Posted on 04/14/2015 1:59:06 PM PDT by Kaslin
Just four short months after "normalizing" relations with Cuba and just days after meeting with Dictator Raul Castro in Panama, President Barack Obama will reportedly strip the country of its terrorism sponsor status.
It was just last year when the Center for Security Policy publishing the detailed connection Cuba has to Venezuela and Iran in its support for terrorism around the globe. It should be noted that Iran is the world's most prolific state-sponsor of terrorism through Hezbollah, the world's largest terror organization responsible for more American murders than any other group before 9/11/2001.
Iran, Cuba and Venezuela have developed a close and cooperative relationship against the U.S. and in support of terrorist groups and states. The three regimes increasingly coordinate their policies and resources in a three way partnership aimed at counteracting and circumventing U.S. policies in the Middle East and Latin America. Within this relationship, Cuba plays a strategic role in terms of geography (proximity to the U.S.), intelligence gathering (both electronic eavesdropping and human espionage) and logistics.
Further, Cuba is still harboring terrorists and violent fugitives convicted of murder in the United States. More from Henry Gomez:
But is Cuba still a state sponsor of terrorism? Have the Castro brothers changed their minds about the role of violence in bringing about the Latin America they’d like to see?
During the 2000s, the State Department has continually renewed Cuba’s status as a terrorist state on the basis of some unchallenged facts. The Castro brothers continue to harbor international terrorists from Spain’s Basque separatist group ETA and Colombia’s Marxist rebels FARC, as well as American domestic terrorists from groups like the Black Liberation Army.
Nothing has really changed on this front. It’s estimated that 70 U.S. fugitives are being harbored by Cuba, including Joanne Chesimard (AKA “Assata Shakur”), a convicted cop killer.
Apologists for the Castro regime try to argue that Cuba does not meet the criteria of state sponsor of terrorism via technicalities. They insist that the Basque terrorists in Cuba are a matter for Spain to resolve bilaterally with Cuba, and that the FARC terrorists don’t count because Cuba is hosting peace talks between FARC and the Colombian government, and that Chesimard doesn’t qualify as a terrorist because she didn’t kill a civilian, conflating a police officer with a member of uniformed armed forces in a declared war.
Needless to say, the straws they grasp at paint no more of a flattering picture of the totalitarian dictatorship they defend, which is in its sixth decade.
Even if Cuba is removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism on a technicality, even if Cuba’s tactics these days are less obvious, the uncomfortable fact is that neither the Castro regime’s ideology nor its goals nor its leaders have changed since they day the Reagan administration put them on the list.
Convicted cop killer Joanne Chesimard has been hiding in plain sight in Cuba for years. In light of the new "normalization," when asked recently if she would be extradited back to the United States to finish her prison sentence Cuban officials said they have the "right" to protect "persecuted" fugitives.
Cuba said Monday that it has a right to grant asylum to U.S. fugitives, the clearest sign yet that the communist government has no intention of extraditing America's most-wanted woman despite the warming of bilateral ties.
Chesimard was granted asylum by Fidel Castro after she escaped from the prison where she was serving a sentence for killing a New Jersey state trooper in 1973 during a gunbattle after being stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Asked if returning fugitives was open to negotiation, Cuba's head of North American affairs, Josefina Vidal, told The Associated Press that "every nation has sovereign and legitimate rights to grant political asylum to people it considers to have been persecuted. ... That's a legitimate right."
"We've explained to the U.S. government in the past that there are some people living in Cuba to whom Cuba has legitimately granted political asylum," Vidal said.
In the end, Obama's relationship with Cuba has little to do with diplomacy, but instead has everything to do with the iconic Marxist dream and obsession his far left supporters have held for decades. It's finally coming true.
This post has been updated with additional information.
The more tourists (and non tourists?) we have on the ground in Cuba, the harder it will be for them to do anything like that. There are enough anti Castro Cubans in Cuba, that whispers would arrive in the ears of US people on the ground there about terror attacks or nuclear missiles.
Perhaps we could arrange for our terrorist prisoners to be placed in a prison built on an island in the Aleutians. Two goals served, get rid of the Guantanamo albatross and put these desert loving Arabs in a less welcoming climate. Who knows, might even discourage some future terrorists. Brrrr. Just think of the comparison: sun, sand, tropical breezes vs. cold, damp, fog, storms, ice. Now, “We’re going to ship you to the Aleutians” could hold some real terror.
When does North Korea win the Nobel Peace Prize?
It is actually at the discretion of the Secretary of State, if I recall correctly. I was reading about this a few months back when I was reading the laws regarding punishment for knowingly funding terorism... my thought was that since the execuctive branch, with its pen and phone, are basically enabling terrorism, If I wish to remain in complaince with the law, I need to stop paying taxes used to fund terrorism.
It is not lost on me that John Bolton has joined in signing this open letter to Congress. Good guy. Way to be, John!
YOU can not do what you want.
Put Florida’s electorial votes in the GOP column.
Former MI Senator Bob Griffin (R) died yesterday at age 91, he was defeated by Carl Levin in 1978. We’ve won only 1 Senate race in MI since, 1994.
Alas, it was Sen. Griffin’s dithering that needlessly cost us his seat in 1978. He was just short of 55, but had already been in Congress since he was 33 (when he beat a lady Republican who was 36 years older than he) and was 42 when he was elevated to the Senate via appointment (though was already running for it).
He scored a “hugh” victory in stopping my fellow Tennessean Abe Fortas from getting elevated to Chief Justice, thwarting the plans of both LBJ and Earl Warren. Barone said it was almost a single-handed accomplishment. For the task, he was elevated to Republican Whip after just 3 years in that body (although this came because of Leader Everett Dirksen’s untimely death in the Summer of 1969. With ex-Sen. Tom Kuchel’s primary defeat in 1968, fellow liberal Hugh Scott of PA replaced him as Whip, but got thrust into the top job after barely 8 months in that position).
Not mentioned on his Wikipedia bio is more telling. His ultimate goal was to land on the Supreme Court. I think he expected to get President Ford to appoint him to Bill Douglas’s seat in 1975 (or at the very least, whichever vacancy next came open when Ford was reelected — of course, we know now that there wouldn’t be, since Carter mercifully never got to make an appointment, although Stevens might as well have been a Carterite).
Particularly galling to him was that after his yeoman work, he expected to succeed Scott as Minority Leader in 1977, but instead he lost out to my more telegenic Senator, Howard Baker. He apparently was bitterly unhappy and simply wanted to retire. His biggest problem in 1977 is that he didn’t much bother with showing up for work. He missed votes, a lot of votes.
At some point, pollsters for the party crunched the numbers and told Griffin that he was the only one who could hold the seat for them in 1978 (the party was on the heels of just having come up short for Phil Hart’s open seat in 1976). Apparently, Rep. Philip Ruppe was set to run instead but dropped his plans (he did run in 1982 against Riegle and lost) when Griffin changed his mind. He might’ve prevailed, but there was some latent hostility towards him amongst MI Republicans, but what ultimately sunk him by the execrable Carl Levin was that Levin successfully exploited the fact that Griffin missed all those votes (making it look like he was collecting a paycheck and not showing up for work), and that really didn’t go over well with blue-collar voters.
It is truly unfortunate that missing those votes cost us that seat. Had he not done so, Levin might never have made it to the Senate. Griffin then could’ve retired in 1985 (and Reagan could’ve named him to SCOTUS) and been succeeded by another Republican, presumably Astronaut Jack Lousma (who almost beat freshman Levin). He did achieve a seat on the MI Supremes in 1987 and served until retiring in 1995, but that was likely only a consolation prize for SCOTUS ambitions. RIP, nonetheless to Justice Griffin.
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