Port Security
PORT SECURITY -- (House of Representatives - March 02, 2006)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, it is hard to believe, but the Bush administration, through its Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, has given a nod and green light to the Dubai Ports World deal.
Mr. Negroponte says the Bush administration ``assessed the threat to U.S. national security posed by Dubai Ports World to be low. In other words, he said, ``We didn't see any red flags come up during the course of our inquiry.''
Now the questions I have to ask: Why should we trust the Bush administration or their analysis on intelligence on anything certainly when it comes to the Middle East? It seems to me their record on assessing risk is not good.
Let us review some of their intelligence predictions:
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, back in February, 2003, said about the war in Iraq, ``It is unknowable how long that conflict will last. It could last 6 days, 6 weeks. I doubt 6 months.'' That is what he said. His estimate was dead wrong.
Vice President Dick Cheney, March, 2003, said, ``We will, in fact, be greeted in Iraq as liberators ..... I think it will go relatively quickly ..... in weeks rather than months.'' His estimate was dead wrong.
President Bush told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Well, the United States called off that search in January, 2005. There were no weapons of mass destruction. His estimate proved to be dead wrong.
This administration seems to make wrong decisions about a lot of things, like knowing who the enemy really is, like knowing what causes enemies to rise in the first place, and working to prevent that by avoiding cozy deals with dictatorships of all stripes.
I think it is clear to even the least interested of observers that the architects of this war, starting with the President, the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense, allowed our troops to go to war in insufficient numbers, with inadequate resources, with fantastic escalating costs and with absolutely no plan whatsoever to win the peace. Globally, their approach is yielding more terrorism every day. Their approach is yielding more anti-Americanism every day globally.
Why then should we trust the Bush administration? Why should we believe their intelligence that the Dubai Ports World deal will not risk U.S. national security? Those who seek to do us harm know a lot about ports. Two weeks ago, in Yemen, 23 al Qaeda members escaped from prison. Thirteen of them were men convicted in involvement in the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole that occurred in Yemen's harbor which killed 17 American soldiers. The others were attackers of the French supertanker Lindbergh in 2002.
Some of those who are our enemy have spent decades working the oil fields and sea lanes of the Middle East. Supertankers like the Lindbergh now wend their way to our shores because we irresponsibly are dependent on oil imports to sustain this economy. Those who want to harm us know this system well.
The quagmire in Iraq is bringing contempt for the United States around the world and our enemies seek to harm us. That is why port security must be uppermost in our minds.
America is fast becoming a dependent Nation, dependent on other countries for oil, for food, for autos, for electronics, for toys, even for clothing. Our maritime system includes over 95,000 miles of open shoreline, and 316 U.S. ports and ships carry more than 95 percent of our non-North American trade. But only 2 percent of what comes into this country is even inspected. Just last week, we saw what happened in Saudi Arabia as an al Qaeda attack occurred at their largest oil facility.
In this era, when vastly more is shipped into our ports than goes out, we had best be on the alert to protect our portals. I am introducing legislation to prohibit any foreign government or foreign-owned company from owning, leasing, or in any way controlling a U.S. port. The bill will ask our Coast Guard to assume full oversight and control over these bloodlines and all inspection of all cargo flowing into them until America is no longer at war.
The Federal Government controls and operates the agencies that admit people into this Nation. Our Federal Government controls and operates the systems and agencies that admit airplanes into this Nation. We should have the very same system of control over our port systems, one that, by the way, is increasing and expanding at a very rapid rate. In 2005, more than 11 million containers came into our country from abroad, and the estimate is that will quadruple in the next 20 years if we don't get this trade balance in line.
We have invested billions in other systems and pennies in our port system. Isn't it time to put America's national security first before any private deals?
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