Port politics

Link.

Senate Democrats on Thursday raised concerns about a sale whereby a company owned by the United Arab Emirates would operate six major ports.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., said lawmakers should have been made aware of the proposed transaction long ago, given how many “red flags” existed around security concerns.

Clinton called the approval process “a failure of judgment” because officials “did not alert the president, the secretary of the treasury and the secretary of defense” that several of our critical ports would be turned over to foreign country.

When I first heard about this deal, I said "what the hell?!" But when I actually educated myself about the details (including but not limited to the fact that the ports are already run by a foreign country and this new company will be in charge of running the port operations, not port security), I became convinced that Bush is right on this one.

Democrats like Sen. Clinton have obviously calculated that most people won't get past "what the hell?!" and, therefore, this is a winning political issue for them. And many Republicans agree, causing them to jump ship (sorry). Pathetic.