Well, this is a quote Bush may have trouble living down.
President Bush on Thursday defended his administration’s decision to allow a company from an Arab country to operate six major U.S. ports, saying, “People don’t need to worry about security.”
There are a few presidential critics who disagree. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee published a fairly devastating fact-sheet on port security, the concerns Dems have raised on the issue, and the legislative efforts that have been rejected by some of the same congressional Republicans who are raising questions about the UAE deal now. It further highlights the extent to which this is now a top-tier political issue, whether the White House likes it or not.
Matt Yglesias suggested today that now is a good time “to pivot to the Bush administration’s broadly lamentable record on the question of port security.” I couldn’t agree more. Indeed, like Kevin, I think the one good thing that may come of the ongoing brouhaha is that policy makers will finally take this issue seriously.
In the political collision between the White House and Congress over the $6.8 billion deal that would give a Dubai company management of six American ports, most experts seem to agree on only one major point: The gaping holes in security at American ports have little to do with the nationality of who is running them. […]
The administration’s core problem at the ports, most experts agree, is how long it has taken for the federal government to set and enforce new security standards — and to provide the technology to look inside millions of containers that flow through them.
Only 4 percent or 5 percent of those containers are inspected. There is virtually no standard for how containers are sealed, or for certifying the identities of thousands of drivers who enter and leave the ports to pick them up. If a nuclear weapon is put inside a container — the real fear here — “it will probably happen when some truck driver is paid off to take a long lunch, before he even gets near a terminal,” said [Stephen Flynn, a retired Coast Guard commander who is an expert on port security at the Council on Foreign Relations]. […]
“I’m not worried about who is running the New York port,” a senior inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency said, insisting he could not be named because the agency’s work is considered confidential. “I’m worried about what arrives at the New York port.”
And the same morning this report hit doorsteps, Bush insisted, “People don’t need to worry about security.” Like I said, this is one of those quotes that may linger a while.