[pcx99]

Yres, we will try one last time: PARENTAL RIGHTS DO NOT EXIST IN CUBA. The father has NO RIGHTS IN CUBA. He was in the US laboring under the long cruel thumb of Fidel Castro. That poor guy would have been condemning his relatives back in communist Cuba if he had swayed from the proscribed. You keep writing about this like there is some sort of moral equivalence between the USA and communist Cuba. Newsflash: There isn't! That boy is doomed to live under communism. That is shameful and pathetic.

But parental rights DO exist in the United States and this dispute was carried out on US soil and the US made the right decision. If the US had made any other decision we'd have been no better than cuba. If the father had made any indication he wanted to stay or wanted Elian to stay the US government would have bent over backwards to help him with the full support of its citizens. He didn't and whether we like it or not the US stood by its principles that the rights of the father are superior to the rights of the state and the US cuban community.

Case closed.

[whereasandsoforth]

Case closed, indeed. It's pointless to argue this. I am getting the same "logic" I got back then. I was then conversing with a devout socialist female of the species.

[SupplySider]

If the father had made any indication he wanted to stay or wanted Elian to stay the US government would have bent over backwards to help him with the full support of its citizens.

And Elian's family in Cuba would have, at best, rotted away in hellholes. If Castro dies and Cuba is liberated while Elian's father is still alive, I think he may have strong words for folks who took your position.