"I strongly believe the people of Cuba should be free from the tyrant," Bush told a crowd of supporters here two days before the election, winning the rally's loudest cheers and chants of "Viva Bush" -- long live Bush.
"Over the next four years, we will continue to press hard and ensure that the gift of freedom finally reaches the men and women of Cuba," he said. "We will not rest, we will keep the pressure on, until the Cuban people enjoy the same freedoms in Havana they received here in America."
The crowd packed into the Coconut Grove Convention Center cheered, screamed and applauded, waving pro-Bush signs in English and Spanish and chanting "four more years!"
Like most Republican candidates in Florida, Bush's hopes of victory here rest in large part on the support of the state's sizeable anti-Castro Cuban exile community.
Earlier speakers had fired up the audience with attacks on Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry, with one asking "who do the enemies of America favor?" and then thanking Bush for the global war on terrorism.
The president was to make three stops in this pivotal state before going to another critical battleground state: Ohio, without which no modern Republican has won the White House.
Before Bush arrived in Miami, a small army of speakers -- including Mexican-born actress and singer Lucia Mendez -- who extolled him and attacked Kerry as the crowd swelled to a few thousand.
Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen pointed to elections in Afghanistan and plans for elections in Iraq and said that Bush was committed to "help bring about that same freedom, that same democracy ... to the oppressed and long-suffering people of Cuba."***
Hugo Chavez has made a point of praising, visiting, and embracing the most totalitarian regimes in the world. He was the first head of state to visit Saddam Hussein in Iraq after the Gulf War. He has allied himself closely with Red China, Russia, Iran, Libya, Algeria, Syria, and, of course, Cuba. His administration praises the Communist regime of North Korean madman Kim Jong Il — leader of an economic basket case, as well as a human rights hellhole — as a model for Venezuela’s development. On October 12, 1999, during a state visit to China, President Chavez proudly announced: “I have been very Maoist all my life.” He praised Mao Zedong, one of the greatest mass murderers in history, and let it be known that he viewed Chairman Mao’s program as a model for his own Venezuelan revolution.
Chavez calls his program a “Bolivarian revolution,” claiming inspiration from the popular 19th-century South American independence fighter Simon Bolivar. But it is clearly more Marxist and Maoist than Bolivarian. Recognizing that his hold on power was tenuous, Chavez imported thousands of Cuban agents masquerading as teachers, health professionals, scientists, and sports instructors. Their job is to organize his Bolivarian Circles — the Communist mobs patterned after Castro’s Committees in Defense of the Revolution. At the same time, Chavez has brought in hundreds of intelligence agents from Castro’s DGI (Cuba’s version of the KGB) to help take over and purge the Venezuelan military and police of counter-revolutionary elements that pose a threat to his total consolidation of power.
In 2003, General Marcos Ferreira resigned as head of Venezuela’s border control agency, DIEX, and presented documents and his own eyewitness accounts of the Chavez government’s close cooperation with global terrorist groups. According to Gen. Ferreira, thousands of fraudulent Venezuelan identities were issued to members of known terrorist groups, including al-Qaeda, on orders from top officials in Chavez’s government. …***