The Republican Candidate : Miami IMC

The Republican Candidate

(Part One)

Fidel Castro Ruz

These reflections are self-explanatory.
In that already famous Super Tuesday, a day of the week when a number of States of the Union were selecting the candidate of their choice for the presidency of the United States from among a group of contenders, one of the likely candidates to replace George W. Bush was John McCain. Due to of his pre-packaged hero image, and his alliance with strong contenders such as Rudy Giuliani, the former governor of the state of New York, other candidates had already gladly endorsed him. The intense propaganda of social, economic and political factors having great significance in his country, and his personal style had turned him into the frontrunner. Only the extreme Republican right represented by Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee, in disagreement with some insignificant McCain concessions, was still offering some resistance on February 5th. Subsequently, Romney would also withdraw in favor of McCain. Huckabee is still in the contest.
On the other hand, the struggle for the Democratic Party candidate is much tougher. Even though we are dealing, as usual, with an active part of the enfranchised population that tends to be a minority, we are already hearing all kinds of opinions and speculations about the consequences of the final outcome of the electoral battle for the country and the world, if mankind escapes the warmongering adventures of Bush.
It is not up to me to talk about the history of a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I have never done so, and perhaps I would never have. Why should I be doing it at this time?
McCain has said that some of his comrades were tortured by Cuban agents in Vietnam. His advocates and publicity experts tend to emphasize that McCain himself suffered such torture at the hands of the Cubans.
I hope that the U.S. people will understand that I consider it my obligation to enter into a detailed analysis of this Republican candidate and to respond to him. I shall do so on the basis of ethical considerations.
The McCain file shows that he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam from October 26, 1967.
As he tells it himself, he was 31 years old at the time and flying his 23rd bombing mission. His plane, an A-4E Skyhawk was shot down over Hanoi by an anti-aircraft missile. Because of the hit, he lost control and ejected over Truc Bach Lake, in the middle of the city, suffering fractures in both arms and one knee. A patriotic crowd, seeing an aggressor come down, gave him a hostile reception. McCain himself says he was relieved at that moment to see the arrival of an army squad.
The bombing of Vietnam, begun in 1965, shocked international opinion, very sensitized to air attacks by the superpower against a small third world country which had been turned into a French colony, thousands of miles away from distant Europe. The Vietnamese people fought against Japanese occupation forces during World War II and, when that war ended, France once again took control. Ho Chi Minh, the modest leader who was much loved by all, and Nguyen Giap, his military commander, were internationally admired figures. The famous French Foreign Legion had been defeated. In trying to avoid that, the aggressor powers were at the point of using a nuclear weapon at Diên Biên Phu.
The noble "anamitas", as José Martí affectionately called them, holders of millenary culture and values were portrayed, to U.S. public opinion, as a barbarian people unworthy of existence. In terms of suspense and commercial advertising, nobody can compete with the American specialists. The specialty was used unrestrictedly in the case of the POWs, and particularly in the case of McCain.
Going along with that, McCain later said that the fact that his father was an Admiral and commanded the U.S. forces in the Pacific led the Vietnamese Resistance to offer him early liberation if he would admit that he had committed war crimes; he refused, arguing that the Military Code provides that prisoners be liberated in the order they were captured, and that meant five years of prison, beatings and torture in a prison area the Americans called the "Hanoi Hilton."
The final pull out from Vietnam was disastrous. An army which was half a million strong, trained and armed to the teeth, could not hold back the thrust of the Vietnamese patriots. Saigon, the colonial capital, today called Ho Chi Minh City, was embarrassingly abandoned by the occupation forces and their accomplices, some of them holding to helicopters. The United States lost more than 50 thousand of their precious sons and daughters, not counting those that were wounded. They had spent 500 billion dollars in that war without taxes, always distasteful in their own right. Nixon unilaterally revoked the commitments of Bretton Woods setting the foundations of today’s financial crisis. Their only achievement was a Republican Presidential candidate 41 years later.
McCain, one of the many U.S. pilots shot down and wounded in the declared, or undeclared, wars of their country, was decorated with the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.
A TV movie based on his memoirs of the experiences as a POW was broadcast on Memorial Day of 2005 and he became famous for videos and speeches on the subject.
The worst statement he made regarding our country was that Cuban interrogators had been regularly torturing American prisoners.
As a reaction to McCain’s incredible words, I became interested in the matter. I wanted to know where such a strange legend had come from. I asked that someone find information on the attribution. I was informed that there was a highly promoted book which was the basis for the movie. This was written by McCain and Mark Salter, his Senate administrative advisor, who continues to work and write with him. I asked for it to be translated. This was done, as on other occasions, very quickly by qualified staff. The title of the book: Faith of My Fathers, 349 pages, published in 1999.
His accusation against internationalist Cuban revolutionaries --using the nickname Fidel to identify one of them who was capable of "torturing a prisoner to death"-- is totally lacking in any ethics.
Allow me to remind you, Mr. McCain: The commandments of your religion forbid you from lying. Your years in prison and the wounds you received as a result of your attacks on Hanoi do not excuse you from the moral duty of truth.
Some facts must be brought to your attention. In Cuba, we had a rebellion against a despot who was put into power by the United States on March 10, 1952, imposed on the Cuban people, when you were just about to turn 16 years old, and the Republican government of a celebrated soldier, Dwight D. Eisenhower –who indeed was the first one to speak of the industrial-military complex– immediately recognized and supported that government. I was a bit older than you; I would have my 26 birthday that August, the same month when you were born. Eisenhower had not yet completed his presidential term that had begun in the 1950’s, some years after he became famous for the allied landing in the north of France, with the support of 10 thousand planes and the most powerful naval force known up to that time.
It was a war, formally declared by the powers fighting Hitler. The Nazis had launched a pre-emptive attack, without warning and without any prior declaration of war. A new style of producing great slaughters was imposed on mankind.
In 1945, two bombs of roughly 20 kilotons each were used against the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I once visited the first of those cities.
In the 1950’s, the government of the United States came to build such nuclear attack weapons. One of them, the MR17, came to weigh 19.05 tons and measured 7.49 meters; it would be carried in their bombers and would unleash an explosion of 20 megatons, equivalent to a thousand bombs like the one that was dropped over the first of those two cities on August 6, 1945. It is a fact that would infuriate Einstein who, in the midst of his contradictions, would often express regret about the weapon that, without meaning to, he helped to manufacture, with his scientific theories and discoveries.
When the Revolution triumphs in Cuba on January 1st, 1959, almost 15 years after the explosion of the first nuclear weapons, and we proclaim an Agrarian Reform Act based on the principle of national sovereignty, consecrated by the blood of millions of combatants who died in that war, the United States response was a program of illegal deeds and terrorist attacks against the Cuban people, signed by the President of the United States himself, Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The attack on the Bay of Pigs followed the exact instructions of the President of the United States and the invaders were escorted by U.S. naval units, including an aircraft carrier. The first air assault with U.S. B-26 planes flying out of secret bases was a pre-emptive attack using Cuban markings on the planes so that world opinion would see this as a revolt by our national air force.
You accuse Cuban revolutionaries of being torturers. I seriously urge you to find a single one of the more than a thousand prisoners captured during the Bay of Pigs fighting who had been tortured. I was there, not in some protected position at a distant general command post. I personally captured a number of prisoners with the help of some assistants; I walked in front of armed squads who were still lying under cover of the forest’s vegetation, paralyzed by the presence of the Chief of the Revolution. I’m sorry that I have to mention this because it might appear to be boasting, and that is something I honestly detest.
The prisoners were citizens born in Cuba organized by a powerful foreign power to fight against their own people.
You have admitted that you are in favor of the death penalty for very serious crimes. What would have you done if faced by such acts? How many would you have sentenced for that treason? In Cuba, we tried several of the invaders who, under Batista's orders, had previously committed horrendous crimes against Cuban revolutionaries.
I visited the mass of Bay of Pigs prisoners, --that is how you call the Girón Beach invasion-- on more than one occasion, and I talked with them. I like to find out man’s motives. They showed surprise and expressed their acknowledgement of the personal respect with which they were treated.
You should know that while we were negotiating their liberation in exchange for compensation by food and medicines for children, the U.S. government was organizing plans to assassinate me. There is a record of this in what was written by people taking part in the negotiation process.
I shall not go into detail about the long list of hundreds of assassination attempts on me. None of this is made up. It has been stated in official documents circulated by the U.S. government.
What ethics underlie such deeds, vehemently defended by you as a matter of principles?

I shall attempt to delve deeper into those matters.

Fidel Castro Ruz

February 10, 2008.

Time: 6:35 p.m.

From: http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art01.html

Second Part of this reflection from Fidel:

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art102.html

Other reflections:

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/secciones/reflexiones/index.html

More news related to the CUBAN FIVE :

- CIA continues to manage Miami terrorist groups:
http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2008/febrero/vier8/06agee.html

- Code Pink resumes Miami campaign against Posada Carriles:
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/international/2008-02-11/code-pink-resumes-miami-campaign-against-posada-carriles/

- Cuban Five Case draws attention in Vermont:

http://www.cubanews.ain.cu/2008/0211casocinco.htm

- Prepared Statement of Journalist Ann Louise Bardach:

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/bar111507.htm

- The Five Cuban Prisoners - Defending Against Terrorism (Philip Agee):

http://www.freethefive.org/updates/IntlMedia/IMAgee112007.htm

- Luis Posada Carriles and the Bombing of Cubana Flight CU-455 (Peter Kornbluh):

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/kor111507.htm

- Testimony for Hearing before Committee on Foreign Affairs’ Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight (Blake Fleetwood):

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/fle111507.htm

- U.S./Cuba: Justice Not So Blind in Politically Charged Cases:

http://www.ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=40994

- The case of the Cuban Five: Where we come from, where we go from here:

http://www.freethefive.org/legalFront/LFRoberto012908.htm

- FBI turned to perjury to protect Posada:

http://www.freethefive.org/usTerrorism/USTerrFBIPerjury012508.htm

- Former Panamanian Officials on Trial for Release of Posada Carriles:

http://www.cubanews.ain.cu/2008/0108posadacarriles.htm

- The coddled "terrorists" of South Florida:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/01/14/cuba/print.html

See also:

http://www.antiterroristas.cu

http://www.freethefive.org

http://www.freethefive.org/usTerrorism/USTerrDelahuntHearing111507.htm

http://www.granma.cu/miami5/ingles/index.html

http://www.codepink4peace.org/article.php?list=type&type=344

http://www.cubainformacion.tv

http://www.cubanradio.cu

In Great Britain and Ireland:

http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/

http://www.ratb.org.uk/

http://www.cubansarecoming.org/

http://www.cubasol-manch.org.uk/

http://www.cymru-cuba.cjb.net/

http://www.cubasupport.com/

The Republican Candidate 3
(Part Three)

Fidel Castro Ruz

Yesterday, I said that while Bush was speaking to Congress, McCain was being honored at the Versailles Restaurant of Little Havana.
It was there that most of the fiercest enemies of the Cuban Revolution and their families took up residence, Batista’s followers, the big landowners, owners of apartment buildings and millionaires who tyrannized and plundered our people. The United States government has used them at will, to organize invaders and terrorists who have shed our people’s blood through almost 50 years. Later, illegal emigrants joined that stream, along with the Cuban Adjustment Act and the brutal blockade imposed on the people of Cuba.
It is incredible that, in this day and age, the Republican candidate, honored as a hero, is turned into an instrument of that Mafia. Nobody having an ounce of self-esteem would commit such a serious lapse in ethics.
Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario and Lincoln Díaz-Balart, Senator Mel Martínez, also of Cuban descent, Governor Charles Christ and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman have become the candidate’s linchpins in the attempt to win Florida and his main advisors for Latin America policy.
What can Latin Americans possibly hope for with such advisors?
Ros-Lehtinen described McCain as being "strong on national defense" and "also understanding the threat posed by the Castro regime".
McCain shone in his participation at a hearing on Cuba which he held on May 21, 2002, at the Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Foreign Trade and Tourism of the Science and Transportation Committee; there he reiterated that our country poses a threat to the United States because of its capacity to produce biological weapons, something James Carter demonstrated to be ridiculous.
As for the proposals to relax the travel to Cuba policy, in October of 2003 McCain introduced a motion to interrupt the debate on these topics.
Particularly interesting was the introduction in March 2005 of a bill entitled "Advance Democracy Act of 2005", authorizing funds, reinforcing subversion, establishing new structures and proposing additional mechanisms to exert pressure on Cuba.
Alluding to the light pirate planes downed on February 24, 1996, he declared: "If I were President of the United States, I would order an investigation on the downing of those brave men who were murdered under orders of Fidel and Raúl Castro, and I would indict them."
In another one of his capricious declarations he stated that "when freedom comes to Cuba, he would like to meet the Cubans who tortured some of his comrades during the Vietnam War". The nerve of that obsessive candidate!
Let’s move on to the crux of his thinking.
What kind of political education did he get? None. He was trained as a war pilot based on his physical attributes for flying an attack plane. What was his predominant trait? Family traditions and his strong political motivation.
In his memoirs, he writes: "My father rose to high command when communism had replaced fascism as the dominant threat to American security. He hated it fiercely and dedicated himself to its annihilation. He believed that we were locked on inescapably in a life-and-death struggle with the Soviets. One side or the other would ultimately win total victory, and sea power would prove critical to the outcome. He was outspoken on the subject."
"In 1965, violent clashes between warring factions, one of which was believed to be a Communist front, had brought the Dominican Republic to the verge of civil war. President Johnson ordered my father to command the amphibious assault on Operation Steel Pike 1, the invasion and military occupation of the Caribbean nation. The operation was controversial. Critics judged it, with good reason, to be an unlawful intervention in the affairs of a sovereign nation. My father, typically, was undeterred by domestic opposition.
"’Some people condemned this as an unwarranted intervention,’ he observed, ‘but the Communist were all set to move in and take over. People may not love you for being strong when you have to be, but they respect you for it and learn to behave themselves when you are.’
"His subsequent assignment at the United Nations, however, was regarded by the Navy as a dead end and was expected to be his last. He was a three-star admiral, and the prospects for a fourth star were remote. But two years later he was ordered to London to assume command of all U.S. naval forces in Europe. A fourth star came with the job... Within a year, he was given command of all U.S. forces in the Pacific, the largest operational military command in the world."
When McCain was returning from his training flight as a cadet, he passed through the occupied territory of Guantánamo.
"Guantánamo in those pre-Castro days was a wild place. Everyone went ashore and headed immediately for huge tents that had been set up on the base as temporary bars, where great quantities of strong Cuban beer and an even more potent rum punch were served to anyone who professed a thirst and could afford a nickel a drink."
"I was proud to graduate from the Naval Academy. But at that moment, relief was the emotion I felt most keenly. I had already been accepted for flight training in Pensacola. In those days, all you had to do was pass the physical to qualify for flight training, and I was eager to embark on the life of a carefree naval aviator."
"In October 1962, I was just returning to home port at Norfolk after completing a Mediterranean deployment aboard the Enterprise. My squadron had flown off the Enterprise and returned to Oceana Naval Air Station while the ship put in at Norfolk".
"A few days after our return, we unexpectedly received orders to fly our planes back to the carrier. Our superiors explained the unusual order by informing us that a hurricane was headed our way."
"We flew all our planes back to the carrier within twenty four- hours and headed out to sea. In addition to our A-1s, the Enterprise carried long-range attack planes, which typically had a hard time managing carrier takeoffs and landings. We embarked on our mysterious deployment without them."
"Our air boss turned to a representative of the Marine squadron and said we didn’t have time to wait for all their planes to land; some of them would have to return to their base.
"I was quite puzzled by the apparent urgency of our mission, we’d been hustled back in one day, leaving some of our planes behind; the Marine squadron has been ordered to join us with only enough fuel to land or ditch. The mystery was solved a short while later when all pilots were assembled in the Enterprise’s ready room to listen to a broadcast of President Kennedy informing the nation that the Soviets were basing nuclear missiles in Cuba."
This time he was referring to the well-known October Missile Crisis of 1962, more than 45 years ago; it left him with the underlying desire to attack our country.
"The Enterprise, sailing at full speed under nuclear power, was the first U.S. carrier to reach waters off Cuba. For about five days, the pilots on the Enterprise believed we were going into action. We have never been in combat before, and despite the global confrontation a strike on Cuba portended, we were prepared and anxious to fly our first mission. The atmosphere aboard ship was fairly tense, but not overly so. Pilots and crew men alike adopted a cool-headed business-as-usual attitude toward the mission. Inwardly, of course, we were excited as hell, but we kept our composure and aped the standard image of a laconic, reserved and fearless American at war."
"After five days the tension eased, as it became apparent the crisis would be resolved peacefully. We weren’t disappointed to be denied our first combat experience, but our appetites were whetted and our imaginations fueled. We eagerly anticipated the occasion when we would have the chance to do what we were trained to do, and discover, at last, if we were brave enough for the job."
Further on, he describes the accident on the nuclear aircraft carrier, the Forrestal, in the Gulf of Tonkin. One hundred and thirty-four young Americans, many of them 18 and 19 years old, died in a huge effort to save the vessel. The carrier, peppered with perforations from the exploded bombs, had to sail to the United States to be reconstructed. It would be necessary to check what was published at the time and the approach taken on the subject.
McCain is then moved on to another conventional type of aircraft carrier in the same waters, with the same objective. Each one of the author’s self-definitions warrants close observation.
"On September 30, 1967, I reported for duty to the Oriskany and joined VA-163 –an A-4 attack squadron nicknamed ‘the Saints’. During the three years of Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign of North Vietnam begun in 1965, no carrier’s pilots saw more action or suffered more losses than those on the Oriskany. When the Johnson administration halted Rolling Thunder in 1968, thirty-eight pilots on the Oriskany had been either killed or captured. Sixty planes had been lost, including twenty-nine A-4s. The Saints suffered the highest casualty rate. In 1967, one-third of the squadron’s pilots were killed or captured. Every single one of the Saints’ original fifteen A-4s had been destroyed. We had a reputation for aggressiveness, and for success. In the months before I joined the squadron, the Saints had destroyed all the bridges to the port city of Haiphong."
"Like all combat pilots, we had a studied, almost macabre indifference to death that masked a great sadness in the squadron, a sadness that grew more pervasive as our casualty list lengthened.
"We flew the next raid with greater determination to do as much damage as we could.
"I was just about to release my bombs when the tone sounded.
"I knew I was hit. My A-4, traveling at about 550 miles an hour, was violently spiraling to earth"
"I reacted automatically the moment I took the hit and saw that my wing was gone. I radioed, "I’m hit," reached up, and pulled the ejection seat handle."
"I struck part of the airplane, breaking my left arm, my right arm in three places, and my right knee, and I was briefly knocked unconscious by the force of the ejection. Witnesses said my chute had barely opened before I plunged into the shallow water of Truc Back Lake. I landed in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day."
"My father wasn’t much of a believer in fighting wars by half measures. He regarded self-restraint as an admirable human quality, but when fighting wars he believed in taking all necessary measures to bring the conflict to a swift and successful conclusion. The Vietnam War was fought neither swiftly nor successfully, and I know this frustrated him greatly."
"In a speech he gave after he retired, he argued that "two deplorable decisions" had doomed the United States to failure in Vietnam: "The first was the public decision to forbid U.S. troops to enter North Vietnam and beat the enemy on his home ground...The second was...to forbid the bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong until the last two weeks of the conflict..."
"These two decisions combined to allow Hanoi to adopt whatever strategy they wished, knowing that there would be virtually no reprisal, no counterattack."
"When the North Vietnamese launched a major offensive in December 1971, at a time when U.S. forces in Vietnam had been reduced to 69,000 men, President Nixon finally directed my father to mine Haiphong and other northern ports immediately. The Nixon administration had dispensed with much of the micromanaging of the war that had so ill served the Johnson administration, particularly the absurd target restrictions imposed on American bomber pilots."
"Relations between military commanders and their civilian superiors improved when President Nixon and Defense Secretary Melvin Laird entered office. The new administration was clearly more interested in and supportive of the views of the generals and admirals who were prosecuting the war. My father had a good relationship with both Nixon and Laird, as well as with the President’s National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger."
He does not hide his feelings when speaking of the bombing victims. His words ooze intense hatred.
"Our situation improved even more in April 1972, when President Nixon resumed the bombing of North Vietnam and, on my father’s orders, the first bombs since March 1968 began falling on Hanoi. Operation Linebacker, as the campaign was called, brought B-52s, with their huge payload of bombs."
"The misery we had endured prior to 1972 was made all the worse by our fear that the United States was unprepared to do what was necessary to bring the war to a reasonably swift conclusion. We could never see over the horizon to the day when the war would end. Whether you supported the war or opposed it –and I met a few POWs who argued the latter position –no one believed the war should be prosecuted in the manner in which the Johnson administration had fought it."
"The B-52s terrorized Hanoi for eleven nights. Wave after wave they came. During the days, while the strategic bombers were refueled and rearmed, other aircraft took up the assault. The Vietnamese got the point."
"Our senior officers, knowing that this moment was imminent, had warned us not to demonstrate our emotions when the agreement was announced."
He oozes hatred of the Vietnamese. He was ready to exterminate them all.
"By the time the end did come, with the signing in Paris of the peace accords, my father had retired from active duty. No longer restrained by his role as a subordinate to civilian superiors, he dismissed the agreement. ‘In our anxiety to get out of the war, we signed a very bad deal.’"
These paragraphs reflect McCain’s most intimate thoughts. The worst comes when he yields to the idea of making a declaration against the war being waged by his country. He cannot help but mention that in his book. How does he do this?
"He (his father) had received a report that a heavily edited propaganda broadcast, purported to have been made by me, had been analyzed, and the voice compared to my taped interview with the French journalist. The two voices were judged to be the same. In the anguished days right after my confession, I had dreaded just such a discovery by my father.
"After I came home, he never mentioned to me that he had learned about my confession, and, although I told him about it, I never discussed it at length. I only recently learned that the tape I dreamed I heard playing over the loudspeaker in my cell had been real; it had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father.
"If I had known at the time my father had heard about my confession, I would have been distressed beyond imagination, and might not have recovered from the experience as quickly as I did. But in the years that have passed since the event, my regard for my father and for myself has matured. I understand better the nature of strong character.
"My father was a strong enough man not to judge too harshly the character of a son who had reached his limits and found that they were well short of the standards of the idealized heroes who had inspired us as boys."
I don’t criticize him for this. It would be heartless and inhuman. That’s not my aim. What we need to do now is to unmask a policy which is not an individual one, but one that is shared by many, since the objective truth will always be difficult to understand.
Has McCain ever thought about the anti-terrorist Five Cuban Heroes who were imprisoned in solitary cells just like the ones he says he hates, forced to appear before a jury from Little Havana for crimes they never committed, with three of them sentenced to one and even two life sentences, and the others to 19 and 15 years in prison?
Does he know that the United States authorities received information that could prevent death by terrorism of U.S. citizens?
Is he aware of the activities of Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, the men responsible for blowing up a Cuban airliner in mid-flight, killing its 73 occupants?
Why doesn’t he talk about that to the cadets at Annapolis?
The Cuban heroes are about to complete 10 years in prison. They have never murdered or tortured anyone. Don’t accuse them now of being in Vietnam torturing American pilots.
I know about your declarations at the school where you graduated as a cadet. I appreciate your noble wish to not answer me so as not to dignify me. The only sad mix-up –and it was not the intent of some news agencies that ran my first reflection on the subject– is that I asked for proof. You can’t prove something that didn’t happen. I asked for ethics.

I shall continue.

Fidel Castro Ruz

February 12, 2008.

7:26 p.m.

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art26.html