Posted on 02/02/2013 12:40:40 PM PST by Kaslin
"Elian is now where he belongs." (Senator Chuck Hagel after Elian Gonzalez was shanghaied at U.S. gunpoint from his American family at Fidel Castros command and without a warrant.)
To me, wrote Hagel in a New York Times Op-Ed just after the armed raid on the Gonzalez familys Miami home, this case has always been fundamentally about a father-son relationship. the point of the raid -- to reunite Elián with his father when those housing him had repeatedly refused to hand him over .The boy is where he belongs.
Why did this Republican Senator accept the word of a Stalinist dictator whose lifelong dream was to nuke Hagels homeland over that of the most loyal Republicans in modern U.S. history: (Americans of Cuban heritage)?
Some background:
During the dawn of April 22, 2000 on the orders of Janet Reno-- acting on the orders of her Commander-in-Chief Bill Clinton, acting under the threat of blackmail by Stalinist dictator Fidel Castroarmed INS agents maced, kicked, and gun-butted their way into Lazaro Gonzalez's Miami home, wrenched a bawling 6-year-old child from his American family at (genuine) assault weapon-point and bundled him off to Castros Stalinist fiefdom, leaving 102 people injured, some seriously.
Thanks to the ritual Media-Democratic-Castroite collusion most people forget (or missed) the crucial legal and ethical details of this circus/tragedy which were mostly established during the first week after Elians rescue at sea, after his heroic mothers drowning. The son-belongs-with-his-father crowd, for instance, missed that Elians father was initially delighted that his motherless son was in the U.S. and in the loving arms of his uncles and cousins.
The evidence frantically buried by the Media-Democratic-Castroite complex was overwhelming. Mauricio Vicent, a reporter for Madrid newspaper El Pais, wrote that during that first week hed visited Elians home town of Cardenas and talked with Elians father, Juan Miguel, along with other family members and friends. All confirmed that Juan Miguel had always longed for his son Elian to flee to the United State. Shortly after Elians rescue, his father had even applied for a U.S. visa!
Elians Miami uncle, Lazaro, explained it repeatedly and best: I always said I would turn over Elian to his father, when Juan Miguel would come here and claim him. But I (along with practically everyone with experience under communism from Cambodians to Hungarians and from Lithuanians to Cubans) knew such a thing was impossible. He couldnt do that. I knew it wasnt Juan Miguel requesting Elian it was Fidel.
The legal-weasels forgot (or missed) that on Dec, 1st 1999 the INS asserted that Miami-based uncle Lazaro was indeed Elians legal custodian and Floridas family court indeed the place to arbitrate further issues .
Then on Dec 5th, 1999, Castro clapped his hands and his U.S. media minions along with the Clinton administration snapped to attention.
Bill Clinton was terrified of Castro, later explained Dick Morris. Clinton looked over his shoulder for rafters the way Castro is always looking over his shoulder expecting an invasion of marines.
The Mariel exodus of Cubans in 1980, you see, had cost Bill Clinton the only electoral loss of his life. Some of the Cuban criminals Castro sent over (a small portion of the refugees, actually) had been held in Fort Chafee Arkansas, as agreed by Governor Clinton acting on Jimmy Carters request. Shortly the criminals rioted, many horrified Arkansans blamed the governor, and Bill Clinton lost the next elections.
Point is, the Clinton team who ordered the Elian raid knew exactly what was going on behind the scenes and were simply reacting to Castros blackmail. They knew Elians father wanted Elian to remain in the U.S. They knew Juan Miguel would have defected to the U.S. in a nanosecond if given half the chance. They knew Castro held a gun to Juan Miguels head. How could they not? Bill Clintons lawyer and chum Gregory Craig, who had sprung him from the Lewinsky rap, now represented Elians father (i.e. Fidel Castro behind the façade.) Craig even traveled to Cuba and met with the Stalinist dictator himself to batten down the details of his (Potemkin) clients visit to the U.S.
Some of these details were uncovered during the U.S. visit by an alarmed Pedro Porro during the taping of Juan Miguels father 60 Minutes interview with Gregory Craigs other chum, Dan Rather.
"Juan Miguel Gonzalez was surrounded by Castro security agents the entire time he was in the studio with Rather." This is an eye-witness account from Pedro Porro, who served as Dan Rather's translator during the famous 60 Minutes interview. Dan Rather would ask the question in English into Porro's earpiece whereupon Porro would translate it into Spanish for Elian's heavily-guarded father.
"Juan Miguel was never completely alone," says Porro. "He never smiled. His eyes kept shifting back and forth. It was obvious to me that he was under heavy coercion. I probably should have walked out. But I'd been hired by CBS in good faith and I didn't know exactly how the interview would be edited - how it would come across on the screen.
"The questions Dan Rather was asking Elian's father during that 60 Minutes interview were being handed to him by attorney Gregory Craig," continues Pedro Porro. "It was obvious that Craig and Rather where on very friendly terms. They were joshing and bantering back and forth, as Juan Miguel sat there petrified. Craig was stage managing the whole thing - almost like a movie director.
So whatever else can be said, the Clintons werent ignorant. They were cowing to Castroite blackmail. So lets call them something else; perhaps ethically-challenged and/or cowardly.
But how can a Republican who came of political age during the Cold War, and who actually fought Communists in Viet-Nam, have been unaware that Communist regimes can apply unseen pressure to their inmates? Can a prospective U.S. Secretary of Defense have taken at face value the word of the same Stalinist dictator who declared:
Again I stress I am not a communist. And Communists have absolutely no influence in my nation! (Fidel Castro, April 1959)
Political power does interest me in the least! And I will never assume such power! (Fidel Castro, April 1959)
What! Nikita Khrushchev gasped, as recalled by his son Sergei, Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba?
Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear- armed, responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. Thats precisely WHY I urged Khrushchev to launch them.
But it appears that well soon entrust our nations security to a U.S. Secretary of Defense who wholeheartedly trusted Fidel Castro.
Any human on this earth that Obama would pick to shepherd our defense forces to protect this country is dead meat in my book...there’s no need to discuss it.
100% correct.
Whoa.
I never knew that. Thanks.
Serious information you just shared. I may have just moved neutral on Hagel.
He proved two things to me. He’s a dullard and he’s too stubborn to ever admit that he might have been wrong no matter how clearly wrong he was and no matter how bad it makes him look. Stupid and obsessively prideful aren’t exactly shining character traits for any position of authority. He also seems to have a love for America’s enemies.
The Elián kidnapping by Janet Reno’s stormtroopers at the behest of Castro on Clinton’s orders was the darkest day of that despicable regime. One more reason to find Hagel’s support of it beneath contempt.
At the time, there were some conservatives who agreed with returning Elian Gonzalez to his father in Cuba, including Mike Reagan.
Way too many conservatives and, sad to say, Freepers bought the “Elian belongs with the father” BS.
I was never more ashamed of this country than when Elian was taken at gunpoint by the feds. That’s when I took the Freeper nom de plume “Aelian Nation”
President Ronald Reagan saved one teenager from being shipped back to Poland by keeping the case in the courts until the boy was old enough to file for citizenship on his own. Clinton was a coward.
Way too many idiot trolls that were on this website pushing that same absurd position. Now that poor child got brainwashed by the communist gulag regime.
Zero Obama and Doofus Hagel brings to mind one thing..
“Birds of a feather flock together”... -or- Critical Mass of Stupidity..
Hagel has now shown clearly where he does not belong.
I met a Cuban MD in Haiti who claimed Elian was tortured and both of his legs were broken within months of his return to Cuba. The MD eventually claimed asylum in the US.
There was a pretty big number of freepers doing the same thing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.