the rix mix

No surprise that the Dubai port operations deal turned so quickly into a lose/lose issue for GWB. Faced with a bipartisan opposition, unprecedented since he took took office in 2001, the best spin his handlers could put on the matter was to say he didn't know about it. This is easy enough to believe of a man who didn't know about Hurricane Katrina until it had become a tropical storm over Tennessee. But if he didn't know about the deal, why did he so stubbornly defend it so quickly? To be sure, it's the kind of arrangement his people assumed he would eagerly approve, given the close business alliances between the Bush Family & the UAE sheikdoms - the small Emirate nations are extended family businesses. The elder Bush may have known about the deal all along, if only through casual golf course conversation. The plan included greasing the machine by moving Dave Sanborn from his position as DP World Director of Operations for Europe and Latin America to a job as Maritime Adminstrator at the Dept. of Transportation, the sort of appointment no one outside maritime industries even notices. This sweetheart deal was in the works for a long time. Well, the tale is now being investigated & told, & it'll be more of what we've come to expect of the Bush Junta: profit disguised as patriotism. Our port operations would probably be just as secure from terrorists if they were handed back to the mafia, because living in New Jersey it's obvious that hardly anything here is really safe from attack. There may be few logical reasons at present for denying DP the ports contract. But given its record to date, we're better off doing the opposite of whatever the Bush Administration proposes. & it's very good that the important matter of our port security is on the front pages.