Sheer: Dubai-great theater

[Guest guest]

" Zepp " <zepp

Wed, 01 Mar 2006 16:44:46 -0800

[Zepps_News] Sheer: Dubai-great theater

 

 

 

 

Dubai: Great Theater

Truthdig.com,

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030106P.shtml

 

 

February 28, 2006

 

Robert Scheer: Dubai: Great Theater

 

 

Do you buy Dubai? That's this season's big hit, a zany farce with

pompous officials in the Bush administration and their hysterical

courtiers in the mass media asserting positions that are patently absurd

but hilarious to watch. Audiences are eating it up.

 

Great fun - but not for everyone. Feel the pain over at Fox television.

How do you go on stoking xenophobic hysteria against the Arabs when the

Golden Boy in the White House has turned over management of American

ports to an emir who once backed the Taliban? OK, so now he's a good

guy, responding to Daddy Bush's charity pitch by throwing $100 million

to Katrina victims, and before that another million into the Bush

presidential library. But how do you sell that to a Fox television

audience brainwashed to believe that Saddam Hussein is indistinguishable

from Osama bin Laden because they both speak Arabic?

 

Oh, to be Lou Dobbs over at CNN, who never liked anyone connected with

the Mideast, including the president, and who now sends reporters out in

the dark of night to track mysterious cargo. Some guys have all the fun

- particularly those traitors who don't realize there is a war on and

that it's our patriotic duty to support the president, even if he's

endangering the country.

 

Now, maybe this port deal is not really that big a threat to U.S.

security, but then neither was Saddam Hussein. That didn't stop Bush

from ripping up Iraq and turning it into a showcase for religious

fratricide. So he makes mistakes, but he's our president and we are in a

WAR, a War on Terror. Terror, terror, TERROR, all the time.

 

But now, we're getting mixed messages. First, the president told us that

in a war on terror you trust your own government to provide Homeland

Security. You put your faith in the stern, electronic wand-waving

Americans in white shirts and TSA epaulettes who check your shoes at the

airport; those upstanding Americans who report to other upstanding

Americans, like Michael Chertoff, and people he trusts. Now they tell us

it's OK to have some Arab as the guy in charge of checking our shoes -

excuse me, ports?

 

Yeah, I know, to be the least bit queasy about turning over our ports to

guys who supported the Taliban when that bunch of religious maniacs were

harboring bin Laden is, as the Bush apologists tell us, just xenophobic.

Dubai was not alone; Saudi Arabia and Pakistan did the same, and they

are now trusted allies. These are crazy times, and there are some

unnerving oddities in Bush's foreign policy, but don't worry: As soon as

Hussein is tried and hanged, democracy will flower in the Arab world and

the war on terrorism will be over. In the meantime, we have to put up

with some contradictions, like trusting Arabs to own port-management

companies, even as we scapegoat them everywhere else.

 

And even if you are a teensy-weensy nervous about it, remember that the

Bushies have made it clear that the management companies don't have

anything to do with port security, because that's safely in the hands of

U.S. Customs and the U.S. Coast Guard.

 

Ooops, well, not according to the Coast Guard.

 

Just when things looked like they were quieting down, Republican Sen.

Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee,

had to go and mess it up for the president by releasing details of a

very embarrassing Coast Guard warning that the White House had ignored.

" There are many intelligence gaps, concerning the potential for [Dubai

Ports World] & assets to support terrorist operations, that preclude an

overall threat assessment of the potential merger, " stated the Coast

Guard document.

 

No biggie. I get it, when it comes to national security, who are you

going to trust, the president of the United States, our commander in

chief or those sailor boys in the Coast Guard who are already backing

off? But this is a very unpopular lame duck president, and some

Republican legislators are getting nervous. For example Collins, who

broke ranks to warn, " This report suggests there were significant and

troubling intelligence gaps & That language is very troubling to me. "

Hey, no problem, reassures fellow Republican Sen. John McCain of

Arizona. It could be worse - the port managers could be Chinese

communists! The Chinese are even less free than the people of Dubai, he

insists, so we've dodged a bullet there. Some spoilsports might point

out that Beijing never recognized the Taliban and hardly coddles

religious fanatics. But that would ruin this wonderful farce, and I

wish it a very long run. Do you buy Dubai? Yeah, loved every minute.

 

 

--