The February 13 Lou Dobbs Tonight program was the first cable news outlet to
report on Dubai Ports Worlds (DPW) pending acquisition of six U.S.
seaports, providing alarmist, biased coverage. Eight days later,
after President Bush vowed to veto a bill blocking the acquisition,
Dobbs was even worse.
The program devoted even more air time to the issue, skewing the
coverage heavily against the Bush administrations position,
rhetorically asking critics of the port purchase why on earth such
an absolutely irrational decision was made, without bringing on
any guests who disagreed with Dobbss conclusions.
It doesn't seem to me anyone can be possibly worse than this
administration on this issue, Dobbs complained on his February 21
program as he concluded a discussion with security experts Frank
Gaffney and Gordon Chang. Can you come up with a national security
reason to approve such a deal with the United Arab Emirates
government-controlled company, the CNN anchor asked Chang to open
the interview. He later repeated his question to Gaffney, expanding
it to include any reason in the world for the deal to gain final
approval.
Earlier in his program, Dobbs asked the same of Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.),
wondering if there was any way in the world to rationalize what
seems from everyone that I have heard from an absolutely irrational
decision?
Yet for all of his curiosity, Dobbs left
out any supporters of the administration decision, such as the
Independent Institutes Ivan Eland. If a
terrorist incident occurred in one of its ports, the company would
probably lose more business worldwide than a non-Arabic company
would under the same circumstances, the former Congressional Budget
Office defense analyst wrote in a February 20 article on his think
tanks Web site.
Eland dismissed Dobbs smear of the UAE which hinged on Emirati
(residents of the UAE) citizenship of two of the 9/11 hijackers.
Introducing the Dana Bash report which opened the program, Dobbs
tossed out that the United Arab Emirates has ties with the 9/11
hijackers, but failed to substantiate his claim with any
documentation, such as the 9/11 Commission report. That report found
no state sponsorship of the September 11 attacks save that of the
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
But if the fear of UAE ownership can be based on
guilt-by-association, shouldnt Dobbs be equally concerned about the
British management of the ports? After all, wrote Eland, the
British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company,
was allowed to operate the ports despite Richard Reids (the
infamous shoe bomber) British citizenship, and of course
American companies are permitted to operate some U.S. ports despite
the fact that Timothy McVeigh, Jose Padilla, and other U.S. citizens
are convicted or accused terrorists.
Dobbs did not detail how many other industries he thought should be
prevented from foreign ownership such as: defense, transportation,
energy, chemical manufacturing, communications or even media.
Dobbs Places Ports in a Storm of Coverage
February 22nd, 2006 2:00 PM
Font Size