Ports and a Storm

Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner (R-Va.), left, listens to Carl Levin (D-Mich.) during a panel meeting on the controversy surrounding management of U.S. port terminals by a Dubai company. (By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)

"We didn't ignore the law," Kimmitt again maintained. "We might interpret it differently."

Even Warner, though initially defending the administration, grew tired of this explanation. "I must say, as a lawyer myself, reading this, on the face, my colleagues raise a legitimate question," the chairman warned.

The ports controversy undoubtedly has an element of anti-Arab jingoism and political opportunism. But part of the backlash is because lawmakers think the White House has been snubbing Congress and selectively ignoring laws through the secret National Security Agency eavesdropping program, the resistance to Hurricane Katrina probes and Bush's "signing statements" that reinterpret laws.

The resentment was woven through yesterday's session. Levin protested that "we weren't notified at all" about the ports deal, "unless watching CNN and reading the morning paper constitute notification." Warner wondered: "Couldn't someone, sort of, say, you know, 'This looks like something we ought to talk to some of the committee chairmen about'?"

The answer was no. When Warner asked England to describe the "risks and consequences" of postponing the Dubai deal, England slighted Warner by calling him "senator" rather than "chairman," and advised him: "I'm not going to speculate on that."

The administration sent a similar tone out yesterday over the airwaves and from the White House. In a briefing for reporters, White House homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend echoed Kimmitt's view that "there was no need" for the 45-day review.

Bush aide Karl Rove, in a Fox News interview, said the objections are because "most members are just picking up and reading something in the newspaper, hearing something on talk radio."

But the administration and its allies clearly were not enjoying their time on the defensive. All Republicans on the Senate committee skipped the meeting except for Warner, whose defense of the administration grew progressively more tepid. Several of the officials spent their two hours whispering, passing notes and occasionally smirking at the senators' barbs, while the others labored to describe the Special Relationship with the UAE.

In past election years, Democrats were the ones on the defensive. Bush in 2002 said his opponents were "not interested in the security of the American people." Rove recently declared that "Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world."

Yesterday, Democrats seemed pleased to exact some rough justice. "The fact is, we do live in a post-9/11 world," Clinton said, using her response to one of the reporters' questions to announce legislation banning foreign state-owned companies from U.S. ports. "As a matter of national security in the post-9/11 world, I think we have to take a hard look at this."