The Ming Report

OUTSOURCING SECURITY

February 21, 2006 - - When Homeland Defense Secretary Chertoff signed off on the deal to sell America’s primary Atlantic port facilities to the United Arab Emirates he must have had FDR’s Secretary of State Cordell Hull in mind. Chertoff said that his agreement to outsource National Security to the tiny country that furnished two of the 911 hijackers and whose banks have financed Al Qaeda’s operations was based on free trade considerations. It was at the depths of the Great Depression when Secretary Hull was pushing tariff reform that he said, “When goods freely cross borders armies don’t.” That was in an era that protecting our national security meant defending ourselves against aggressors’ armies militarily and diplomatically. In this Century the threat to our National Security does not come from enemy armies. Today the threat to the security of the United States and our allies comes from squads of terrorists infiltrated into our midst. It does not come from an identifiable rouge regime but rather a shadowy amalgam of religious fanatics dedicated to our cultural destruction.

Now I am not a Nervous Nelly who sees an Arab terrorist behind every bush. Nor am I among those who believe that when the nest strike comes it will be in the form of a bootleg nuclear devise hidden in a shipping container landed at a New York port. Al Qaeda does not need that kind of investment or sophisticated plot to devastate a US port city. We have had object lessons in the destruction that can be caused by fertilizer bombs delivered in small trucks. All we need do is recall the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center; the attacks on our embassies in Africa; the Cole incident when the barrel of fertilizer was delivered in an inflatable boat; and Oklahoma City.

One of the most destructive episodes in the history of US ports occurred in Texas City in 1947. The French freighter Grandcamp was loading a cargo of ammonium nitrate fertilizer on April 16th when a fire broke out. While the firemen were at work trying to control the blaze the ship exploded at 9:45 in the morning. The damage was tremendous and cost ay least 600 lives. Consider that a bulk carrier loaded with fertilizer passes in and out of one of the ports proposed to be turned over to the UAE on nearly a daily basis. Consider also that turning one of those ships into a devastating bomb does not require a sophisticated plot or a wide spread cell. All it requires is one port employee with a pocket sized detonating devise and access to the cargo hold. Are we willing to bet that Bin Laden hasn’t thought of it and infiltrated just one operative into the UAE’s state owned port operating company?

One father of a 911 victim had asked if the President has gone crazy. It isn’t just the President who had lost his way in this decision. It is the entire Administration’s decision makers who have participated in this decision to outsource our nation’s security.