The Bush Administration: hubris, cronyism, and incompetence.

The shady details of the UAE port deal continue to come out as the AP reported that one of the UAE sheiks donated at least $1 million to the Bush Library Foundation.

A sheik from the United Arab Emirates contributed at least $1 million to the Bush Library Foundation, which established the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University in College Station.

…

The donations were made in the early 1990s for the library, which houses the papers of former President George Bush, the current president’s father.

The list of donors names Sheik Zayed Bin Sultan al Nahyan and the people of the United Arab Emirates as one donor in the $1 million or more category.

…

Other Arab donors include the state of Kuwait, the Bandar bin Sultan family, the Sultanate of Oman, King Hassan II of Morocco and the amir of Qatar. The former Korean prime minister and China also gave tens of thousands of dollars to the library.

Has there ever been any actual effort to protect America from this administration or is it solely about fear and corporate profits? After all, the Treasury Secretary yesterday said that economics are apparently more important than national security.

Again, we find ourselves in the strange position of linking to a site that we would otherwise avoid like Peter avoids low fat Whiz on his cheesesteak, but as RedState says, “Regardless of your position on the deal - Rep. [Sue] Myrick’s letter [to Pres. Bush] is a must read”:

Dear Mr. President:

In regards to selling American ports to the United Arab Emirates, not just NO–but HELL NO!

Sincerely,
Sue Myrick
Member of Congress

Despite his endless lies, excuses, and near criminal bungling of everything at the Defense Department and in Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld has managed to hang on to his job time and time again. Could this be the beginning of the end? Today Rumsfeld said he was not consulted on the sale of US ports to the UAE. Now, via TP:

Donald Rumsfeld, as Secretary of Defense, is a member of Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States. As such, he was one of the people who, according to the Treasury Department, unanimously approved the sale on February 13. How could [he] do that when he didn’t even find out about the sale until last weekend?

Perhaps it’s just wishful thinking. But unless the GOP wants to run this year as the party that outsourced Homeland Security to a nation that supported the Taliban, a nuclear Iran, North Korea and Lybia, and provided a financial conduit to the 9/11 hijackers, they better back this train (or boat) up mighty quickly.

The issue of whether the Bush Administration was sober when it made the decision to outsource the management of six U.S. ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates is a sticky one. Certainly not a good controversy for the Bushies leading up to 2006 and a debate over whether America truly is safer under this regime.

Time magazine has a good piece outlining the issues of this particular controversy and detailing some of the challenges of port security.

The claim that six U.S. port facilities are being “sold” to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates may be grist to the election-year mill for politicians from both parties, but the resulting furor may obscure the challenges of port security. The transaction in question is the $6.8 billion acquisition by Dubai Ports World of the British P&O shipping company, to become the world’s third largest port-operator. Among P&O’s numerous worldwide operations are contracts to operate port facilities in New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. The transaction was approved by the Bush administration after a routine evaluation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, an inter-agency body that assesses the security implications of foreign acquisitions of major U.S. infrastructure assets. U.S. officials say that both P&O and Dubai Ports World have solid security records.

UPDATE: ReddHedd at Firedoglake has more details on the many many ways in which this deal stinks.