Warner Plans Senate Effort to Rescue Dubai Ports Deal (Update3)

[dogday]

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner is planning a last-ditch legislative effort to rescue a state-owned Dubai company's embattled bid to take over some operations at six U.S. ports.

Warner's measure will be introduced ``within a week'' and would require DP World to ensure the security of the facilities, spokesman John Ullyot said. He said the legislation is still being drafted and declined to say what it would require of the company, which is buying the operations of London-based Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. for $6.8 billion.

Even before the legislation has been formally offered, there are clear signs that it will face long and perhaps insurmountable odds in a Congress increasingly hostile to the ports deal.

Bob Stevenson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said he wasn't certain Warner's measure could pass the Senate. And the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Peter King, predicted that any 11th-hour effort to save the deal by transferring the U.S. port operations to an American subsidiary would fail and that the Warner legislation was headed for defeat.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a1gzGuvrzh5Q&refer=us

[Fridays Child]

1. The problem for these dumbasses is that their supporters have been...

...trained, for the last five years, to bite Arabs. They must be getting hammered by calls to reject the deal. But, not to worry. As soon as Bush convinces them that he can fix their elections, no matter what, they'll all come around.

[dogday]

2. Taking the vote right now on CSPAN-2 nt