| Clintons Skate on Their Dubai Port Dealings |
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March 8 2006 |
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 All right, ports deal time. We got through yesterday without talking about the ports deal but we can't avoid it today. "Republican House leaders last night split with President Bush and said they would derail a Duba-owned company's bid to take control of operation at six major US ports. Representative Jerry Lewis, California Republican, House appropriations committee chairman said, 'It is my intention to lay the foundation to block the deal.' Ron Bonjean, the spokesman for Denny Hastert, said the rest of the House Republican leadership backed Mr. Lewis and is expected to have his committee add to a must-pass emergency spending bill an amendment to block the Dubai ports deal. 'We don't believe the US should allow a state-owned company to run American ports.'"
Look I told you this was going to be the case. All you people getting upset at me, I told you the politics of this were going to kill it. It didn't matter what anybody thought. This doesn't officially kill it, but it's an election year and they've got some weenies up there and they see the Democrats occupying what they think is the high ground up there and they don't want to cede the high ground to them. "Lawmakers from both parties..." Get this. "Lawmakers from both parties say the United Arab Emirates has helped shuttle weapons components around the Middle East, has ties to Al-Qaeda, and shouldn't be trusted to operate terminals in US ports. The legislators, disputing the Bush administration's contention that the UAE has been a loyal ally on the war on terror, are citing findings by the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and the September 11th Commission among their evidence.
"According to the Wisconsin Project, an anti-proliferation group, United Arab Emirates officials in 2003 allowed 66 switches used in nuclear weapons to be sent to a Pakistani guy in the mid-nineties. They also allowed representatives of Dr. Abdul Hadir Khan, the father of Pakistan's nuclear program, to ship technology through Dubai to Iran. None of this has gone on since 2003." My only question about this... This is just adding another nail in the coffin of the ports deal, but France and Germany armed Saddam.
I mean, everybody in the world was on the take in the oil-for-food program. Can we still trade with France and Germany? They had dealings with Saddam, and we are at war with Iraq. White House spokesbabe said "Mr. Bush's position has not changed but added that the White House is committed to having a sincere and open discussion." Washington Times lead editorial today on the port security proposals, get this: One of the proposals from these geniuses on Capitol Hill is to create an office of cargo security policy.
"It would strip port security from other transportation security areas and calls for greater spending for DHS agencies," Department of Homeland Security agencies. So we're going to set up a new bureaucracy. In addition to what we've already got, we're basically going to set up -- well, it was a proposal to set up, to create -- an office of cargo security policy. Now, some people say, "Well, Rush, this is great news! I mean, we should have done this immediately after the 9/11 incident. We've gotta get serious about this." Okay. Do you think another bureaucracy is the way to deal with this? Welcome to it, folks. This ports deal is what it is, and it's going to go down as it apparently is going to go down. |
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It's going to be curious to see how the president deals with this with his own party now splitting off from him faster than the Democrats are. I have another angle on this ports deal, though. I think this is not being talked about enough. We've got Jake Abramoff out there and everybody's talking about him. What about Bill and Hillary Clinton? You know, these two are involved in more schemes, and they get away with ignorance -- with feigned ignorance. Hillary gets away with saying, "I didn't know Bill was going to pardon those -- those FALN terrorists! I didn't know Bill was working with Dubai."
"It's right there on your financial disclosure form, and your staff was coordinating with his staff about his lobbying efforts over there! What do you mean?"
"Well, I didn't know," and nobody is raising a stink about this. Clinton is out there lobbying for the Dubai company, advising them. He's unregistered, did not sign up as an agent of a foreign government. That's a violation of federal statute. You have to do that. Nobody cares. It's like Tom DeLay won his primary last night, skunked his opponent, nobody is writing about it. Had he lost it would have been front page news.
 But, I mean, here you've got Bill and Hillary engaging in a giant scam where she gets to pretend to be innocent and uninformed, and he gets to occupy both sides of the issue. He's for the port deal but he's against the port deal -- while making money for it. They have both enriched themselves. Here's the real story: Who enabled this to happen? Bill Clinton is George Bush's "brother." The Bush family has practically admitted that they've adopted Clinton. So was Bush covering up the involvement of his brother, Bill Clinton, in the Dubai ports lobbying scandal? If so -- I'm trying to give you people in the drive-by media (ha-ha-ha) a new action line here on this story. It's Bush's fault. Bush covered up the legal lobbying by his brother, Bill Clinton, because he wanted the deal to happen and he doesn't care that Clinton got rich because the Bush family's rich and they want every member of the family to be rich, and Clinton is the new brother in the family. That's where you ought to take this. Blame Bush for Clinton and Hillary and their behind-the-scenes dealing on the port deal.
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Another story here that has an ancillary relationship to the port deal. Going to love this one. "The Bush administration has decided to push ahead with a proposal to ease limits on foreign investments in US airlines, despite some congressional pressure to slow down the plan or withdraw it. The proposed regulation was opposed earlier this year by mainly Democrat lawmakers concerned about the impact on US jobs and airline service if global capital options for financially struggling domestic airlines were expanded. But in recent weeks a few Republicans have begun to question whether the initiative is wise in light of the port deal. Many Republicans and Democrats in Congress as well as state and local officials who lease port facilities are worried that giving a company owned by the UAE management control at key US ports could undermine security," and now here comes the Bush administration wanting to allow foreign countries to invest in ailing US airlines! That could eventually lead to them buying them out. (Laughing.)
Not only does this deal not have a prayer, the port deal doesn't have a prayer now. As I told you from the outset, that it wouldn't. I said, "Economically it's okay. Politically, it's dead on arrival." I said that from the (interruption). What's wrong with foreign countries investing in airlines? Because it's just a ruse, Mr. Snerdley. Investment leads to ownership. American airlines owned by Sheik Mohammed Shaktum Shabiz, is that what you want? You want United Airlines -- hell -- do you know that the US airline industry, as an industry, has never had a year where they've shown a profit? Individual airlines have. But the industry as a whole has not shown one. Well, I don't think it ever has, but if I'm wrong about that, it's very few years and a long, long time ago. Mr. Snerdley, I know we invest in other countries. But sounds to me like we're selling everything we've got. It sounds like everything we've got is being put up for auction, and it sounds to me like the things that we're putting up for auction are things that could direct... I mean, what was it that brought down the World Trade Center, aside from the people that planned it? It was airplanes. You realize what could happen here.
You realize if these people start owning these airplanes, I mean it's over. We're finished, kaput. The security, it's a mess. I can't believe Bush wants to do this! I can't believe it. (interruption) No, I just can't believe that we would willingly do this. I mean, in the face of the port deal, for this to come up, for the administration to hang tough and say no, we're going to go ahead with this. It's got me... "Norman Mineta, the transportation secretary, did not comment directly on the ports saga at a House appropriations hearing yesterday, but he did respond to concerns from two Republican lawmakers that the airline deal could pose similar security risks for the US, especially because it was airplanes that were flown into the World Trade Center on 9/11. He also angrily denounced a three-page anonymous document circulating in Capitol Hill believed generated by an unnamed US airline that also questions the wisdom of allowing more foreign investment in the airline industry.
"'They're saying that we're going to hand over the keys of the cockpit. That's not true. This paper is replete with inaccuracies.'" So apparently there's an American airline, not American Airlines, but a US airline, upset about this deal, circuiting a three-page document that conjures images of Mohammed in the cockpit. We're going to turn over the keys of the cockpit. Representative John Culbertson, Texas Republican: "We want Americans to own American airlines. We're trying to split hairs. This raises all kinds of red flags."
I think this is (sigh) curious at best.
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