of our complaints,” said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., speaking via teleconference in response to Bush’s announcement.

As reported in USA Today, 80 percent of the terminals in the Port of Los Angeles are run by foreign firms. And the U.S. Department of Transportation says the United Kingdom, Denmark, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China and Taiwan have interests in U.S. port terminals. The blogger Sweetness and Light observed that the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia, which is partially owned by the government of Saudi Arabia as well as Saudi individuals and establishments, operates berths in the ports of Baltimore, Newport News, Houston, New Orleans, Savannah, Wilmington, N.C., Port Newark, New Jersey, and Brooklyn, New York. (The link has an inadvertently haunting photo, BTW.)