[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 25 (Thursday, March 2, 2006)]
[House]
[Page H540]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             PORT SECURITY

  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.

                              {time}  1400

  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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