Obama Rewards Brutal Cuban Dictators

[FGB]

He's personally executed dozens of people for what they believe.

Trot out a better choice for immediate use and they will sound good to me.

 

[unregistered]

 

[cowslinger64]

Still has several hundred to go before he matches Dubya's death row record as governor.

Don't forget the 4500 or so American Troops he had killed in Iraq...

 

[FGB]

Yeah, That was "W" behind all those AK's and roadside bombs and rocket grenades.

And um, WE have a Volunteer Armed forces by the way.

Perhaps you missed that little tidbit.

 

[JohnnySavage]

It's about time, and hopefully more normalization is on the horizon.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I think Hillary voted for the Iraq War. Kerry too.

 

[unregistered]

 

[cowslinger64]

Yeah, That was "W" behind all those AK's and roadside bombs and rocket grenades.

And um, WE have a Volunteer Armed forces by the way.

Perhaps you missed that little tidbit.

It was W that got us into Iraq based on lies. It was W that sent troops over there to invade a country and did not properly equip them. It was W that sent National Guardsmen there too that had no business being in a foreign country fighting a war.


They didn't volunteer for that... not to give their lives over an invasion based on lies and vast amounts of money.

Perhaps you missed that huge tidbit.


I know all about a Volunteer Armed Forces. I was in the USAF.

 

[cowslinger64]

I think Hillary voted for the Iraq War. Kerry too.

Didn't make them right.



W had convinced the American people, based on outright fabrications that it was necessary... why wouldn't they?


Buck stops at the top, right? That's what you want nowadays anyway.

 

[anchoredinocean]

Yep, we were part of creating the conditions that allowed Castro to take over, but by God, let's let the common citizen there suffer. Wait, you're OK with the common citizen there suffering as long as it's someone friendly to American business, like say Batista.

Fucking moron.

 

[Paendragon]

We should also end the embargo.

You want communism to end in Cuba? Start spending American money there. Give them a taste of capitalism. Tourist dollars, specifically, would help. And the tourists would go. It's a tropical island getaway a stone's throw from Florida.

The embargo has done nothing but strengthen the Castro regime. It's failed, miserably.

 

[FGB]

It was W that got us into Iraq based on lies. It was W that sent troops over there to invade a country and did not properly equip them. It was W that sent National Guardsmen there too that had no business being in a foreign country fighting a war.


They didn't volunteer for that... not to give their lives over an invasion based on lies and vast amounts of money.

Perhaps you missed that huge tidbit.


I know all about a Volunteer Armed Forces. I was in the USAF.

This should really jack you up!

http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=complete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq

2001-2003: US Intelligence Bases Assessements on Information Provided by INC

The US intelligence community—most notably the intelligence gatherers working in the Pentagon offices under Douglas Feith (see September 2002) —bases several of its intelligence assessments concerning Iraq on information offered by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and by Iraqi defectors provided by the INC, despite warnings from the State Department and some CIA analysts that the lobbying group cannot be trusted. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004 Sources: Greg Thielmann, Unnamed administration official] The INC’s primary intelligence organization is its Information Collection Program (ICP), which conducts about 20 percent of all US intelligence’s verbal debriefings of Iraqi prisoners, insurgents, and defectors. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 336-337] Some of the INC’s intelligence on Iraq is reportedly funneled directly to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney by Francis Brooke, the DC lobbyist for the group. [Newsweek, 12/15/2003 Sources: Memo, Francis Brooke] Brooke will later acknowedge that the information provided by the INC was driven by an agenda. “I told them [the INC], as their campaign manager, ‘Go get me a terrorist and some WMD, because that’s what the Bush administration is interested in.’” [Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 230] Brooke had previously worked for the Rendon Group, “a shadowy CIA-connected public-relations firm.” [Mother Jones, 1/2004]


Entity Tags: Douglas Feith, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Francis Brooke, Frank Gaffney, Office of Special Plans

Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion


June 2001: Abrams, Other Think Tank Neoconservatives Move to Join White House

Edit event

Hardline neoconservative Elliott Abrams (see June 2, 1987) joins the National Security Council as senior director of Near East and North African affairs. A State Department official will later recall: “Elliott embodied the hubris of the neocon perspective. His attitude was, ‘All the rest of you are pygmies. You don’t have the scope and the vision we have. We are going to remake the world.’ His appointment meant that good sense had been overcome by ideology.”
Rush of Neoconservatives into Administration - Abrams’s entry into the White House heralds a rush of former Project for the New American Century members (PNAC—see January 26, 1998 and September 2000) into the Bush administration, almost all of whom are staunch advocates of regime change in Iraq. “I don’t think that most people in State understood what was going on,” the State Department official will say later. “I understood what this was about, that PNAC was moving from outside the government to inside. In my mind, it was an unfriendly takeover.” [Unger, 2007, pp. 205]
Neoconservatives Well-Organized, Contemptuous of Congress - In June 2004, former intelligence official Patrick Lang will write: “It should have been a dire warning to the US Congress when the man who had been convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran-contra affair [Abrams] was put in charge of the Middle East section of the NSC staff. One underestimated talent of the neocon group in the run-up to this war was its ability to manipulate Congress. They were masters of the game, having made the team in Washington in the 1970s on the staffs of two of the most powerful senators in recent decades, New York’s Patrick Moynihan and Washington’s Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson (see Early 1970s). The old boy’s club—Abe Shulsky at OSP [the Office of Special Plans—see September 2002], Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Middle East Desk Officer at the NSC Abrams, Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle—had not only worked together in their early government years in these two Senate offices, but they had stayed together as a network through the ensuing decades, floating around a small number of businesses and think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and the openly neoimperialist Project for a New American Century. The neocons were openly contemptuous of Congress, as they were of the UN Security Council.” [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]


Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Project for the New American Century. The neocons were openly contemptuous of Congress, as they were of the UN Security Council.” [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]

 

[unregistered]

 

[NYC_Man]

We should also end the embargo.

You want communism to end in Cuba? Start spending American money there. Give them a taste of capitalism. Tourist dollars, specifically, would help. And the tourists would go. It's a tropical island getaway a stone's throw from Florida.

The embargo has done nothing but strengthen the Castro regime. It's failed, miserably.

The Embargo has been illogical. I hope it does end

 

[Paendragon]

The Embargo has been illogical. I hope it does end

The majority of the country would be fine with it. Don't know what the government is waiting for.

 

[Que]

Punishing Cuba for appropriating property befroe I was born seems silly. They have had possession of those assets for all that time.

That said, it seems politically provocative to push amnesty to benefit some Hispanic Democrats and push for normalization with Cuba which will piss off Hispanic Republicans.

 

[Ulaven_Demorte]

The embargo against Cuba has done nothing to hurt the Cuban government for 50 years. The only ones hurt have been the Cuban people. It was time to try something different over 30 years ago.

We have relationships, although genus, with China, along with a host of other non-Democratic countries. Cuba is not a threat to the U.S., unless you're afraid of the classic car market being flooded with Cuban restorations.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The embargo against Cuba has done nothing to hurt the Cuban government for 50 years. The only ones hurt have been the Cuban people. It was time to try something different over 30 years ago.

We have relationships, although genus, with China, along with a host of other non-Democratic countries. Cuba is not a threat to the U.S., unless you're afraid of the classic car market being flooded with Cuban restorations.

You can say the same about bombing Hiroshima or Dresden or London.

Cuba has nothing to trade for our Miley Cyrus vids but cheap labor. What industries we have left will move to Havanna in twenty minutes, for that 20 cents an hour labor. The best Cuban restaurants only sell black beans and mayo sandwiches. If you want a slice of olive loaf or some rice you gotta go to a tourist hotel. Pussy, sugar, rum, and cigars are all Cuba has to trade.

 

[about_average]

You support totalitarianism and you know it.

Apparently you don't know that the US, and US businesses, strongly supported the Batista totalitarianism (which murdered as many as 20,000 Cubans who opposed his dictatorship and close ties to the Mafia).
US policy towards Castro was a major factor in pushing him under the Soviet umbrella.
I've said for decades the embargo was asinine.

That said, based on what I know so far, I'm not cool with releasing the prisoners in the US who were instrumental in shooting down the plane, killing the aid workers.

 

[about_average]

Cuba has nothing to trade for our Miley Cyrus vids but cheap labor.

They've had better health care than the US for years, in spite of the embargo.
They have a lot of '57 Chevy's.

 

[Que]

They've had better health care than the US for years, in spite of the embargo.
They have a lot of '57 Chevy's.

Are you being ironic, or myopic?

http://www.haciendapub.com/articles/fidel-castros-medical-care-socialized-cuban-paradise

 

[about_average]

Are you being ironic, or myopic?

http://www.haciendapub.com/articles/fidel-castros-medical-care-socialized-cuban-paradise

Ah, anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
You convinced me!

 

[Que]

Ah, anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
You convinced me!

Inability to provide what would be routine care for the head of State is an anecdote? Really?

What is your data on the "Better than US healthcare?"

Their abject poverty has made a lot of the foods that are killing Americans out of reach so I guess you could call that preventative healthcare.

If you need care will you be heading to Cuba for treatment now that it will be an option?

 

[Que]

One small example of where you are not comparing apples to apples:

minor snippet from: http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/4/817.full

[QUOTE-International Journal of Epidemiology]International comparisons of infant mortality rates are potentially biased by definitions, reporting practices, and differential use of technology, thus the rank order of countries within a narrow range should be interpreted cautiously.35,36 While Cuba adheres to WHO reporting recommendations and attempts to resuscitate all live births, the perinatal mortality rate is higher than is found in industrialized countries,22 suggesting a potential shift in events from infant to fetal deaths. Even with careful attention to case definitions comparisons are difficult since technological interventions, particularly in the US, result in the live delivery of more very low birth weight babies.36⇓–[/QUOTE]

Because Cuba does not have the capacity to even attempt to save low-birth-weight babies, their deaths are reported as fetal deaths.

Yes, they are far cheaper. They have no torts, they have to make rational decisions about end of life and do not spend millions to prolong people a few months.

This makes them cheaper, not, by any stretch of anyone's imagination "better healthcare"

 

[Que]

Cubans were ALREADY healthier than normal before the wonderful world of "modern" communist healthcare.

By the 1950s, the island had some of the most positive health indices in the Americas, not far behind the United States and Canada. Cuba was one of the leaders in terms of life expectancy, and the number of doctors per thousand of the population ranked above Britain, France and Holland. In Latin America it ranked in third place after Uruguay and Argentina.[10] There remained marked inequalities however. Most of Cuba's doctors were based in the relatively prosperous cities and regional towns, and conditions in rural areas, notably Oriente, were significantly worse.[11] The mortality rate was the third lowest in the world.[12] According to the World Health Organization, the island had the lowest infant mortality rate of Latin America.[12]

Their healthcare is free, and Cuba can afford free healthcare because their doctors are paid $20 a month in salary. There is one doctor per 1000 residents, and he visits the home insists all are vaccinated and uses family pressure to insure healthy choices are encouraged including contraception. At 24 cents per patient per year in doctors salary, they are inexpensive, to be sure.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2013/january/a-different-model-%E2%80%94-medical-care-in-cuba

Cubans are healthy despite their 1950's health care system because they always were healthy. Just as the diets of southern Europeans tend to lead to good health, so does the Cuban diet, generally speaking.

To suggest that fat, lazy Americans would do anything but die in Cuba is specious at best. Cars are rare, prized and driven seldom. People walk or bike.