(story) “Democrats on Saturday accused President George W. Bush of being casual with national security as they warned of risks from an Arab state-owned company gaining control of terminals at six key U.S. ports.” They sent New Jersey governor Jon Corzine out there to do the Democratic weekly radio address. He “urged Bush to pose tough questions during a delay of Dubai Ports World’s $6.8 billion acquisition of P&O, even as a top White House official said there was no need to re-open the government’s review. ‘We cannot afford to let this administration be stubborn in their mistakes and casual about our security,’ Corzine said. ‘Every homeland security expert identifies protecting our nation’s ports as one of our greatest unmet security challenges.'” He also had this to say.
CORZINE: Dangerous men, tainted blood money, and nuclear technology have moved across UAE borders. The Bush administration said they’ve looked at the translation and that the public shouldn’t worry.
RUSH: Okay, so UAE money is blood money. Now, I think he’s talking about money that’s been laundered through there by hijackers and other terrorists and so forth when he says, “dangerous men, tainted blood money, and nuclear technology have moved across UAE borders.” He’s trying to imply an association between the sheiks that run the UAE and these dangerous men and tainted blood money. Yesterday on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Senator Joe Biden, Delaware, was the guest. Wallace said, “Is that the Democrat position, that no matter what the Emirates have done since 9/11 as an alley on the war on terror that this is a country of dangerous men and tainted blood money?”
BIDEN: Well, the answer is, the Democratic Party is concerned about this, but I could have closed my eyes and thought that was Peter King, the Republican leader of the subcommittee on that point. He’s saying the same thing. You have a whole lot of people saying the same thing.
RUSH: No, they’re not. Now, King is being critical of the deal, but he’s not being critical of President Bush. And he came to Bush’s defense yesterday on Meet the Press, really tearing into Tim Russert when Russert continued to portray this as the UAE and this company buying the ports and running security, which they’re not doing. American interests, government interests, mostly, will continue to own the ports. Later on the roundtable on Fox News Sunday, Charles Krauthammer said this to Juan Williams. “If you heard the address by Corzine yesterday, it was not about generalities, it was about Arabs in charge of port security, and he painted the UAE as a country which was a enemy country, which it’s not, and that’s where the demagoguery comes in and that’s where they’re jeopardizing America’s position among all of these very small countries. We don’t have a lot of allies in the Arab world,” and Williams responds.
WILLIAMS: Who were the first fearmongers in terms of American politics around here? I would say the Republicans and the Bush administration. It’s just that the fear mongering has now changed because the people on the — in the Congress are worried about their midterm elections.
KRAUTHAMMER: Bush warns us about Al-Qaeda, which is a real threat. The Democrats warned us about UAE, which is not, and that’s why it’s demagoguery.
RUSH: And he’s right about this. The Democrats opposition to this is not principled, as we discussed last week. Their opposition is purely political and it’s the latest effort, the latest opportunity that they think they have to take Bush out, which seems to be their primary interest. And I would — there’s somewhere — I didn’t even bother saving it, I was reading somewhere today where basically it was a story that Bush is unpopular in this state and that state and I finished reading this, and I said, “Yep, I guess I got to renounce my support for Bush in the 2008 election.” He’s not on the ballot. Now, I know that this business of trying to go after Bush is aimed at the 2006 elections, but it still is just nothing new from the Democrats. Their opposition to this is based purely on demagoguing the whole thing, out there saying that they’re going to be in charge of port security and blood money and tainted men, dangerous men, tainted blood money and this sort of thing. It is interesting politically and we’ll just have to wait to see how this develops, but I think I sort of have an idea, and it is this, that the Democrats have gone as far as they can, actually haven’t. I’ve got a story in the stack today about their efforts to get a special prosecutor like Pat Fitzgerald appointed to handle the NSA spying story. So they’re not letting go of that. So while they refuse to see an enemy anywhere in the war on terror or in Iraq, all of a sudden the UAE has become the enemy. Now, politically that’s one foot over the cliff again, which seems to be the constant position the Democrats put themselves in.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
“The Bush administration said yesterday it will grant a request by the Dubai port outfit for an additional 45-day review of its contested takeover of terminal operations at six major US ports. DP World said that it was seeking further review in order to allay US lawmakers’ national security concerns about handing management of these terminals to a company owned by the government of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Upon receipt of the new notification, the Committee On Foreign Investment in the US will promptly initiate the review process and fulfill DPW’s request for a full investigation. Bush national security advisor Steve Hadley said on CNN’s Late Edition it was clear that members of Congress needed more time to understand and review the deal.” Well, just so you understand, members of Congress, particularly on the Democrat side, are not just content with a 45-day extension in order to investigate this. As you will hear soon from New York Senator Chuck Schumer, they want to take over the whole process of authorizing such things. They’re moving the goalpost. Schumer’s legislation not only calls for the 45-day review, but gives Congress the final say. Congress doesn’t have that power. The executive does. He was on Good Morning America today, and Charlie Gibson said, “The Arab company at the center of this story is asking for a fuller investigation, a more complete investigation to clear up any security questions, but that may not be the last word on this. So joining us is New York Senator Charles Schumer who’s been a strong critic of this. We have a 45-day truce, senator?”
SCHUMER: Well, I’m not sure we have a truce. Our legislation, which is bipartisan, five Democrats, five Republicans — we’ll introduce it today on the floor of the Senate — says do the 45-day review. That’s necessary. But it also says give Congress, not just the president, the findings, and let Congress have an opportunity, 30 days to disapprove the deal. That’s what’s needed because the president has already decided.
RUSH: Now, so the president’s already decided, and Schumer wants Congress to have power to nix what the president’s decision is. We have a separation-of-powers battle going on here. It’s an attempt to weaken the president. This happens all the time, but it’s happened since the founding of country. These battles for power that the Congress has always made against the executive are nothing new. This one is timed to coordinate with massive public opinion on this that indicates most people are with Schumer and those who don’t want to allow the deal to be approved. Next question from Gibson, “Well, is there an element of racism in all of this? Because foreign interests already control more than 30% of the port facilities in this country anyway, so is your opposition to this just because this is a Middle Eastern group?”
SCHUMER: Absolutely not. The opposition stems from the fact that the UAE, the United Arab Emirates, of which Dubai is part, has had a relationship, a nexus, with terrorism. Money is laundered by bin Laden and other groups through their banks, or has been. The nuclear weapons that the Pakistani doctor, A. Q. Khan sent through, was through Dubai, was one of three countries to recognize the Taliban. Charles, if this were Chechnya, if this were East Timor, non-Arab countries with a connection with terrorism, the same kind of nexus, we’d have the same ferocity in America to have a full review and put homeland security first.
RUSH: Okay, so Schumer — of course I don’t expect him to admit that it’s racism and xenophobia, but he expressly denies that racism, i.e., the fact that this is an Arab country and an Arab company has anything at all to do with his opposition. But in the very next answer here he says he’s worried about infiltration by Al-Qaeda. Charlie Gibson says, “Look, most national security experts I’ve seen quoted say, ‘Look, we don’t have a better friend in the Middle East cooperating with us on the war on terror than the UAE.'”
SCHUMER: Well, since 9/11 the UAE has been a lot better but the real issue here is infiltration. In other words, even if the top of the Dubai ports world who is actually the leader of the United Arab Emirates because the nation controls the company, even if he were a hundred percent, what about infiltration?
RUSH: Well, infiltration by whom? He’s denying racism, but let me explain to you, not to cover old ground, but I know some of you are upset with me for the sarcasm taken in opening monolog of today’s program, and I’m accustomed to members of the audience being upset with me. This has been the case with several issues in the past: the Perot candidacy, NAFTA, just to name a couple. I think that there is really principled opposition to this. Forget the Democrats. I’m not even talking about them now. I’m talking about the opponents of this deal that would be considered associates or friends of mine or like-minded people. I think there are really two parts to that. I think there’s some principled opposition to this by people on genuine national security concerns, and I’m not trying to pick a fight with them. But I also think that there are some people out there who are just reactionary protectionists, who just on general principle here are opposed to it, and it’s those people that I have a quarrel with and have ever since NAFTA and — well, even prior to that.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
I think what’s going on here actually is tunnel vision. The Democrats for four years have been trying to make the case we don’t have an enemy. They have opposed the war on terror. They have opposed the war in Iraq, even after they voted for it, they tried to pretend like they were snookered, tricked, and lied to. “Bush lied, Bush lied us into war, none of this is necessary, haven’t captured bin Laden, we don’t need these torture chambers.” Ted Kennedy says that Abu Ghraib is no different than when Saddam ran it, it’s just under new management. The NSA spying scandal, we gotta stop that. To sum it up, they have been waging an effort to make it practically impossible to wage war against this enemy, the terrorist enemy. And that’s where the tunnel vision comes in. In the process, they have not accomplished what they wanted to accomplish. They wanted to accomplish turning the people of this country into an anti-war population with the Democrats on top of that large, hoped-for constituency. They were trying to redo what they did in the latter days of Vietnam. They have McGovernized. Well, they never have un-McGovernized themselves. So they tried to rebirth the McGovern era, and it didn’t work. What happened was that they came under even more scrutiny by the American people, and polls indicated that more and more Americans simply would not trust the Democrats with this nation’s national security. They live in a post-9/11 world. The Democrats are trying to create a pre-9/11 world.
Then all of a sudden Cheney goes hunting, shoots Harry Whittington, and the Democrats, oh, they get all riled up. Folks, it’s just like they’re having orgasms out there. And then that didn’t work because Whittington didn’t die. If Whittington died we’d still be talking about that and we wouldn’t be onto the ports deal yet. But Whittington survived, Whittington lived, and he’s going to be happily ever after. So here comes the port deal. And the Democrats immediately saw an opportunity to get themselves on the other side of the national security debate. Where they have failed to turn the country into a population of anti-war citizens, they now, “We gotta get back on the other side of this debate.” And all their advisors from the Carvilles to the Begalas say, “We’ve gotta find a way to–” Hillary’s been out there, “You’ve gotta find a way to get us on the right side of this, they’re killing us on the security debate.” So here comes this deal, and it’s just an opportunity that they can’t even wait to analyze and think, because it gives them an opportunity to be against Arabs. And of course Arabs are terrorists. And it puts the ports deal in question. And the ports, that’s the one area of the Democrats, with the Kerry campaign, were going on and on and on about in the 2004 presidential campaign. Kerry kept saying we only inspect 5% of the incoming cargo; it’s an outrage in a post-9/11 world. So they reacted with glee and with pure emotion without thinking about it, and so since there is no political ground to be gained by getting involved in the Westinghouse sale to Toshiba, which will result in nuclear power plants being built in China via US technology. There’s no terrorism involved there. There’s no Middle East involved there. So it’s of no interest to them. This Emirates deal is just what they think they’ve been asking for. But, see, the problem here again, as I keep saying, the problem is, okay, the Democrats, they want Americans to understand that they’re tough, that they recognize we have an enemy. The enemy is the United Arab Emirates, and the United Arab Emirates is not on the enemies list of this country. But they’re trying to make Americans think that it should be and so they’re demagoguing the whole issue.
Now, if China ever develops a connection with Al-Qaeda, if China ever develops a connection with any terrorist group like this, then this kind of a deal is going to come under more security. I’ll tell you what I think about it. I think there needs to be, obviously, a better way to ensure that our technology isn’t flowing to hostile countries and others. I mean, you don’t have to kill all these deals, but a coherent and consistent policy for reviewing these deals that may transfer technology like this has to be put in place. We have an export control regime, but it may not be enough in the post-9/11 era. They need to look at it, needs to be evaluated, not for protectionist reasons, but for legitimate national security reasons. Obviously Westinghouse was sold to the British before 9/11. After 9/11, would that kind of a sale be permitted? And do we have the power to stop a privately held company from selling to whoever they want to sell to? Well, the Democrats think we do. Obviously the case can be made on an individual case-by-case basis, but I don’t know what you do now about this, other than beg the British not to sell it to Toshiba. What do you do? They’re an ally. Threaten to nuke them if they allow it? I don’t know what we could do.
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