All roads from
hell and back lead to Fidel
Myriam Marquez, Sentinel
Staff Writer. Posted March 21, 2004 in the
Orlando
Sentinel.
All the anniversaries and cosmic combinations
have aligned into one bloody March and a
political snakepit for President Bush.
Bush talked tough Friday to mark the first
anniversary of the start of the U.S. war
in Iraq. He's straining to keep the coalition
of the willing together now that Spain has
gone Socialist and is vowing to pull out
of Iraq. Voters, reeling from Spain's worst
terrorist attack, rejected Bush ally Jose
Maria Aznar to lead them. Now the Socialist-led
coalition vows to get Spain out of Dodge
City, Iraq, unless the Bush administration
agrees to an international coalition.
And if Spain's turn to the far left isn't
enough to worry Bush, another anniversary
came and went last week in Florida's back
yard that could set his campaign on a tailspin
come November. The first anniversary of
Cuba's crackdown on political dissent --
with 75 writers, independent journalists,
librarians and human-rights activists still
in prison serving sentences that average
20 years each -- was the talk of Miami radio
last week in a political game to connect
the dots.
In Miami, all roads from hell and back
lead to Fidel.
Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and
now Spain. Commies, leftists and left-leaning
Latin American leaders excuse Cuba's dictatorship
because it suits their own geopolitical
purposes to appear to stick it to Uncle
Sam, even if the only ones who are really
hurting are the Cubans stuck without an
exit visa. Bush has promised to toughen
the U.S. embargo against Cuba, but pro-free-trade
Republicans in key wheat, rice and shipping
states want to trade with Cuba, so Bush
takes baby steps on Cuba policy.
Meanwhile, el loco in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez,
and his mentor, Cuba's Fidel Castro, have
been trying to ignite nationalist hysteria
with talk of imminent U.S. invasion. As
if.
Chavez has gone so far as to threaten to
shut off the spigot of Venezuelan oil and
gas heading our way.
Castro, Chavez and Brazil's shoeshine boy,
Inacio Lula da Silva, all have long links
to "liberation" terrorist movements.
And if there's any doubt where they're heading,
the Forum of Sao Paulo, which Castro set
up in the early 1990s and da Silva led,
should set people straight as to these leaders'
intentions.
Forum participants have included Latin
American terrorist groups, such as the FARC,
the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine and Northern Ireland's IRA.
Among the forum's assertions: "NATO
troops perpetrated genocide in Kosovo,"
and "U.S. and British forces massacred
the population of Afghanistan."
If Cuba seems inconsequential, think about
the China connection. China secures the
contract to manage the Panama Canal and
has military relations with both Cuba and
Venezuela. Oh, it's now flying reconnaissance
satellites in partnership with Brazil.
Spain was just the first canary extinguished
in this mine.
Myriam Marquez can be reached
at mmarquez @orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5399.
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