Cuba demands US gives back Guantanamo Bay

AFP ^

[chemical_boy]

CUBA has demanded the US return Guantanamo Bay to the island nation and denounced the "war on terror" prison, where six detainees could face the death penalty. Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque claimed today that suspects held in the US naval base in the southeastern tip of Cuba have been subjected to torture and face unfair legal treatment. Cuba rejects "the violation of human rights, unjust incarceration of prisoners held there without charges, and their appearance in courts without guarantees and in which they are convicted in advance,'' he told reporters. He did not directly refer to the case of six detainees facing charges that carry the death penalty. "We demand again the closure of the indecent Guantanamo prison, the return of the territory illegally occupied to our fatherland,'' Perez Roque said. The United States, which has occupied Guantanamo for more than 100 years, signed in 1934 a lease agreement with the Cuban government that could not be altered without agreement by both countries. Since 1960, a year after it came to power, Fidel Castro's communist government has refused the annual lease payment of 5000 dollars from the United States. The US Defence Department announced Monday that military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against six Al-Qaeda detainees on murder and conspiracy charges in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

[Billthedrill]

OK, I have a proposal. We swap him Gitmo for the Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabaña. That was where Che killed a few hundred people. It has a nice view of Havana, too.

[squidly]

John McCain wants to pull terror suspects out of Gitmo and he wants to end water-boarding

What does this have to do with giving up the naval base? BTW, waterboarding ended about five years ago.

[I still care]

My thoughts also. Obama would give back Gitmo to Cuba because it’s “colonial minded” to take it.

Not so sure about Hillary or McCain though.

Hillary’s a witch. She’s a socialist witch, but I don’t think she’d ever give away anything except other people’s money.

[westmichman]

Ummm... OK, but you have to take Michael Moore too.

[misharu]

Come and get it, Feedell.

[mc5cents]

CUBA LIBRE!

Here ya go Fidel, have one of these and chill.

[farmer18th]

What does this have to do with giving up the naval base?

In this particular war, what good is a "base" if you can't use it for interrogating Muslim terrorists? Do you and John want a base you can't use? No one accused John of being a genius, but putting Muslim terrorist on a military facility, with an ocean mote between them and American citizens seems to be a reasonably sound use of resources. The best way to abandon a military asset is to make it useless-and in that he walks lock stop with Fidel.

[gitmogrunt]

wait a few months, and President McCain will be happy to give it back, the dumb B###trd.

[squidly]

In this particular war, what good is a "base" if you can't use it for interrogating Muslim terrorists? Do you and John want a base you can't use?

I'm just guessing, but I'm thinking you don't know much about Gitmo Naval Base. We've been using it for decades for all kinds of things. We've also got a whole lot of other bases we don't use for interrogations. Are you suggesting that they are useless?

[dforest]

The dictator Communist will be appeased with Hillary, Obama, and McCain.

Does anyone wonder why they are making this demand now?

[Centurion2000]

Let’s see ... uhm ... how about a big bucket of NO.

[farmer18th]

I'm just guessing, but I'm thinking you don't know much about Gitmo Naval Base. We've been using it for decades for all kinds of things.

Of course there are other uses, but, heah, John wants to curtail its usefulness in the war on terror. Very patriotic of him, isn't it? If that were the only hint of his disloyalty, you might give him a pass, but when he works with Russ Feingold to put hand-cuffs on the first amendment, when he garners an F- from Gun Owners of America, when he votes for Ruth Bader Ginsberg, when he puts a La Raza traitor on his Hispanic outreach coordinator, when he dumps his 60s era wife for his 80s era wife, when he calls Evangelicals agents of intolerance, he's starts smelling like a stinking, Bolshevik turd, don't you think?

[SJackson]

With McCain, Hillary, or Obama our next president, this is indeed perfect timing on their part.

7. Do you support

a. normalization of relations with Cuba?

Our longstanding policies toward Cuba have been a miserable failure, evidenced by the fact that Fidel Castro is now the longest-serving head of state in the world. If our isolationist policies were meant to weaken him, they certainly haven’t worked. I believe that normalization of relations with Cuba would help the oppressed and poverty-stricken Cuban people while setting the stage for a more democratic government once Castro inevitably leaves the scene.

Barack Obama, 2004

[roses of sharon]

Castro endorsing McCain too?

[farmer18th]

Yes, if we just normalize relations with a Communist dictatorship, civil liberties will just naturally follow. Look at Red China, a regular bastion of freedom.

[ExpatGator]

Come and get it you che lovin’ commie poofters.

[dbacks]

Dear Fidel,

Bite me!

[elcid1970]

“Come and take it!”

Seems I read, many years ago, of a scenario where tens of thousands of unarmed Cubans are made to swarm across the no-man’s-land open zone (guns aimed at their backs, of course) and crowd up to the wire, demanding “asylum”. Their sheer numbers threaten to overwhelm the Marine garrison, with Marines reluctant to open fire. The garrison holds out, at first, but thousands more appear and blanket the base with a human flood.

Thoughts?

[ScratInTheHat]

.We got Cuba and the Philippines in that war.

We could have made it a territory of the US.

Here the snippet from Wikipedia.

The war ended after decisive naval victories for the United States in the Philippines and Cuba.

The Spanish-American War

Only 109 days after the outbreak of war, the Treaty of Paris, which ended the conflict, gave the United States ownership of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam.

The Treaty of Paris provided that Cuba would become independent from Spain but the US congress made sure it would be under US control (Platt Amendment). Specifically, Spain relinquished all claim of sovereignty over - and title to - Cuba.

We won and set the terms. Independence was what we decided to do.

[Dog Gone]

It’s all been wargamed, and we have more than tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.

And Marines are not reluctant to fire. They will follow orders.