Too many resources wasted on Cuba (Dem. Senator Max Baucus) [View All]

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Sat, May. 22, 2004


SANCTIONS, TRAVEL BAN


Too many resources wasted on Cuba
MAX BAUCUS MIKE ENZI


In the weeks after that devastating day in September 2001 when terrorists struck at America's symbols of financial and political strength, the United States launched a war on terrorism. The first salvo from the United States was perhaps the smartest: freezing millions of dollars in assets held by suspected terrorist groups and their affiliates. As President Bush noted, "Money is the lifeblood of terrorist operations."

Today, 2½ years later, money is still the lifeblood of terrorists, and stopping the flow of funding is the key to victory in our fight against them. Yet the division at the Treasury Department in charge of tracking terrorist financing and enforcing sanctions programs, the Office of Foreign Assets Control, is not committing every resource to the crucial financial front in the war on terror.

The office employs some 120 people. Of these 120, 21 dedicate their time to just one of the 19 sanctions programs administered by the office. If you think the country targeted by that sanctions program is Iraq or Iran, you'd be wrong. It is Cuba, and in the office's cross hairs are the American people themselves.
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Among the criminal Cuba travelers that the office's investigators have uncovered: a 75-year-old grandmother from San Diego who took a bicycling trip on Cuba, an Indiana Christian academy teacher who delivered Bibles there and a Washington man who traveled there to spread his parents' ashes at the site of the church they founded.
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http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld/sunnews/news/opinion/8730271.htm