Spy chief calls threat from port deal low (CNN) {Susan Collins}

[eppur_se_muova]

Coast Guard initially raised issue of 'intelligence gaps' in review
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Collins, a Maine Republican, questioned whether the Coast Guard's concerns had been addressed before an administration committee approved the DP World-P&O transaction.

She said Monday's briefings left her "more convinced than ever that the process was truly flawed." (Watch the senator express her concern -- 2:09)

The senator, who took her committee into a closed session to discuss the Coast Guard report, said security concerns should have triggered a broader, 45-day security review of the merger.

"I know the administration disagrees, but I can only conclude that there was a rush to judgment -- that there wasn't the kind of painstaking, thorough analysis that needed to be done despite serious questions being raised and despite the wide variety of involvement by agencies," she said.
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more at: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/28/ports.dubai/index.html
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I wanted to post this because I heard Collins on the radio this morning, and I thought she did a really good job -- she did what Committee chairs are supposed to do, which is to help get the facts out.

Alleged "Democrat" Joe Lieberman was concerned that DPWorld get a fair hearing. :hurl:

on edit: This is a fairly long article, at least by CNN standards. Includes quotes by Schumer, Collins, Negroponte, Coast Guard report.

[kenny blankenship]

1. I can remember "spy chief" telling us all that there were WMDs in Iraq

So how you score that remark depends a great deal on how much credibility you think anyone has or can have working for this criminal administration.

[GeorgeGist]

2. March Madness isn't far off.

[Cosmocat]

3. I think it is ...

Really not that great of a direct "security" threat ...

To me, it is a matter of principal ... For four plus years now, it has been the "War on Terror" 24-7 ... Grandious statements of either you are with us or you are against us, and how our country will not do business with anyone who harbors or aids them there terrorists ... THEN, they turn around want want to hand over operational functions of 20+ of our ports to a country that has so many BLATENT connections to terror ...

It just is bullshit, is what it is ...

[BlueManDude]

4. What's the over/under on when Collins climbs aboard the UAE train?

I say by next Tuesday. She'll do some media this weekend to show the folks back home that she's all serious about security and shit - then bend to Bush's will early next week.

[KansDem]

5. It's not so much "security," but rewarding a "terrorist nation!"

Stop and think about offering Muammar al-Qaddafi a multi-billion dollar contract to manage our ports after the Lockerbie bombing:

From Wikipedia:

For most of the 1990s, Libya endured economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation as a result of Gaddafi's refusal to allow the extradition to the United States or Britain of two Libyans accused of planting a bomb on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. With the intercession of South African President Nelson Mandela, who made a high-profile visit to Gaddafi in 1997, and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Gaddafi agreed in 1999 to a compromise that involved handing over the defendants to the Netherlands for trial under Scottish law. U.N.-sponsored sanctions were suspended, but U.S. sanctions against Libya remained in force. In August 2003, two years after Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi's conviction, Libya accepted responsibility for the Lockerbie bombing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moammar_Al_Qadhafi

Would this be a morally-correct thing to do?