From Scrapple Face comes the all important scoop of President Bush admitting his failures:
President George Bush will mark the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq by admitting he made mistakes, and asking Americans and Iraqis for forgiveness, according to a draft of the speech, leaked to journalists today.
"Frankly, I misunderstimated the difficulty of the war for oil," the president will say. "I thought it would be as easy for us as it was for European leaders to pocket kickbacks from Saddam under the United Nations Oil-for-Food program."
The president will acknowledge that his biggest mistake was misinterpreting the word 'resolution' in 12 years of United Nations resolutions about Mr. Hussein's failure to comply with the terms of cease-fire from the first Gulf War.
And speaking of mistakes, is that dubia world ports thing still in play? You bet it is! Dubai Ports World (DPW) has confirmed it intends to sell all its US port operations to an American buyer within four to six months.
In all fairness, Dubia has been and continues to be a good ally to the U.S. They just have a few questionable things to their credit, but what is suspicion among friends, right? What it boils down to for the Bush administration is one of perception, P.R., if you will, during a time of war.
Now, I'm no expert on port management, but it seems to be a no brainer that during a time of war an All-American company should be riding herd on inter-continental port operations. After the war, stand down and go back to the global economy business as usual posture.
I recommend SSA Marine. This is a inter continental port management company located in the pacific northwest. Near as I can tell, SSA Marine is a privately owned American company. The Smith and Hemingway families have owned the company since it was founded in 1949, and maintain an active management role. It is under the umbrella of its parent company,
Carrix,Inc. which is also owned by the Smith and Hemingway families. The center for public integrity, which leans a little to the left, has more information.
I do like this little tidbit reported by the center for public integrity:
"The company is known for its hard-line towards labor unions and for favoring the use of more technology in the ports to reduce its labor costs. It has been called the "most anti-union maritime operation on the West Coast" by union leaders."
They sound like good free market republicans to me!
There, now. That wasn't so hard, was it?