Posted on 04/14/2002 4:36:10 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
So what did Carter do when he got to Cuba? He basically said that the United States was full of it. He explained that the U.S. government didn't tell him about these concerns before he left. Moreover, Carter asked Cuban scientists - in the presence of Castro - and Fidel himself whether they had anything to do with biological weapons or terrorism and they all said no. Heck, if Castro's word isn't good enough, whose is?***
Why does Jimmy Carter, arguably the smallest, meanest and most incompetent soul ever to be President, hold such views? One answer may be greed. Carter's motive in attacking Israel becomes clear the instant one sees how many millions of dollars his Carter Center in Atlanta has pocketed from Arab leaders and interests. Many wealthy multinational corporations are eager to profit from the end of America's trade embargo against Castro, and it would be fascinating to follow their money and see how much is going to the Carter Center and related groups and individuals.
But Mr. Carter, 77, also seems possessed by other demons, including Leftist ideology and loony idealism. "Jimmy Carter," said liberal journalist Mort Kondracke, "is [second only to Jesse Jackson] the biggest nuzzler of anti-American dictators in the country."
Among those in whose service Jimmy Carter has put his lips, as noted by National Review's Jay Nordlinger and Frank Gaffney, Jr., of the Center for Security Policy, are these: the Marxist dictator Ceausescu of Romania (of whom Carter said "Our goals are the same…."); Syrian mass murderer and Soviet ally Hafez al-Assad; Ethiopian mass murderer Mengistu; and North Korean Marxist madman Kim Il Sung [of whose totalitarian state with which we fought the Korean War, Carter said "I don't see that they are an outlaw nation."].
Jimmy Carter was a relentless supporter of the Castro-aligned Marxist Sandinistas of Nicaragua, doing all in his power to keep their leader Daniel Ortega in power and undermine President Ronald Reagan's attempts to restore freedom to this Central America nation. And both as President and since, Carter has befriended Fidel Castro and sought to end the bipartisan trade embargo against this country (the same kind of embargo Carter eagerly supported against non-Communist white-ruled Rhodesia and apartheid South Africa).
Carter has always claimed to favor "human rights." In the name of such rights he as President withdrew U.S. support for the Shah of Iran because the Shah had imprisoned (and in some cases tortured) about 3,000 people, many of them agents of the Soviet Union bordering his nation. Because of Carter, this pro-Western leader was replaced by the fanatic anti-Western Muslim theocracy of the Ayatollah Khomeni.
The Ayatollah's dictatorship immediately put more than 20,000 pro-Western Iranians before firing squads. It reversed the Shah's opening to Western culture and rolled back the equal rights he had extended to women. And it promptly plunged Iran into war with neighboring Iraq, a war that never would have happened with the Shah in power - a war that killed more than 500,000 people. It also created the regional instabilities that led to Iraq's later invasion of Kuwait and to Operation Desert Storm, which cost the lives of hundreds of thousands more.
And the Ayatollah's overthrow of a major American-aligned leader on the Persian Gulf inspired many thousands of Muslim fanatics to destabilize their own modernizing nations in hopes of likewise creating medieval theocracies and making women again submissive.
Jimmy Carter is therefore part of the reason why Osama bin Laden operatives slammed airliners into the World Trade Center and Pentagon last September 11th.
And yet, with the blood of perhaps a million people dripping from his hands, Jimmy Carter continues to stalk the world in his sick quest to be given a Nobel Peace Prize.
In fact, Jimmy Carter arguably has done more to undermine and destroy world peace than any other human being now alive.
If, God forbid, New York City or Washington, D.C., are vaporized by a Muslim terrorist atomic weapon - or if such fanatics kill millions by unleashing a dread disease agent such as Ebola virus in Chicago, Houston, Miami, Seattle or Los Angeles - Jimmy Carter's demented politics should be held responsible for framing the fearful symmetry that caused such horrors.
Speaking from Cuba, Jimmy Carter denounced last week's assertion by U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton that "Cuba has provided dual-use biotechnology to other rogue states [that]….could support BW [Bacteriological Warfare] programs in those states."
"I asked them specifically," said Carter of government officials who briefed him before his Cuba trip, "…'Is there any evidence that Cuba has been involved in sharing any information to any other country on Earth that could be used for terrorist purposes?' And the answer from our experts on intelligence was No."
Mr. Carter had been briefed by underlings with no expertise in biological warfare, as it turned out. As Secretary of State Colin Powell noted, even if Carter accurately represented what he had been told in what was supposed to be a confidential briefing, it contradicted nothing in Bolton's statement about the weapons potential in Cuba's technology sharing.
Carter made a show of touring one biotechnology facility in Cuba and then telling reporters he saw nothing amiss there. But as Associated Press observed, "the former American president had no biotechnology experts in his delegation."
In May 1998 Clinton Administration Secretary of Defense William Cohen warned of Cuba's biological weapons potential. This week Assistant Secretary of State Otto Reich affirmed that "Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological weapons research and development effort, and has provided…biotechnology to other rogue states."
"There is plenty of reason to be very concerned about what the Cubans are doing in this area," said National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
"You can't show someone a biotech lab and be assured they're not creating weapons of mass destruction," Rice continued. "That's not how biotech weapons work. And they're actually very easy to conceal and you need multiple measures to make certain biotech weapons aren't being developed and transferred."
Among the nations with which Cuba acknowledges it is sharing biotechnology are Libya and Iran, both terrorist-supporting states like Cuba itself. Mr. Carter simply brushed these facts aside, saying he did not believe Cuba was providing terrorist assistance to either nation and calling Cuba's biotech relationship with
Iran one in which Cuba could be trusted to "prevent any illicit or improper use of the technology which they share."
A cynic might wonder how the likes of Jimmy Carter ever became President. The answer is Time Magazine, which put the obscure-but-liberal Georgia governor on its cover four times in a successful effort to play king-maker. (Johnny Carson likewise made obscure, failed Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton and his saxophone a star on the Tonight Show, and has lately taken to voicing his distaste for patriotism associated with the War on Terrorism.)
Time nowadays owns CNN, popularly known as the Clinton and/or Castro News Network for its relentless far-Left slant. The Media Research Center recently described CNN as a "propaganda tool for Fidel Castro's government" and a "megaphone for a dictator." CNN, of course, is the half-brainchild of Ted Turner (former husband of Hanoi Jane Fonda), who once boasted aloud to Chinese leaders that he, like them, was a socialist.
CNN's Havana bureau, the only Cuba-based bureau of any network (even PBS, once parodied on Saturday Night Live with the words: "PBS: If we didn't bring you Fidel Castro's 60th Birthday Gala, who would?"), once described Marxist Cuba's elections as superior to America's because they "have no dubious campaign spending" and "no mud slinging."
My Communist Party overseer when I was in Cuba long ago to do a piece for the Los Angeles Times expressed puzzlement that I was an editor at Skeptic Magazine, which featured debates among those on different sides of an issue.
"Here," my government shadow told me, "we do not confuse the people with debate. The Communist Party decides what the correct view of an issue is, and then it tells the people what that is." No wonder Castro and his bootlicks like former Turner Books author Wayne Smith are furious that Bush Administration visitors to Cuba hand out free shortwave radios. When I was in Cuba, all the radios lacked tuning dials, giving listeners instead only buttons tuned to the government stations, rather like what Leftists try to impose on American university campuses.
The recently deceased great international economist Peter Bauer, if my memory serves, once said: "By the year 2050 there will be only two True Believing Marxists left on Planet Earth - and they will be two nuns in Brazil."
In year 2002 one other True Believer in the ultra-Left continues as a specter haunting our world, and his name is Jimmy Carter. Carter would deny this, fancying himself a "Liberal." But as P.J. O'Rourke so rightly put it, nowadays "Liberalism is just Marxism sold by the drink." [End]
Was this brave woman afraid of terrorists or criminals or wild animals? No, she was simply afraid of Fidel Castro and the thousands of Castro agents that had been recruited all over the island of Cuba. And, what purpose did these "block captains" serve? Why did Castro want an agent on every single block in every single town on the island? To spy and report back suspicious activities, of course! Every citizen on the island of Cuba is being watched around the clock by Castro's agents. When a Castro agent suspects dissident activity on the part of someone - no matter how young or old - odds are, the truck with the troops will arrive at night and that "comrade" will disappear for awhile … or maybe, forever.
This is the constant fear that the Cuban people live with. In seeking a meeting with an FBI agent, this brave, old woman was risking imprisonment, or worse. South Florida was riddled with Castro agents on the lookout for any signs of dissent. Not only would she be in serious trouble, but her relatives would be also. Castro has a way of being especially angry and revengeful with those whom he considers disloyal to the revolution.
Was this grandmother trying to tell me she wanted more coffee or bread? Was she risking so much to send a message to America that her nation needed more medicine or pantyhose? The courage she displayed that day was the same courage displayed by the thousands of Cubans who had come before her. They were trying to tell us - we, the people who they believed to be their friends and supporters - that they had lost their liberty and their freedoms to an angry and evil dictator who had instituted in their land a most dangerous and inhuman oppression. The fact that they don't enjoy a steady supply of coffee, or bread or toilet paper is the direct result of the loss of liberty of the Cuban people, stolen by a treacherous and murderous form of government, and not because the United States supports an embargo designed to drive Castro from illegitimate power. Castro lied to get power and he lies to keep it.***
President Bush will hew to a hard-line stance against the Castro government while seeking ways to ease hardships on the Cuban people when he spells out the policy next week, advisers said. The president hopes to curb what aides concede is growing momentum to ease restrictions against Cuba. "The president believes that the trade embargo is a vital part of America's foreign policy and human rights policy toward Cuba, because trade with Cuba does not benefit the people of Cuba - it's used to prop up a repressive regime," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said.***
"It is possible that it will be re-established in the coming months," Portal told a news conference. Under an October 2000 agreement between Chavez and Cuban President Fidel Castro Venezuela was supplying the oil to Cuba on special terms, allowing it 15 years to pay and charging 2 percent a year interest on amassed debt.
Venezuela signed similar agreements with other countries in Central America and the Caribbean. During the two days when Chavez briefly lost control, Venezuelan oil company officials announced a series of changes that included an end of oil shipments to Cuba. [End]
While President Bush has said he is a friend to Cubans seeking democracy, dissidents here are uncomfortable with several points in what they have heard through the news media of his new policy. An adviser to Mr. Carter said that many dissidents favored lifting the four-decade-old trade embargo, which Mr. Bush is proposing to tighten. Dissidents have said before that they reject United States aid because it would taint their efforts, especially the Varela Project, a petition drive seeking a referendum to gain increased freedoms. One of Mr. Castro's main arguments against the project is that it was a foreign creation.
………Mr. Carter said he hoped that before President Bush announced his Cuba policy, the president would review a report Mr. Carter will send him on his conclusions from the trip, which included ``extensive'' discussions with Mr. Castro. Mr. Carter today repeated his call for the United States to end the trade embargo and allow Americans to travel to Cuba. He said that greater cooperation among scientific researchers, especially, would help dispel any fears that the Cuban government was conducting research on biological weapons, as the State Department recently alleged.
Mr. Carter argued that trade and travel restrictions on Cuba should be removed because they restrain fundamental American freedoms. ``I think an American citizen or an American company has the right to visit any place on earth and the right to trade with any purchaser or supplier on earth,'' he said. Mr. Carter said his delegation also brought along some 500 pages of declassified documents from the National Archives that detail his administration's efforts to ease relations with Cuba.***
No surprise. Carter offered much the same criticism of Ronald Reagan's solution to the Cold War -- challenge the Russians to match America's military might or get out of the superpower business. Reagan's policy was dangerous, Carter said at the time. Perhaps. However, during Reagan's watch, the United States and the Soviet Union began limiting nuclear arms because of Reagan's "peace through strength" approach, unlike Carter's penchant for whining loudly and seeing problems as beyond the United States' ability to fix. Instead of provoking a third world war, Reagan's policies led to the unraveling of a Soviet empire that, during Carter's watch, expanded its influence while the American president boldly responded by canceling U.S. participation in the Olympics.***
Why? Because until now, Cuba's president for life Fidel Castro had managed to convince many countries that the Cuban conflict was with the United States, or with Miami Cuban exiles, rather than with his own people. The Varela Project, by contrast, puts the spotlight on Castro's denial of fundamental freedoms to peaceful oppositionists, who are willing to seek political changes through the island's Socialist laws.
''This changes the conflict from a U.S.-versus-Cuba issue, to a democracy-versus-dictatorship issue,'' says Carlos Alberto Montaner, a Madrid-based Cuban exile leader. ``It is bound to lead to joint measures by democratic countries to bring to an end the last communist dictatorship in the West.''
In addition, the Varela Project petition is the first initiative of its kind that has the support of the Cuban internal opposition, a majority of Cuban exiles in Miami, the United States, Europe and most Latin American countries. A poll by Bendixen and Associates released last week showed that, in sharp contrast with their past opposition to a negotiated solution to the Cuban drama, 54 percent of Miami-Dade's Cuban exiles support the Varela Project.
In the past, European and Latin American reservations to the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba -- and their active opposition to the U.S. Helms-Burton law that imposes sanctions on foreign companies that trade with Cuba -- had prevented the creation of an effective international front to push for fundamental freedoms in Cuba.***
"We certainly don't have any intention of weakening or diluting the embargo," a senior Bush administration official said. "The president has been pretty clear on that." The administration upped the ante considerably when it aired suspicions earlier this month that Cuba could be seeking to develop offensive biological weapons, perhaps in coordination with Iran and other rogue states, a charge immediately denied by the Castro regime.
Many expect Mr. Bush to push for an even tougher line on Cuba, despite growing pressure from U.S. agribusiness and other commercial interests to ease trade restrictions on the Caribbean island-nation. Among the possibilities discussed: tighter travel restrictions on U.S. citizens visiting Cuba and increased U.S. government broadcasts to Cuba to support dissident political movements.***
Some experts believe that by aiding dissidents, the United States indirectly helps Fidel Castro, who can argue that his opponents are American puppets. Nor was Bush expected to change his stance on a law known as Helms-Burton that has prompted some conservatives and Cuba activists to accuse him of being soft on Havana. Twice in his first year in office, Bush refused to lift a prohibition on Americans suing people or companies who now control property in Cuba that was confiscated from Americans.***
But although Cubans are now divided into economic classes, none of them has what tourists do. The elaborate seafood buffets at tourist hotels and beach resorts are off-limits to Cubans. Nor can they stay in the hotels, even if they can afford to pay in dollars. The only exception is when they are on their honeymoon. In that case, a night in a state-run hotel is a gift from the Cuban government. Still, those who work in tourism have much better access to dollars and want to see more such jobs created. ***
Among the measures:
o Offering scholarships for study in the United States to family members of political prisoners and to Cuban students and professionals trying to build independent civil institutions.
o Negotiating for direct mail service between Cuba and the United States. Mail must now go through a third country.
o Providing direct assistance to Cubans through nongovernmental organizations, sidestepping the Castro regime's role in assistance.
o Facilitating and permitting humanitarian assistance by American religious and other nongovernmental groups. ***
European cash almost solely lines Castro's pockets because of the way the dictator has fashioned the terms of engagement. Foreign companies must establish joint ventures with the Cuban government, with a cut of the profits going to Castro. But the despot nets more cash from the labor arrangement: Workers are not employed by foreign companies; they are rented.
Companies pay Castro's machine approximately $1,000 per month per worker, in hard cash. The regime, in turn, shells out less than $20 - per month - to each worker, in pesos. In other words, 98 percent of all wages paid by foreign companies in Cuba are funneled straight to Castro.
Because Castro has been denied American cash from such joint ventures and for several other reasons, the embargo has worked, even if it hasn't dethroned him. The embargo has put Castro in a box, and has robbed him of resources to fund his extracurricular activities. As a senior administration official noted, "If Castro has to spend $40 million on food, that's $40 million he's not spending to develop biological weapons."
Despite the morally despicable conditions for joint ventures, a large number of Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill are pressing for engagement with Castro. In fairness, many simply don't understand that the communist dictatorship relies on foreign cash for its very existence, but ignorance should not be an excuse for ignorant policy.
Bush's speech may pave the way for expunging Congress's blissful ignorance, and likely will be cheered on Capitol Hill in the long run.***
Castro's ultimate propaganda message is that his country is selflessly working to provide affordable life-saving meds to an overlooked Third World still dying in droves from AIDS and even cholera. If all this is but a covering ruse to proliferate forbidden technologies to dangerous foes, it is that much more dangerous and sinister. Experts like Alibek, who have been to the dark side, are very skeptical of Cuba's intentions - despite all the window dressing.***
….. But Bush never mentioned Carter's outreach in a speech that was intended to reassure a vocal element of the Republican base in this politically important state. At the rally, Bush was introduced by his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is depending on the strong support of Cuban-Americans in his re-election campaign this November. After the rally the president attended a $25,000 a couple fund-raiser sponsored by the state Republican Party that will primarily benefit Jeb Bush's campaign.
The event, which was expected to raise $2 million, was held at the home of Armando Codina, a former business partner of the governor. A number of Democrats are vying to face Jeb Bush, the most prominent being Janet Reno, President Clinton's attorney general.
President Bush also is indebted to Cuban-Americans for their support in his narrow victory in Florida that enabled him to claim the White House. About 82 percent of the state's estimated 400,000 Cuban-American voters went for Bush over Democrat Al Gore in the 2000 race.
And since his election Bush has rewarded this constituency by appointing Cuban-Americans to influential posts. He picked Mel Martinez as secretary of Housing and Urban Development and Otto Reich, an anti-Castro hard-liner, as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemispheric Affairs. ***
His economy, lacking a market and free enterprise to generate income, is unable to make good on the arrears. The government's main export is sugar, but inefficient cultivation and distribution policies keep it from competing in the world market. Last year, Cuba's central bank reported a balance-of-payments deficit of $687 million and an overall foreign debt of $11 billion. The U.S. embargo limits commerce with Cuba's unelected leaders, who confiscated property owned by U.S. citizens now worth about $7 billion. Those limits should remain in place until the regime enacts democratic reforms, agrees to respect human rights and releases its political prisoners. If the United States eases the sanctions, such changes definitely won't take place.***
If you are sickened by the thought of a former U.S. president and a former First Lady of the United States and the career terrorist Yasser Arafat all sitting around bashing Ronald Reagan . . . you and I think alike. Mary King was Carter's key aide and emissary. She once took a flight with Arafat, and "Arafat noticed that I was tired and insisted that I take his customary seat on his plane because it reclined in a certain way, so that I could sleep. I used my handbag as a pillow. After some time had passed, I noticed that a pillow was being ever so gently substituted for the handbag. Arafat himself was trying to place the pillow under my head without waking me. This reflected a caring side to his character which has rarely been evident to the international public as a whole."
Here, folks, we are in Amb. Joseph Davies territory. Remember him? "He gives the impression of a strong mind which is composed and wise. His brown eye is exceedingly kindly and gentle. A child would like to sit in his lap, and a dog would sidle up to him." Davies spoke these words about Stalin. When Saddam Hussein invaded and raped Kuwait, Mary King cabled her boss, Carter: "Saddam learned from the Israelis that might makes right - they took most of Palestine by force and 20 years later occupied the West Bank and Gaza." That's the Carter mindset: no thought to the wars of attempted annihilation waged against Israel, which made such occupation thinkable or necessary.
After Carter had that first meeting with Arafat, he went home and promptly served the PLO head as PR adviser and speechwriter. What do I mean? Listen to Brinkley: "On May 24 Carter drafted on his home computer the strategy and wording for a generic speech Arafat was to deliver soon for Western ears . . ." Said Carter, "The audience is not the Security Council, but the world community. The objective of the speech should be to secure maximum sympathy and support of other world leaders . . . The Likud leaders are now on the defensive, and must not be given any excuse for continuing their present abusive policies."***
Continuing, "He is a dictator who jails and tortures and exiles his political opponents. We know this [who you mean, 'we'?]. The Cuban people know this [for sure]. And the world knows this [well, some of it does]."
Then, "Through all their pains and deprivation, the Cuban people's aspirations for freedom are undiminished." True. And, later, Bush said, "Today, there is only one nation in our hemisphere that is not a democracy. Only one. There is only one national leader whose position of power owes more to bullets than ballots. . . . Cuba's independence was achieved a century ago. It was hijacked nearly half a century ago. Yet the independent spirit of the Cuban people has never faltered."
Very nice. You might say that these words are boilerplate, but you would be mistaken. They are extraordinary. They are ordinary in that they speak the simple truth, but they are extraordinary in that they rarely escape the lips of a head of state, including those of the American president, who - whoever he is - should be the world's advocate of, and spokesman for, freedom. The mere facing of the truth is a tonic. Solzhenitsyn exhorted, "Live not by lies." A few words of unvarnished truth about Castro and Communism are worth far more to the Cuban cause than all of Jimmy Carter's apologies for prisons (U.S. ones), the death penalty, and a market-based health-care system.***
Officials from Cupet, the Cuban oil company, visited Caracas earlier this month in an effort to renew the eight monthly cargoes, a spokesman for the Venezuelan Energy and Mines Ministry said………………….. During last month's brief 48-hour ouster of Chávez, managers at PDVSA announced that they would immediately suspend the Cuba supply contract. Employees gathered at an assembly cheered and applauded. But PDVSA President Ali Rodríguez, a former leftist guerrilla, said upon taking the post last month that the Cuban contract would be honored.***
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