Mr. Castro showed himself to be emotionally unstable and reckless during the crisis, even calling on Khrushchev to launch a nuclear first strike on the United States rather than back down. Mr. Castro also opposed any arms inspections and wanted Moscow to keep a secret arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba for use against an invasion. (At the height of the crisis, the Kremlin drafted an authorization for the Soviet commander in Cuba to use tactical nukes against U.S. forces).
In the wake of the crisis, Mr. Castro felt secure enough to launch a campaign of subversion throughout Latin America. He played a major role in the wars in Central America and sent Cuban troops to fight in support of Marxist regimes in Africa. Cuba remains a center for international terrorism and last December hosted a meeting of Latin American and Middle Eastern groups including the Columbian FARC and representatives from Iraq. Mr. Castro provided critical support (including personnel) to help Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez survive a coup attempt. And he is courting the Chinese. The cost of abandoning regime change in Cuba has been very high.
Saddam is in charge of his own WMD arsenal and Iraq's nuclear weapons program. He does not need subsidies from a patron, as he has plentiful oil reserves to finance his regime. He may already believe the chemical and bioweapons he possessed in 1991 deterred a U.S. march on Baghdad. Should he acquire nuclear weapons, his confidence as a survivor and leader of radical movements in the Middle East will skyrocket. A sizable proportion of the Iraqi people, as well as other Arabs, will hail Saddam as a leader who has what it takes to make the "imperialists" and their "puppets" back down.
Regime change in Iraq is a strategic necessity. It cannot be postponed, because time is not on America's side. Saddam must be removed before he has even a single nuclear bomb, and before he has the means to deliver his other WMDs on a large scale to distant targets. An invasion to liberate Iraq will be costly in money and effort, and possibly in lives. But the long-term costs of allowing Saddam to strengthen his position will be much higher on all counts. ***
Da Silva has established extensive ties to international terrorism. He has been very critical of the US "War on Terror" and has professed admiration for such widely respected international statesmen as Saddam Hussein and Mohomar Quadafi. His election as President would greatly increase the prospect of a successful takeover of Columbia by the Communist FARC guerillas, which he fully supports. Mendes states that a Marxist regime in Brazil would also be well-positioned to help cause Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru to fall to would-be Marxist dictators and exploit the deepening economic crisis in Argentina, which I recently visited in June, and Paraguay. All told, a da Silva victory could well result in "as many as 300 million people" falling "under the control of anti-American dictatorships."
In 1990, da Silva co-founded the Forum of Sao Paulo with Cuban President Fidel Castro and former Nicaraguan Marxist President Daniel Ortega. The Forum is a kind of annual "Communist Party Congress" for Communists, anti-American terrorists and Marxist revolutionaries to meet together and strategize on how to best effect their plans for Communizing much if not most of Latin America. Venezuelan President and self-proclaimed Communist, Hugo Chavez has become a major power player in this organization since coming to power in 1998. Chavez is probably supporting the da Silva campaign to the tune of millions of dollars while Castro may also be committing hundreds of his intelligence operatives to help da Silva win the election.