The Clintons, the Doles and the Dubai port deal: political duplicity and..

[IndianaGreen]

The Clintons, the Doles and the Dubai port deal: political duplicity and class interest

By Bill Van Auken
4 March 2006

The contradiction between Hillary Clinton’s public outrage over the sale of the port operating company to Dubai and her husband’s close political and financial dealings with the Arab emirate is politically damning, but hardly unique.

Far more direct and profitable relations have been forged with the UAE over the Dubai ports deal by Clinton’s Republican opponent in the 1996 election, Bob Dole. The former Republican candidate’s wife, Elizabeth, is also a US senator, a Republican from North Carolina. She has declared that she has “serious concerns” about the port deal.

Bob Dole, a former Senate majority leader, is a partner in the law firm that played the key role in steering the Dubai deal through the federal bureaucracy, and has recently signed on as a paid lobbyist for Dubai. Elizabeth Dole, like Hillary Clinton, claims that she and her husband have never discussed the Dubai deal.

Also aiding the Dubai port company is the lobbying firm of Clinton’s former secretary of state, Madeleine Albright.

The Bush family’s own ties to the Emirates are longstanding and intimate. The Carlyle Group, the private equity firm that employed both Bush and his father, as well as a number of other former top Republican officials, has profited off of hundreds of millions of dollars in investments from a UAE state-owned investment firm. The president’s brother, Neil Bush, has forged his own lucrative connections with the UAE, making regular visits to Dubai and reportedly raising some $23 million in state investments for his educational software company, Ignite.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/mar2006/duba-m04.shtml