Neil Bush....isn't he the one who had sex with prostitutes in Thailand while he was still married? And he has herpes too, right?

Not that it's anyone's business.

This is interesting, but not surprising at all. The White House quickly "admitted" that the review and approval of this deal was conducted without Bush's input, and that he only learned of it from media reports after the fact. At first glance, this would seem a somewhat damning admission that the president wasn't involved in an issue that could potentially impact national security. More likely, it was a move to preempt any claims that Bush family connections to the UAE were responsible for the deal's quick approval and the president's adamant stance on the matter.

The Bush's have never been ones to allow national interest or national security to get in the way of a business deal.

The President's great grandfather was on the War Production Board that ran the American economy during the First World War. He was accused of directing small arms contracts to Remmington that had been bought by the Rockefellers and Harrimans with whom he had close ties. (In honesty, I've never been able to find a clear confirmation of that charge.)

Prescott Bush, the President's grandfather, played a major role in financing the rearmament of Nazi Germany and was the director of two banks seized after the war started as German agents. Why he was never prosecuted is an interesting question. I suspect he was just too well connected.

George H. W. Bush played a major role in selling arms to Iran during the Regan years, and I personally believe he was involved in a secret deal to keep American hostages locked up in Iran until after the 1980 election. That, of course, was never proven, but was not seriously investigated either.

One of the reasons that George W. Bush has been so successful in pushing through tax cuts for rich Americans and other such stuff is that the American people are not prepared to believe that a President would run the Country to benefit himself, his family and their rich friends. Sadly, that seems to be the situation we are in.

Roger A. Webb

Follow the money. It's all about the do-re-mi.

How long will Americans keep taking the Bush sleeping pills? While they keep us drowsy, they are stealing our future, damaging our national security, and corrupting our republic. I've had ENOUGH!!! Bring on the strong coffee!!!

...in Conason's otherwise excellent article.

"Pierce" was the maiden name of Neil Bush's mother,Barbara, not Pierce's. HIS mother was the recently dumped Sharon. I don't know what her maiden name was, but I assume Conason was referring to Neil's mother, not Pierces.

Although the war in Iraq will equal or surpass the foreign policy debacle of the Vietnam War, the propaganda campaign by the Bush administration was a great success and rivals the execution of British PM George's administration to stir up the citizens prior to England's entry into The First World War. In one poll prior to the invasion of Iraq, I think 66% of Americans believed that there were actually WMD's in Iraq and Saddam had clear links to Al Queda. So there is a poetic justice in the way that Republican and Democratic politicians have used the same war hysteria against the Bush administration in the Dubai ports deal. What comes around goes around.

And the outcry from politicians over this controversy proves that President Bush has entered the lame-duck phase of his Presidency. Now that 55% of potential American voters think that the war in Iraq is a failure, the Congressmen and Congresswomen have an issue to use in their re-election bids for two more years of gainful employement as federal solons and also appear tough on the issue of national security.

Stop and look at what Neil Bush was selling in the name of "educational reform" when he was the featured speaker at the technology conference in Dubai in 2002.

Go to the Ignite! web page to see this "revolutionary" educational program Neil is peddling. It's a computer like thing sitting on a three legged rolling cart. Not a word about curriculum content, no evidence provided on how this particular technology improves learning, no information about the target age levels, and no specified outcome goals for students. No school system or administrator in their right mind would invest money in this garbage.

Excellent articles like this one really help deflate the accusations of bigotry being lobbed at critics of the Dubai port deal. It's not Islamophobia so much as the fact that there really are significant differences between, say, a private corporation based in Britain and a state-controlled corporation in the United Arab Emirates. The real irony, though, is that accusations of bigotry and Islamophobia come from the same people who defend racial profiling.

I hate Bush as much as the next guy, but DP World isn't buying P&O to get the American port business. The idea that this is some sweetheart deal the Bushes have cooked up is silly--DP World is a huge company buying a huge company which happens to have about 10% of its business in the US. I'm not sure what message it sends to say that Arab investors can't buy any companies in the US because...what? They may use the facilities to smuggle WMD into the country? Does anyone think there will be a wholesale firing of stevodores and longshoremen at these ports to bring in Arab workers?

There won't...And it's sad as a Democrat to see our politicians playing the same cards of racial prejudice and fear that the Bush administration has been criticized for for so long and saying, "We're just giving as good as we got." Not very inspiring.

Mr. Conason:

Thank you for your reporting on this. Perhaps you and Tim Grieve can talk some sense into Andrew Leonard, and ask him to rethink his moonbat posting that 'Democrats are ruining America', premised on the assertion that anyone asking questions about this deal must be motivated by 'transparant stupidity' and 'racism'.

http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2006/02/21/dubai/

A real irritation in the Leonard style of response to this story is how reflexive dogmatic 'anti-protectionism' leads otherwise reasonable people to start passing on the blithe assurances of the Bush administration. 'Oh, the president may have lied about nearly everything else his administration has done,' the theory seems to go, 'but open trade and support for globalisation is such a no-brainer that we can be sure they're right on this one.'

Leave aside the particulars of the UAE, except to assure Steve that there's a difference betwee sheer predudice and evaluation of particular facts. Isn't this another example of Bush assuring us that proper procedures and oversight were conducted, only to reveal days later that he wasn't aware it was happening? Some accounts have led me to believe that *any* deal of this sort *requires* a 45-day review. So why does he get a pass for eliding this law? Because it's wrong to have any suspicions of foreigners, even from a country whose leaders had actual ties to bin Laden and nuclear proliferation? Or because any business transaction that involves global supply chains is just so neat to think about in a freetrade sense that only a stupid Luddite would want to be critical?

Then there's the tut-tutting tone of the freetraders, where skeptics get reprimanded for reacting emotionally to meaningless symbolic flashpoints. 'Hey, this globalisation's already taken your jobs and your manufacturing base, and the WTO already overrides your national sovereignty - and now you're going to be hysterical about who runs the operations of a port? You're being silly. If you wanted to object, you should have done so when we were making the decisions that really mattered. Remember, sweetie? When you lost your job to a foreign prisoner? That was frightening, wasn't it? But then it happened, and everything was all right, yeah? Other people kept making more money. So don't worry about this.' I expect - and received - that drivel out of David Brooks, but how about we let the rightwing hacks make those infuriating points on their own.

One other thing. The defenders of the deal make a lot of the fact that 'red-blooded American longshoremen' will still be doing the actual work at the ports, and the unions are the ones who control the workforce, so in a security sense it doesn't matter who their bosses are because we've got trustworthy people on the docks. I'm really gratified to see union workers mentioned as not only decent people, but the ultimate watchdogs of American security. But I wonder what will happen when the Dubai-based company wants to break the union to increase its profit. Will it be OK for anyone to object when they bring in non-union crews from Singapore to run the cranes and trucks, and house them in barracks at the port facilities? Or will the goalposts move again, and will we be reprimanded for xenophobia. 'After all, foreign companies have been running these ports for a long time, and they have the right to select whatever workforce gives them the greatest efficiencies. Ultimately, the consumer benefits from lower prices...'