Looks like someone got to the Coast Guard:

Press Release February 27, 2006

STATEMENT BY COAST GUARD SPOKESMAN CMDR. JEFF CARTER ON COAST GUARD PORT TRANSACTION ANALYSIS

WASHINGTON - "What is being quoted is an excerpt of a broader Coast Guard intelligence analysis that was performed early on as part of its due diligence process. The excerpts made public earlier today, when taken out of context, do not reflect the full, classified analysis performed by the Coast Guard. That analysis concludes ‘that DP World's acquisition of P&O, in and of itself, does not pose a significant threat to U.S. assets in [continental United States] ports.’ Upon subsequent and further review, the Coast Guard and the entire CFIUS panel believed that this transaction, when taking into account strong security assurances by DP World, does not compromise U.S. security."

Doesn't allay my concerns, at all.

(Statement via Mark Levin)

The American people usually have a knack for getting things right at the gut level, and they have demonstrated that this is the case with the UAE port deal:

Americans are also overwhelmingly opposed to the Bush-backed deal giving a Dubai-owned company operational control over six major U.S. ports. Seven in 10 Americans, including 58 percent of Republicans, say they're opposed to the agreement.

CBS News senior White House correspondent Jim Axelrod reports that now it turns out the Coast Guard had concerns about the ports deal, a disclosure that is no doubt troubling to a president who assured Americans there was no security risk from the deal.

Whoever urged the president to go out and immediately threaten to veto any legislation that would kill the deal, thereby painting him into an embarassing corner on this matter, should be fired sooner rather than later.

This is precisely why the 45 day delay in the UAE port deal is appropriate, and why it is looking more and more likely that this deal will eventually be killed:

WASHINGTON -- Citing broad gaps in U.S. intelligence, the Coast Guard cautioned the Bush administration weeks ago that it could not determine whether a United Arab Emirates-based company seeking a stake in some U.S. port operations might support terrorist operations.

The disclosure came during a hearing Monday on Dubai-owned DP World's plans to take over significant operations at six leading U.S. ports.

The Bush administration said the Coast Guard's concerns were raised during its review of the deal, which it approved Jan. 17, and that all those questions were resolved.

I can't wait to hear exactly why those concerns were resolved, and who resolved them.

Appropriate:

The Bush administration said yesterday that it has accepted a proposal from a Dubai maritime company to conduct a 45-day review of the national security implications of the company's plans to take control of significant operations at six U.S. ports.

The announcement by Dubai Ports World, brokered by the White House and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), appears to satisfy the demands of many members of Congress, who had threatened to force a security review if the administration would not conduct one. The deal also offered pledges to reassure the United States that the ports deal would not pose any threats to American safety and security.

Let the reassuring begin. There is a lot of it to do.

Reuters (via Malkin):

An FBI-led task force is trying find out how the deadly poison ricin wound up in a student dormitory at the University of Texas, a campus police spokeswoman said on Saturday.
A chunky white powder, less than the amount that would fill a plastic sandwich bag, was found on Thursday night and preliminary tests on Friday showed it to be ricin, a poison made from castor beans, spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon said. "This is not associated with any threats against the campus" in Austin, Texas, Weldon said. A spokesman for the FBI San Antonio Joint Terrorism Task Force was not immediately available to comment.

Ricin is extracted from castor beans and even small amounts of it can kill if inhaled or injected, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention web site. Toxicologists say it can easily be made in an ordinary kitchen. In 2005, an al Qaeda-trained Algerian man, Kamel Bourgass, was convicted in a plot to spread ricin throughout streets in Great Britain.

Humid weather apparently caused the ricin powder to clump together, reducing the risk to those exposed, according to CNN.

No known antidote exists for ricin.

Predictions (Via Hugh) about the port deal from Frank Gaffney:

If this drama is allowed to play out fully, several things are predictable:

# Legislation will be enacted by veto-proof margins in both the House and Senate to block the DP World takeover of the port terminal and other management contracts currently held by the British company, P & O.

# If so, the president will be unlikely to cast his first veto in a futile attempt to block the legislation. The deal will, therefore, be aborted.

# Relations with the UAE, which has been helpful in some aspects of the War for the Free World post-9/11 — the factor that seems to have trumped all others in the secretive deliberations of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) about the DP World takeover, will be damaged unnecessarily.

More blogging from Frank Gaffney here.

And Peggy Noonan gets sensible again:

So we're all talking about port security this week, and the debate over the Bush administration decision to allow an United Arab Emirates company to manage six ports in the United States. That debate is turning bitter, and I wonder if the backlash against President Bush isn't partly due to the fact that everyone in America has witnessed or has been a victim of the incompetence of the airport security system. Why would people assume the government knows what it's doing when it makes decisions about the ports? It doesn't know what it's doing at the airports.

This is a flying nation. We fly. And everyone knows airport security is an increasingly sad joke, that TSA itself often appears to have forgotten its mission, if it ever knew it, and taken on a new one--the ritual abuse of passengers.

The fears about would transpire after yesterday's attack have come true:

BAGHDAD, Feb. 23 -- A wave of sectarian strife and recrimination swept Iraq Thursday after Wednesday's bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra. The Interior Ministry said that more than 100 people have been killed in the violence.

Officials in Baghdad, struggling to restore order, expanded an existing curfew in an effort to get people off the streets after dark and canceled all leaves for Iraqi security forces.

The process of forming a new government also appeared to be in jeopardy, as some Sunni politicians, protesting what they said was a lack of protection for Sunni mosques attacked overnight, said they were pulling out of negotiations with Shiite parties.

There were a great number of disturbances reported across the country Wednesday night and Thursday, too many to accurately track let alone verify.

President Bush didn't even know of the impending deal to turn over six ports to a UAE company until after it was approved:

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration, the White House said Wednesday.

Defending the deal anew, the administration also said that it should have briefed Congress sooner about the transaction, which has triggered a major political backlash among both Republicans and Democrats...

Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, incredibly, didn't know about it (via Malkin) until just this last weekend:

SEC. RUMSFELD: There were Defense Department and -- I think as I said, there were six departments that were involved in the process in one way or another, and the Defense Department was one of them. The lead was the Department of Homeland Security.

Q Are you confident that any problems with security -- from what you know, are you confident that any problems with security would not be greater with a UAE company running this than an American company?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I am reluctant to make judgments based on the minimal amount of information I have, because I just heard about this over the weekend.

If Mr. Rumsfeld didn't know about it until the last few days then it is reasonable that the general public, and Congress, would not know about it either, which makes this assertion by the Washington Post all the more ludicrious:

None of the U.S. politicians huffing and puffing seem to be aware that this deal was long in the making, that it had been reported on extensively in the financial press, and that it went through normal security clearance procedures, including approval from a foreign investment committee that contains officials from the departments of Treasury, Commerce, State and Homeland Security, among other agencies...

Might it be that the we didn't know more about this a little earlier because of the Post's and the rest of MSM's hilarious obsession with the Cheney shooting incident? For the Post to turn around now and criticize everyone for their ignorance of this story just doesn't pass muster at this point.

Senator Bill Frist is the highest ranking member of the Senate so far to call for the Bush administration to delay a deal that would allow the takeover of six U.S. seaports by a United Arab Emirates company:

"The decision to finalize this deal should be put on hold until the administration conducts a more extensive review of this matter," said Frist. "If the administration cannot delay this process, I plan on introducing legislation to ensure that the deal is placed on hold until this decision gets a more thorough review."

"I'm not against foreign ownership," said Frist, "but my main concern is national security." He was speaking to reporters in Long Beach, Calif., where Frist was doing a fact-finding tour on port security and immigration issues.

Sen. Frist, and the other senators and congressmen who are coming forward with concerns about this deal, are to be commended.

The president is reported to be threatening a veto against any legislation which would delay or stop this deal. I think this highly unwise, and this has the potential to set the stage for a confrontation between himself and many of his supporters, the likes of which have not been seen since the Harriet Miers debacle. Mr. Bush has not come forward and publicly, despite intense political uproar during the last few days over this proposed deal, communicated to the American people why this deal is a good one, and more importantly why it will not in the slightest compromise America's national security.

Because port security is so important to the prevention of the entry of either terrorists or their weapons to this country, it is incumbent upon the President to fully explain this deal to the American people. Until and unless he does, it is the Congress's duty to stop this deal from going forward.

Concern is building to possible critical mass:

WASHINGTON - Two Republican governors are threatening legal action to block an Arab company from taking over operations in major U.S. ports and some GOP lawmakers say the deal should be closely examined.

In the uneasy climate after the Sept 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration decision to allow the transaction is threatening to develop a major political headache for the White House.

New York Gov. George Pataki and Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich on Monday voiced doubts about the acquisition of a British company that has been running six U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World, a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates.

The British company, Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., runs major commercial operations at ports in Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New Orleans, New York and Philadelphia.

Both governors indicated they may try to cancel lease arrangements at ports in their states because of the DP World takeover.

"Ensuring the security of New York's port operations is paramount and I am very concerned with the purchase of Peninsular & Oriental Steam by Dubai Ports World," Pataki said in a news release. "I have directed the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to explore all legal options that may be available to them."

Ehrlich, concerned about security at the Port of Baltimore, said Monday he was "very troubled" that Maryland officials got no advance notice before the Bush administration approved the Arab company's takeover of the operations at the six ports.

"We needed to know before this was a done deal, given the state of where we are concerning security," Ehrlich told reporters in the State House rotunda in Annapolis.

In Germany and Italy:

PARIS (AFP) - Lethal bird flu continued its advance across Europe with more infected birds found in Germany and Italy, while in India seven people were under observation with symptoms of the disease.

The H5N1 strain of the flu which can be potentially fatal to humans was detected for the first time on the German mainland in the northeast state of Mecklenburg-Pomerania, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 61, animal health experts said.

In Italy, the Institute of Animal Health in the north eastern city of Padua announced the virus had been detected in a total of 16 birds in the country.

H5N1 was also confirmed in Tuzla and Navodari on the shores of the Black Sea in Romania, bringing to 33 the number of sites where it has been found nationwide, a veterinary official said.

Samples from the latest Romanian cases were sent to the
European Union reference laboratory in Weybridge, Britain, to establish whether it was the highly pathogenic form of the H5N1 virus.

French authorities vowed to spare no effort in containing avian influenza after the country became the sixth in the European Union, and the most westerly, to be hit by the virus.

"Yet the debate playing out in the blogosphere, cable airwaves and on talk radio pits the Vice President against an allegedly left-wing, overly cynical, prissy White House press corps in a tizzy because it wasn't the first to know and angry because it hates the President and Vice President anyway. This is nonsense. If you believe an accidental shooting by Vice President Al Gore would not be met with the same press scrutiny, I think you are not being honest with yourself. Have you Googled transcripts from the Clinton administration at the height of the Lewinsky scandal?"

So writes the obnoxious David Gregory, attempting to rationalize his behavior in the White House press room this last week. Nice try, Mr. Gregory, but it's not flying here...that dog just isn't going to hunt. Gregory's self important arrogance, couched in his complaint that the public often does not get enough information from this administration, is just too much to take. He is obviously perturbed that the public does not get enough information about the administration from HIM. And that is likely to be more the case in the future. His behavior this last week in the press room (nothing new by the way if you watch the briefings regularly) is hardly likely to lead to the administration seeking him out to distribute any earth shattering news.

And the comparison to the press and Lewinsky? Give me a break.

Sox Blog thinks he may have wrongly judged David Gregory.

Hugh Hewitt is appropriately more skeptical.

All I can say is that I find Gregory personally offensive, and the mute button on the TIVO control is a very handy thing to be able to depress the instant he begins cackling during a White House press briefing.

From the man shot by Dick Cheney last weekeend:

The man wounded by Vice President Dick Cheney in a hunting accident at a south Texas ranch left the hospital today, calling himself ``lucky'' and expressing regret for the controversy sparked by the shooting.

``You can see what a lucky person I am,'' Austin attorney Harry Whittington said, adding that he and his family are ``deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through'' in the aftermath of the Feb. 11 accident during a quail hunt.

``We send our love and respect to them as they deal with situations that are much more serious than what we have had this week,'' Whittington said after being released from Christus Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi. The accident was ``not easy to explain, especially to those who are not familiar with the great sport of quail hunting.''

Video from Expose the Left.

Eh, David Gregory?

Line of the day on the Cheney bashing media:

"Veep coverage continues to tell us more about the folks producing it than about the Veep and the Adminstration."

That's the question being asked in the blogosphere, and by its readers today, as mainstream media begins to gleefully reprint the old and new Abu Ghraib pictures.

Why, mainstream media? Why?