Right-wing posturing from Congress on Arab firm’s role at US ports

For Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer, New York’s two Democratic senators, as well as a dozen other senators, congressmen and governors of both parties, the campaign against the sale of port operations to Dubai provides a welcome opportunity to combine anti-Arab agitation with an attack on the Bush administration from the right. It gives a glimpse of the campaign the Democrats plan to wage in the 2006 congressional elections, avoiding as much as possible any identification with antiwar sentiment or the mass popular opposition to Bush’s attacks on democratic rights.

The furor began February 10 when the British-owned Peninsula & Orient (P&O) company, the fourth largest port operator in the world, agreed to be acquired by Dubai Ports World (DP World), the port operator owned by Dubai. P&O currently manages most operations at the ports of New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans, which account for the majority of the cargo shipped into the eastern half of the United States.

DP World revealed that even before the successful takeover bid, it had consulted with the Bush administration and received approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS), a secretive panel of 12 top US government officials that reviews foreign acquisitions of US properties from the standpoint of their impact on American national security.

There are perfectly legitimate grounds for questioning the unusually swift approval of the Dubai takeover of P&O. US Treasury Secretary John Snow, chairman of the CFIUS, has indirect business ties to the Gulf sheikdom, since his former company, the railroad giant CSX, sold its own port operations to DP World for $1.15 billion in 2004, the year after Snow left the company to join the Bush cabinet.

The revolving door goes the other way too: a top DP World executive, David Sanborn, manager of the company’s European and Latin American operations, was named by Bush last month to head the US Maritime Administration, a major unit of the Department of Transportation.

But the Democrats are not focusing their objections to the deal on allegations of cronyism or Halliburton-like sweetheart arrangements among giant corporations. Their professed concern is that control of US port facilities by a company based in Dubai—even though virtually the entire management and all of the work force will be American—could undermine US security and facilitate ship-borne terrorist attacks against the United States.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/port-f22.shtml