Bush and the Dubai Debacle. This. Is. It.

I realize we're probably suffering from Port Fatigue here, but this Dubai Debacle is growing increasingly disastrous for the GOP by the hour. Literally, by the hour.

AP is reporting that Stephen Hadley declared in no uncertain terms that Bush. Will. Not. Back. Down.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Friday it won't reconsider its approval for a United Arab Emirates company to take over significant operations at six U.S. ports.  

The president's national security adviser said the White House would keep trying to persuade lawmakers there's more time since the company offered to delay its takeover but the administration wouldn't reconsider its approval.

"There are questions raised in the Congress, and what this delay allows is for those questions to be addressed on the Hill," Stephen Hadley said. "There's nothing to reopen."

One minor problem with this six-port deal is that it's not six ports ... it was revealed this morning by UPI that "A United Arab Emirates government-owned company is poised to take over port terminal operations in 21 American ports, far more than the six widely reported."

Even with six ports cited, the AP article tells us that Thomas Kean, former Republican governor of New Jersey and head of the 9/11 commission said the deal "never should have happened":

"It shouldn't have happened, it never should have happened," Kean said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.

The quicker the Bush administration can get out of the deal, the better, he said. "There's no question that two of the 9/11 hijackers came from there and money was laundered through there," Kean said.

Let's run that last sentence there by the American populace that the Bush administration has spent the past five-and-a-half years terrorizing and see how it plays in Peoria.

Apparently, not too well. Even without Kean's adamant opinion, Rasmussen reports that only 17 percent of Americans think the deal should go through. That's not exactly a mandate, even by the yardstick of George W. Bush.

But. He. Won't. Back. Down.

So it seems we're going to be treated to a High Noon moment for the GOP-controlled Congress. Representatives, whom Hadley and his boss are simply viewing as underinformed, will be forced to pass legislation against the deal - or else spend an inordinate amount of time convincing 83% of their constituents that the president has convinced them it's vital to our national security that this particular country's corporation, with its particular history, should run our ports. Not an easy sell in an election year.

If Bush follows through on his veto, then we'll be facing the possibility of an override. This is an excellent thing - and I'm not saying that as a Democrat; I'm saying that as a citizen joined with conservatives like George Will and Andrew Sullivan who are voicing more and more alarm over President Bush's monarchical tendencies. Congress - whichever party controls it, now and in the future - needs to flex some muscle and rip its dutiful checks and balances out of the executive branch's cold and politically dying hands.

Seizing this very clear-cut issue now, with an overwhelming back-up of a majority of this country's citizens and spokespeople like Kean condemning the deal, can be the first very real rollback of Bush's over-reach. Once Congress re-awakens to its own power, there's no telling where its resentment at its own surrender ends.

Let the good times roll.

Update: Yikes! MO Blue makes a great catch in the UPI story cited above:

The Marine Transportation Security Act of 2002 requires vessels and port facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop security plans including passenger, vehicle and baggage screening procedures; security patrols; establishing restricted areas; personnel identification procedures; access control measures; and/or installation of surveillance equipment.

Under the same law, port facility operators may have access to Coast Guard security incident response plans -- that is, they would know how the Coast Guard plans to counter and respond to terrorist attacks.