Tempest in a Teaport

Maybe Dubya thought Dubai was named after him or something

America probably hasn’t been this exercised over seaports since the Boston Tea Party. For those of you whose study of American history ended in grade eight, the real story is a bit of a surprise: England rescinded the hated “tea tax” and Boston area smugglers, furious that the new law cut deeply into the profits they made from running untaxed tea to the colonists (the early American version of “teabagging”) staged a protest, throwing untaxed tea into Boston harbor, thus inventing clam chowder. One thing led to another, with the result being that Americans are now able to buy unsmuggled tea that is taxed at rates the English wouldn’t even dream of levying.

I’ve been expecting a huge uproar over America’s ports for some time, but for a different reason. I fully expected to see America pay a grievous price for the nearly non-existent security that exists at nearly all the nation’s ports. Most likely (and it’s STILL very likely) is that one or more coastal cities will vanish in bright blue flashes, and a few weeks later, after the radioactivity has died down, investigators will determine that all the ground level blasts originated at the docks. Less than one in five containers unloaded at American docks is inspected, and only rarely do they look at containers from “friendly” middle eastern countries like Pakistan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Those, incidently, are the countries with the highest number of nationals involved in the 9/11 attacks, and all the other foreign terrorist attacks against America. While Americans have their footwear inspected by bored security guards and surveillance cameras are everywhere, at some major ports only 1% of containers are inspected by hand, and drivers and on-board longshoremen are not required to show any ID.

The uproar that is here now may be a blessing in disguise, because it will focus public attention on a security breach so severe that it makes all the other security items that we all find to be a damned nuisance utterly useless. Searching airline passengers while ignoring the ports is a bit like making people carry screen doors around in front of them as they walk in order to avoid getting the plague.

In the meantime, we have one of the most flabbergasting moves this corrupt regime has pulled yet. It has OK’ed the sale of day-to-day operations at six of the nation’s busiest ports to one of the most questionable regimes in the oil-rich states of the middle east, the Dubai kingdom of the United Arab Emirates. That a British firm already owned this franchise is no surprise; nearly everything worthwhile being done in the United States these days is being done by foreign concerns. That this security-obsessed admini go to an outfit like Dubai is mind-boggling.

Not only did Osama bin Laden get a lot of aid and support from the UAE, but it was one of three nations in the world to recognize the legitimacy of Afghanistan’s reprehensible Taliban. AQ Khan, the supposedly “renegade” Pakistani scientist, funneled most of the nuclear secrets and materials that he sold to Liberia, Iran and North Korea through Dubai while the government beamed its approval.

As middle east regimes go, it ranks about average, ahead of the American-created mess in Iraq, the thuggish and brutal regime of Musharraf in Pakistan, and the religiously insane kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Compared to most regional countries, it actually does fairly well in regard to women’s rights. And of course, it’s swimming in wealth, with gleaming, ultra-modern cities and incredible amusement parks hiding the large portion of the population that isn’t sharing in the obscene wealth.

The Putsch junta, ever corrupt, is attracted to wealth like flies to offal. If their followers put party ahead of country, they put money ahead of both. And the UAE is pure, undiluted money.

So they just didn’t see that there would be a visceral reaction throughout the country, from all sides of the political spectrum. Unfairly or not, middle easterners are associated with terrorism and religious extremism, and in the case of the Dubai regime, the association is a fair one.

So the highly politicized and corrupted Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, Defense and State all signed off on the deal. After all, Saudi Arabia alone owns nearly a sixth of the property in American cities. What’s a few ports?

But even if the people taking over the ports aren’t interested in fostering terrorism (bad for business, you see), there is no guarantee that they haven’t been infiltrated like the Iraqi police force. If you were a terrorist looking for an easy and discreet route to damage America, wouldn’t you infiltrate organizations doing business with America, especially organizations with access to entry points and secure information?

One of the little things about owning the ports that the administration tried to brush aside. They said that security would still reside in the hands of various US government port authorities (like the one that defended the twin towers, you understand). That’s true, for what little it’s worth.

But by law, they have to inform port owners of toxic and weapon material passing through, and usually have to give them at least a few day’s warning of any large troop movements that might be going through a port (same applies to airports, of course). Which means they would have to notify possibly infiltrated UAE people of movements that the US might be hoping to hide from al Qaida.

At that point, you might as well make Osama bin Laden head of Homeland Security. It might even be an improvement, since he, at least, might know what the terrorists are up to.

The GOP is trying spin control on the vast uproar the proposed sale has triggered. Nobody, left or right, likes it much. Or at all.

So they decided to get Putsch off the hook by saying he didn’t know about this ultra-sensitive sale that half a dozen government departments analyzed. The old “you-can’t-blame-the-President-because-he’s–an-idiot” dodge.

He didn’t know. No worries here, folks: you can’t blame the president because he’s an ignorant, shambling moron. Hell, if Laura didn’t dress him in the morning, he’d be standing before you right now in the Rose Garden with his dick hanging out. The man is a pure fool, and so we don’t bother him with major matters concerning national security.

As a defense of the President, it probably isn’t the GOP’s most inspired effort. But then, Putsch isn’t exactly grade-A material to work with.

But you have to wonder what Cheney and the rest thought they might gain from selling out America’s ports to a regime that is in bed with America’s worst enemies. How much more money do they need to justify selling out their country?