Defending the indefensible...Buried in the Briefs...Still making up news

Good Morning....

Perhaps you heard last week that the "president" has approved a deal where 6 major ports on the East Coast are to be taken over by a United Arab Emirates-based shipping company, Dubai Ports World. I'm so glad the "president" has the best interests of these United States as far as jobs and National Security are concerned. It turns out that both sides of Congress, and the Republican governors of two of the states affected aren't so sure. But the "president", in all his stubbornness, has threatened to veto any legislative action created to block the sale. Wonder how much money is being funneled into his pockets to get him all riled up like that?

WASHINGTON -- President Bush yesterday strongly defended a United Arab Emirates company's agreement to take over the operation of seaports in six US cities, and he threatened a veto if Congress tries to pass legislation against an accord his administration has blessed.

Facing objections from both parties, Bush took the unusual step of summoning reporters to the front of Air Force One to condemn efforts to block a firm from the United Arab Emirates from buying rights to manage ports from New York to New Orleans.

The Bush administration has approved the sale of a London-based company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., which now manages the ports, to state-run Dubai Ports World. The accord has raised alarms on Capitol Hill and with the Republican governors of Maryland and New York, who say that the Emirates have housed terrorists. Both states would be affected.

The federal government has approval rights over business transactions with national security implications. In this case, Dubai Ports World would oversee shipping arrivals, departures, and unloading at the docks, but the federal government would continue to handle port security.

''I want those who are questioning it to step up and explain why all of a sudden a Middle Eastern company is held to a different standard" than a British company, Bush told reporters. He said the transaction was thoroughly scrutinized by officials, who concluded that it poses no threat to security.

Bush praised the United Arab Emirates as a close ally against terrorism and warned of sending the wrong message by condemning a business because it is Arab-owned.

But many Republicans and Democrats who represent the seaport regions remain deeply skeptical of a United Arab Emirates-owned company playing such a central role. They said some of the hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks used the UAE as an operational and financial hub.

The Senate majority leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, called on Bush to delay the takeover and re-evaluate the risk.

Frist threatened to introduce legislation to delay the takeover if Bush does not act quickly.

Representative Mark Foley, a Republican of Florida, called Bush politically tone deaf. ''Of all the bills to veto, if he lays down this gauntlet, he'll probably have 350 members of the House ready to accept that challenge," Foley said.

Bush said: ''They ought to look at the facts and understand the consequences of what they're going to do. But if they pass a law, I'll deal with it, with a veto."

Continued...

Turning as we often do to the "warron terra", there's a paragraph-long story buried deep in the "national briefs" section of the Boston Globe today...where the Pentagon pretty much admits to abusing and torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Nice.

The military commander responsible for the American detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, confirmed yesterday that officials there last month turned to more aggressive methods to deter prisoners who were carrying out long-term hunger strikes to protest their incarceration, The New York Times reported today. The commander, General Bantz J. Craddock, said soldiers at Guantánamo began strapping some of the detainees into ''restraint chairs" to force-feed them after finding that some were vomiting or siphoning out the liquid they had been fed, the Times reported.

Now moving to Iraq, remember the story from some months back where the Pentagon actually paid reporters to make up favorable stories that were eventually published by the Iraqi press? At the time, there was a significant uproar, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that the practice "had ended". Well, like everything else associated with the Bush Criminal Enterprise...not quite.

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that the Pentagon is reviewing its practice of paying to plant stories in the Iraqi news media, withdrawing his earlier claim that it had been stopped.

Rumsfeld told reporters he was mistaken in the earlier assertion.

''I don't have knowledge as to whether it's been stopped. I do have knowledge it was put under review. I was correctly informed. And I just misstated the facts," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.

Rumsfeld had said in a speech in New York last Friday, and in a television interview the same day, that the controversial practice had been stopped.

He said that General George Casey, the top US commander in Iraq, was reviewing the practice. Previously, Casey has said he saw no reason to stop it.

In his speech last week to the Council on Foreign Relations, a foreign-policy think-tank, Rumsfeld raised the issue as an example of the US military command in Baghdad seeking ''nontraditional means" to get its message to the Iraqi people in the face of a disinformation campaign by the insurgents. Continued...

Lastly, in another harbinger of spring....position players are to report to Fort Myers today.