Roosting comfortably

It's quite a sight at the White House this week, all those chickens marching across the South Lawn toward the executive mansion, carrying their little suitcases.

They've come home to roost.

For most of his term in office, President Bush has been ringing the firebell every morning to warn Americans of the imminent and deadly danger of al-Qaeda terrorists finding a way to smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States. Just in the last two weeks he has given speech after speech urging Americans to understand the need for warrantless surveillance of domestic phone calls and e-mail, because the nation still faces a dangerous enemy, an enemy that is trying to hurt us.

An enemy. The word suggests an organized force with dastardly leaders devising evil plots to exploit any opening in our defenses.

Well, okay.

And then on Tuesday the president got off his helicopter and strode to the microphone and vowed to veto any bill that blocks the sale of U.S. port operations to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates.

He's lucky the chickens didn't trample him to death.

The first poll that came out on Wednesday showed ninety percent of Americans opposed to the ports deal. In Washington, lawmakers materialized out of their Presidents Day recess like Brigadoon out of the mist, only louder.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner was the first one to grab the bagpipes, holding what he called a briefing in advance of a future hearing. Joined by Senators Carl Levin, Robert Byrd, Edward Kennedy and Hillary Clinton on Thursday morning, he questioned a panel of administration officials about the Dubai Ports World deal and then invited reporters to the microphones to ask their own questions.

For more than two hours, the administration's shell-shocked representatives explained that nothing about the ports deal struck anyone as having any effect on national security, so the law requiring a 45-day extended review did not come into play. One of the undersecretaries said the national security implications were evaluated using the same standard that has been in use since 1992.

As any frisked, screened, orange-alerted, metal-detected, ID-checked, wiretapped American can tell you, 9/11 changed everything.

President Bush complained Tuesday about the congressional opposition to the ports deal. "They ought to listen to what I have to say about this," he said.

We've been listening. That's his problem.


Copyright 2006

.