Tired of studying and ready for more blogging? Sweet. Everybody is all in a furor over this whole port thing. You know, plenty of terrorist money went through Sarasota, too, but nobody would object if the State of Florida formed a company to buy up some ports. Dubai is as anti-terror as anybody in the world (ourselves included) for the very reason we're seeing here: terror prevents them from making money. I'm sure the Sheikh is cursing Osama bin Laden louder than most because he's losing billions while people think they'll get blown up by an IED at his airport or hijacked aboard one of his airplanes or that his companies will deliver bombs to their kid's elementary school.
What's doubly hard here is that our ports aren't secure now. Less than 5% of containerized (and way less break-bulk) cargo is ever checked - if that is secure to you then you are a dopehead - because the government agencies who insist on doing the checks are, amazingly, unable to get 'er done with their trillion dollar budgets. In my opinion letting Dubai Port World manage all of the terminal operations would probably be the most secure and most cost-effective way to run these massive ports.
Further, if we are interested in stopping terror why are we concerned about our ports at all? Shouldn't we be searching ships at the sea buoy? I mean if we are scared of a dirty bomb detonation at a container terminal in Port Elizabeth a dozen miles from Manhattan we should be just as scared of it detonating off the deck of a ship at half that distance. In essence, the security of American ports is irrelevant - the ports whose security we need to beef up are those that load cargo bound here. Why don't we let DPW buy port operations here and then send our Coast Guard to Hamburg, Zeebrugge, Seoul, and Shanghai to actually keep us safe?
Thursday, February 23, 2006