Majority Leader Bill Frist just posted the following message on his VOLPAC blog:

News that a Middle-East based firm is seeking to purchase the operating rights to several U.S. ports - from New York to New Orleans - raise serious questions regarding the safety and security of our homeland.

Post 9/11 prudence warrants - at the very least - a more extensive review of this matter.  As Ronald Reagan used to say: 'trust, but verify.'  And that's what we need to do.  The simple fact is, there's no such thing as being 'too careful' in a post 9/11 world.

As of today, I'm requesting briefings on this deal.  If the Administration does not put the deal on hold, I will introduce legislation doing so ... to ensure that this decision gets a more thorough review.

Common sense warrants it; our national security requires it.

The Chicago Tribune said something similar in an editorial this morning:

When the Tribune editorial board on Thursday pressed Treasury Secretary John Snow for justification of this deal, he said, essentially: You'll have to trust us. Given the critical nature of these ports and legitimate concerns about seaport vulnerability to terrorist infiltration, "trust us" is not good enough. Nor is it reassuring to Americans that the White House considers the UAE, a federation of seven emirates including Dubai, an ally in the war on terror. [snip]

This isn't about foreign ownership. The company operating these ports now is foreign-owned. Under British or UAE control, American longshoremen will continue to work the docks. This also isn't about the competence of Dubai Ports World to manage American ports. The company insists that it intends to maintain and enhance port security.

This is about the long war on terror and the assurance that U.S. ports will be secure when they are managed by a firm owned by a government in one of the most volatile parts of the world. The administration says this deal won't compromise security. But the secret nature of the process has left many people with a lot of questions and no answers.

Both Frist and the Tribune get the tone just about right: cautious, but not hysterical. A reader points out that much of the hoopla so far has been based too much on the latter:

I do business in Dubai and for the life of me can't understand the hysteria surrounding the Dubai Ports deal.  Anyone with any familiarity with Dubai understands that the executive leadership of every major corporation is expatriate, usually British, Aussie or other non-US anglophone.  And anyone with any familiarity with corporate outsourcing understands that the model is to take over the employment of the existing local employees (e.g. the US citizens who currently run the ports) and simply try to make them more efficient.

So my question is this: precisely what threat are the existing US employees supposed to pose that they didn't before the deal? And why is one group of anglophone brit managers (P&O) not a threat and another group is?

Finally, Dubai Ports is a big corporation. Precisely why would it allow terrorism anywhere near its largest revenue sources?

If we start shrieking at deals like this then our companies are going to suffer mightily in response.  For example:  Microsoft is in every government around the world....isn't that a threat to their national security?  How about Google?  How about our entire technology industry?

The critics of this deal need to get a paper bag to treat their hyperventilation.

As John and I suggested earlier, the way that this has been handled so far politically makes it almost a moot point. The administration should have had the foresight to brief Governors, Senators, relevant House members and Mayors from all the ports involved to assuage any concerns and enlist their support. Instead, those very people (both Republican and Democrat) have been attacking the deal making it a huge political liability.