Bush risks losing the plot over Cuba

[emad]

Simon Tisdall
Wednesday March 9, 2005
The Guardian

Unrelenting US pressure on Cuba, set to ratchet up again at next week's UN human rights commission meeting in Geneva, is testing relations between the Bush administration and a new generation of centre-left Latin American leaders.

As it has done each year since the early 1990s, the US will urge the commission to adopt a resolution condemning Cuba's human rights record. And Cuban officials predict that the US will again use "arm-twisting and threats" to get its way.

Republican attacks on President Fidel Castro's communist government intensified during last year's American election campaign. The treasury secretary, John Snow, tightened the 42-year-old US embargo and vowed to "bring an end to the ruthless and brutal dictatorship".

But George Bush's victory has not eased the pressure - rather the reverse. A Republican-led congressional committee gave a platform to Cuban dissidents last week to publicise Cuba's "atrocious" behaviour. Porter Goss, the CIA chief, recently described Cuba (and Venezuela) as a source of regional instability.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/cuba/story/0,11983,1433254,00.html

[murray hill farm]

1. Booooooooooooooo!

Bush needs to look at his own country if he wants to see human rights abuses....and "atrocious" behavior.

[peacetalksforall]

2. They are full of crap. I hope someone lets them know in eloquent

emphatical statements.

[Padraig18]

3. Cuba DOES have an atrocious human rights record.

Just because we are anti-Bush does not mean that we must neccessarily be pro-Castro. They are both assholes!

[XemaSab]

4. "People are being TORTURED in Cuba!!!!!!!!!!"

"....and then there's Castro's government!"