White House had secret deal with Dubai Ports World. Why is everything with this administration "secret"?

The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.

As part of the $6.8 billion purchase, state-owned Dubai Ports World agreed to reveal records on demand about "foreign operational direction" of its business at U.S. ports, the documents said. Those records broadly include details about the design, maintenance or operation of ports and equipment.

The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

I keep hearing that this deal does not really place our security at risk. I have heard that from security experts that I consider to be non-partisan. But it just looks horrible!

I find it hard to believe that the White House is going to fight, what is clearly a losing battle, over this sale. I think that the deal must be already so far along that it is going to cost our government a certain amount of money in fines to back out, and of course there is the cost in good will with United Arab Emirates. But there is no way that ths deal is going to go through with all of this media attention focused on it.

It kind of makes me wonder if Karl Rove is out of the office this week. This is so clearly a political "hot potato" that it would seem they would have tapped Rove to help shape the message or just ask for his advice, which I would assume would be to "bail as quickly as possible"!

Any Republican who supports the president in pushing for this sale is going to suffer a huge loss of support in the upcoming elections. That is a given. This week has been just like Christmas for the Democrats. Don't blow it fellas!