Cuba a bioweapons 'threat,' U.S. says

[teach1st]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/8316400.htm

Miami Herald, 3/31

The Bush administration continues to believe there's a ''strong'' case that Cuba has a limited biological weapons effort, although some of the intelligence is ''questionable,'' according to testimony on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

''The case for the existence of a developmental Cuba BW R&D effort is strong,'' John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, told the House International Relations Committee.

''The administration believes that Cuba remains a terrorist and BW threat to the United States,'' he added.

Bolton's testimony, part of his statement during a hearing on nuclear nonproliferation, reiterated many of the same allegations he raised in 2002, when he alleged Havana had a ''limited developmental offensive biological warfare research and development effort'' and was exporting its technology to ''rogue'' nations.

More

[rooboy]

1. Yeah sure...

but only if you get half a million Cubans to eat beans and drop their shorts in America's general direction on a windy day.

[skooooo]

3. What are Castro's "intentions"???

Isn't this what matters to the US government now? Intention? That's what they're saying since they didn't find any WMD in Iraq. Elimination of potential threat...Bush is just itching to start another war.

[mouse7]

2. Candy Crowley is more of a bioweapons threat than Cuba

Look out after Candy hits those free burrito buffets they put out for the press out on the campaign trail.

[rooboy]

4. Look out!!! It's Candy al Qaeda !! n/t

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Terrorists from al-Frijole and al-Habichuela

Castro is secretly planning to send a crack squad of fanatically loyal frijoleros trained in bioterrorism to infiltrate the USA, engorge themselves with leguminous products from Taco Bell, and subject the population to flatulo-terrorism.

It's even more shocking than Fluoride, or Nutra-Sweet, or the subversive hypnotic jungle beats of Peter, Paul and Mary. This dagger to the loins of America must be stopped!

And that is why I am asking for a $750 billion Emergency Federal appropriation to fund a Strategic Beano Initiative to stop these fiends in their tracks.

We must not allow America to fall behind in the Intestinal Gas Gap!

--bkl
"Okay, Mr. BKL, what does this next ink blot mean to you?

[cryofan]

6. Un-be-LEIVE-able that they have ANY credibility left. CorpGovMedia just...

....continues to give BushCo a free pass....

I guess they are afraid that Cuba is progressing and getting stronger and it will soon pose more of a "threat of a good example" of how socialism can and will work to better the lives of people.

[rooboy]

7. Next thing you know, Fox will blame Castro for Guantanamo Bay.. n/t

[Stockholm]

10. Next thing you know,

Bush & Co will invoke their right of self defence/pre-emptive strike as demonstrated by their actions in Iraq and invade Cuba.

[Turbineguy]

8. Well at least we know who Bush

will attack after the election, just as soon as Rove gives him permission.

[Iceburg]

9. Pineapples --- "Limited biological weapons" ?

If this administration starts to put heat on Cuba, then America is in BIG trouble. This may come as news to most Americans, but Cuba has more friends and allies in the free world than America at this point. With certainty, Canada will not sit idle while America invades Cuba, neither will Mexico, Spain, most South American countries, Germany, France, Russia, Finnland, Sweden and many more. Tony Blair will have to decide which team he is on since Britain is a Cuba-friendly nation.

[acmavm]

11. Yeah, right. And John Bolton is an oracle of truth. That guy needs to be

stuffed in a closet somewhere.

[LunaC]

12. Now you know why Haiti went up in smoke

With Aristide out they can set up any kind of military base operations they like and Haiti is the perfect launch-point for invading Cuba.
I was wondering when they'd get around to specifically targeting Cuba....doncha' know that Fidel is another "bad, bad man" who refuses to buckle under U.S. sanctions. How dare he hinder U.S. corporations from exploiting all that cheap labor!

[no_hypocrisy]

13. Here we go. Deja vu all over again.

What was Iraq? The warm-up?

[ima_sinnic]

14. B*sh announced publicly in Oct. a plan to bring down Castro

see Nov 22-Dec 5 2003 Frontline:
The Bush Plan for Cuba
by Sharmini Peries

President Bush's recently unveiled plan to bring down the Fidel Castro government in Cuba bears close resemblance to the one for Iraq and is designed with the 2004 Presidential election in focus.

FOREGROUNDING the 2004 United States election campaign, President George W. Bush announced on October 10 before a gathering of anti-Castro Cuban-American constituents at a ceremony in the White House's Rose Garden that the U.S. administration was planning to bring down President Fidel Castro's Cuban government. In the statement, Bush officially directed his Secretary of State Colin Powell and Cuban-born Housing Secretary Mel Martinez to chair a panel that would "plan for the happy days when Castro's regime is no more... The transition to democracy and freedom will present many challenges to the Cuban people and to America, and we will be prepared." ...

</snip>

words can't express the revulsion, the hatred I feel for the slime who have hijacked our government.

[keithyboy]

15. Whatever Cuba has, it's to protect them from the US

Folks, we have got to get this administration out of office AND out of power. If they go after Cuba, their should be active demonstrations in our streets. How can a so-called 'Christian' nation allow this administration to get away with this evil agenda? We are about to turn the Hispanic communities among us into enemies.

[sniffa]

16. coincidence?

besides the fact that cuba is Listed on the PNAC agenda.... there's oiL off the coast of cuba, just ripe for extraction.

honestLy, is anyone gonna be duped again on wmd's?

"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once -- shame on -- shame on you. You fool me, you can't get fooled again."

[Media_Lies_Daily]

17. If there are any WMDs of any kind remaining in Cuba, they were...

...left behind when the old Soviets pulled back to the borders of Russia.

I'm going out on a limb here, but I seriously doubt that the Soviets would have left ANYTHING behind when they left Cuba, much less any form of WMDs.

[Judi Lynn]

18. They already tried to put this one over on everyone two years ago

(snip)
May 14, 2002


Carter Challenges Bush Administration on Cuba Bioterror
By Greg Flakus

HAVANA (voa) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has challenged the Bush administration to back allegations that Cuba is involved in developing biological weapons and exporting the knowledge to terrorist-supporting nations.

Visiting Cuba's biotechnology institute and speaking before an audience that included Cuban President Fidel Castro, Mr. Carter said he had been briefed by U.S. State Department officials before initiating his trip, and that no one had said Cuba was involved in making biological weapons. He said he had even asked specifically if there were any evidence that Cuba was supporting terrorist activities in other nations, and that no such evidence was presented.

Mr. Carter then challenged those in Washington who have concerns about Cuban biotechnology laboratories to come and inspect them. "In the welcoming address at the airport when we arrived ," Mr. Carter told the Cubans, "your president publicly offered that any person who wanted to come and investigate any allegations concerning this bio-terrorism issue would be free and welcome to come, without restraint, and my presumption is that anyone who does have evidence of this kind will take advantage of this offer."

The allegation against Cuba came from U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton last week. He said Cuba was developing biological weapons and sharing the information with several other nations that have been linked to terrorism. Mr. Carter noted the timing of this allegation just days before his trip to Cuba.
(snip/...)

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=2932

Photos from that trip:



(snip)
'No Evidence'
Former President Carter Visits Bio-Tech Center; Challenges Bio-Terror Charges

By Andrew Chang



H A V A N A , May 13 — Jimmy Carter toured a major biotechnology lab in Cuba today and said U.S. officials told him they had no evidence that Cuba was sharing information with other countries that could be used for terrorist purposes.
The former president told a gathering at Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology that before beginning his trip, he had asked the White House, State Department and intelligence officials "specifically on more than one occasion is there any evidence that Cuba has been involved in sharing any information to any other country on Earth that could be used for terrorist purposes."

"The answer from our experts on intelligence was 'no,'" Carter said.

Carter spoke as he was touring the research facility, which the Bush administration believes is a threat to U.S. national security. Carter said he was raising the issue "with some degree of reluctance."

Last week, Undersecretary of State John Bolton said the United States believed Havana had "at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort provided dual-use technology to other rogue states."
(snip/...)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/cuba020513.html

[Gman]

19. Bolton just never gives it up, does he?

This has already been shown to be a lie quite some time ago. So now they figure people have already forgotten and now its time to bring it back up again.

Actually, Cuba is a country at the forefront of battling disease in 3rd world countries. Even some American pharmaceuticals want to patent some of the drugs Cuba has developed. Wish I had a link to this. But I read it a few months ago.

Here's an article about Cuba's pharmaceuticals. They're the only country with a vaccine against Meningitis B. They distribute it for free to all their children. They also provide it to other counties:

http://www.aegis.com/news/ips/2001/IP010312.html

[Vogon_Glory]

20. Bio weapons Claim As A Cover For Economic Sabotage

John Bolton’s repeated claim that Cuba supposedly has limited biological warfare capability is less an expression of concern regarding Cuba’s current military capabilities than a thinly-veiled cover for further US sabotage of the Cuban economy.

Cuba is a country facing a hostile regime capable of overrunning it even with that regime having massive military commitments elsewhere. A genuine bio-warfare program would be less of a deterrent than a provocation for a US military invasion. Whatever may be said of Fidel Castro’s economic policies, when it comes to politics, Castro has proven to be no fool when it comes to politics.

More than likely, Bolton’s repeated claim that Cuba supposedly has a biological warfare program is a Boosh regime effort to further sabotage the Cuban economy. Anyone who has done even the slightest amount of research in recent years concerning the Cuban economy since 1990 knows that Cuba has developed a bio-tech industry that is beginning to bring products to the world market. Bolton’s allegation may only be to “justify” the continuing trade embargo and travel ban, but after the invasion of Iraq, the dishonest Banana Republican regime in DC has shown that it would happily use a phony threat of “biological warfare” as a rationale for sending agents to disrupt agricultural experiments or to aid outright intellectual property theft for the benefit of Boosh regime corporate donors by sampling made in the name of “weapons inspection.”

Personally, I'd welcome Cuba admitting genuine weapons inspectors. But Cuba probably has reason to be concerned about Yanqui experiment or production disruption intellectual property theft than it does about "bioweapons" running amok.

[Mika]

22. Cuba to US: 'We''ll Allow Weapons Inspections If You Will'

Cuba: We will Allow Weapons Inspections If You Will

May 14, 2002

(CNSNews.com) - A top Cuban government official says Cuba will allow United Nations weapons inspectors to examine the country's biotechnology program, but only if the United States will open its doors to similar inspections.

According to a Radio Havana report, Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon on Monday categorically denied that his country is producing biological weapons.

Undersecretary of State John Bolton alleged that "Cuba has at least a limited offensive biological warfare research and development effort." During a speech in Washington last week, Bolton said Cuba may even be exporting its bio-weapons know-how to U.S. enemies.

Alarcon said Bolton should present proof of his accusations. But he also said such evidence will be hard to find because the allegations are completely false.

---

... because our Bonesman is better than their Bonesman

[Minstrel Boy]

21. Biological warfare has been waged AGAINST Cuba

From time to time since 1959 there have been reports of plagues spread by US and Cuban American forces in Cuba. One of the most recent of these was the 1996 Thrips Palmi infestation in the Province of Matanzas, a cradle of African culture in Cuba. If you read the protest note to the UN written by the Cubans, you can observe how the American government damned itself by the very foolishness of its own defense, entangling itself in a web of lies and deceit in an attempt to deny its role.

The history of biowar attacks against Cuba is said to be well documented. This history will help us understand how the Cubans came to be "paranoid" and why they may be so concerned about their national security and prone to crackdown on contacts with foreigners.... And lest anyone think this is unproven, it has been confessed to by participants in US courts!
http://www.afrocubaweb.com/biowar.htm


Cuba's Granma newspaper also ran an article today listing some of the most well-known cases of U.S. biological warfare against Cuba. The Cuban daily recalled that between 1961 and 1962, the CIA -- under orders from the White House -- organized Operation Mongoose, aimed at destroying the Cuban Revolution. The plan included the use of chemicals to incapacitate Cuban sugar workers and thus negatively affect the island's principal industry.

In 1971, the Long Island daily "Newsday" revealed that U.S. agents operating inside Cuba received a virus from Fort Gulik, in the Panama Canal zone, transported by a fishing boat. "The Fish Is Red," a book published in the early 1980s, confirmed that CIA agents first introduced a swine fever virus into Cuba in 1972. Cuba had to sacrifice 500,000 pigs to fight the epidemic.

Between 1979 and 1981, continues the Granma article, four plagues were introduced into Cuba that affected people and crops vital to the Cuban economy: hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, dengue, sugarcane mildew and tobacco mold. Dengue alone killed 158 Cubans, among them 101 children. During the first seven weeks, dengue affected 273,404 Cuban. In 1979, "The Washington Post" reported that the CIA had elaborated a program against Cuban agriculture and that since 1962, the Pentagon had been producing biological agents specifically for that purpose.

Finally, Cuba's Granma newspaper recalled that in 1984, Cuban- American terrorist Eduardo Arocena admitted before a U.S. Grand Jury that he had participated in a biological warfare operation against Cuba and had introduced biological agents after infiltrating the island.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/43b/067.html


While accusations of biological warfare by Cuba are utterly bogus, a typical Cold War “disinformation” campaign, the United States government has a long history of using biological and chemical warfare against the Caribbean island nation. In 1961-62, the CIA’s infamous “Operation Mongoose” sought to cause sickness among sugar cane workers by spreading chemicals on the cane fields. U.S. agents repeatedly contaminated exported Cuban sugar. The CIA later admitted that during the 1960s it undertook clandestine anti-crop warfare “research” targeting a number of countries under its MK-ULTRA program, but claimed its records had been destroyed. At the end of the decade, as Castro tried to mobilize the population to bring in ten million tons of sugar, in addition to the regime’s rampant bureaucratic snafus the CIA sabotaged the harvest by seeding clouds to cause torrential rains in nearby provinces while leaving the cane fields parched (see William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II ).

After that “success,” the U.S. moved on to introduce African swine fever to Cuba in 1971. This was the first outbreak of swine fever in the Western Hemisphere. As a result of the epidemic, Cuba was forced to slaughter the entire pig population (some 500,000 animals), eliminating the supply of pork, a staple of the Cuban diet. When Cuban government spokesmen first accused Washington of unleashing the biological attack, U.S. officials dismissed this with a wave of the hand. However, six years later, following the post-Watergate Congressional investigations of skullduggery by U.S. intelligence agencies, a New York paper reported that a “U.S. intelligence source” told the paper that “he was given the virus in a sealed, unmarked container at a U.S. Army base and CIA training ground in Panama with instructions to turn it over to the anti-Castro group” (“CIA Link to Cuban Pig Virus Reported,” Newsday, 10 January 1977). The article explained in detail how the virus was transferred from Fort Gulick to Cuba.

A decade later, the U.S. introduced a virulent strain of dengue fever in Cuba, as a result of which 273,000 people on the island came down with the illness and 158 died, including 101 children. An article in Covert Action (Summer 1982) detailed U.S. experiments with dengue fever at the Army’s Fort Detrick chemical/biological warfare center and its research into the Aedes aegypti mosquito which delivers it. The article noted that only Cuba of all the Caribbean countries was affected, and concluded that “the dengue epidemic could have been a covert U.S. operation.” Two years later, a leader of the Omega 7 gusano (Cuban counterrevolutionary) terrorist group, Eduardo Victor Arocena Pérez, admitted (in a Manhattan trial in which he was convicted of murdering an attaché of the Cuban Mission to the UN) that one of their groups had a mission to “carry some germs to introduce them in Cuba to be used against the Soviets and against the Cuban economy, to begin what was called chemical war” just before simultaneous outbreaks of hemorrhagic dengue fever, hemorrhagic conjunctivitis, tobacco mold, sugar cane fungus and a new outbreak of African swine fever (Covert Action, Fall 1984).

These are only a few of the most spectacular and best documented cases of U.S. biological warfare against Cuba. James Banford in his book Body of Secrets (Doubleday, 2001) revealed that while the Pentagon was refining plans for a biological strike on Cuba, in “Operation Northwoods” the U.S. military developed plans to fake incidents to cause popular outrage. These included shooting people on American streets, sinking refugee boats on the high seas and blowing up a U.S. ship in Guantánamo. These was no mere contingency plans. They were drawn up by rabidly anti-Communist general Lyman Lemnitzer, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the suggestion of U.S. president (former general) Eisenhower, and were signed by all of the service chiefs. But they pale in comparison with the operation code-named “Marshall Plan,” which was to have been unleashed if U.S. forces invaded Cuba at the time of the 1962 missile crisis.
http://www.internationalist.org/biowarfareagainstcuba0503.html

[leesa]

23. Shameful murderers the Bush Crime Family are.

[Judi Lynn]

24. For interested parties, here's a Human Rights Watch report

on the Cuban "exile" community extremists in Miami:


August 1992 Volume 4; Issue 7



DANGEROUS DIALOGUE

Attacks on Freedom of Expression
in Miami's Cuban Exile Community
AMERICAS WATCH

THE FUND FOR FREE EXPRESSION


DIVISIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

http://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/U/US/US928.PDF


You may find it truly illuminating to find out more about the people to whom _Bush and other politicians pander year after year. Creepy bunch.

[Mika]

25. Cuba will respond by building more schools and med clinics

Over the last 45 years Cuba has faced US military attacks, terra attacks, bio attacks as well as economic sanctions and threats that would crush just about any other country let alone a Caribbean island.

Cuba has responded to external terra threats by building more schools and medical facilities than Cuba had any time prior. Post revolution -increasing literacy to 100%, increasing Cuban life expectancy to 76+ years, reducing infant mortality to the lowest in the West. Cuba's stats better our own.
http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/learn.htm


Compare that to the US's infrastructure funding response to terra attacks and threats. (Stripping down the schools and medical infrastructure to pay for the largest most dangerous military in the world.)


Cuba will respond to this latest threat from America by building more schools for their children and more med clinics/hospitals for those in need of medical attention/prevention.




Viva Cuba!

[ConcernedCanuk]

26. I think Junior must have just tried to READ something

.
.
.

and read it wrong - - -

From the article:

" . . . Cuba has long ``provided safe haven for terrorists, . . ."

"terrorists" ?

ah I think it meant to read "tourists"

And ya know how Junior hates THAT idea!

. . :shrug: . .

[Judi Lynn]

27. Cuba still spooks the U.S.

Cuba still spooks the U.S.


By PETER McKENNA
Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - Page A21

For more than 40 years now, the thrust of U.S. policy toward Cuba has remained largely static: confrontational, isolationist and vitriolic. You would think that someone might suggest, after four decades of muddling through, that an alternative approach toward Cuba would be in order.

Cuba is still considered a Communist enemy of the United States, and a major rights-abusing state, even though the United States has openly courted an economic relationship with China. Relations are even warming with Moammar Gadhafi's Libya (to which Britain's PM, Tony Blair, recently made a visit), not to mention that U.S. engagement with Vietnam continues.

For a host of reasons, not the least of which is the electoral significance of the state of Florida (and its nearly one million Cuban exiles), the United States can't seem to get past its deep-seated antipathy toward Fidel Castro's Cuba. It doesn't seem to matter whether you're talking about President George W. Bush or Democratic presidential contender, John Kerry.

At the mid-January special Summit of the Americas in Mexico, in pointing to Cuba's record on human rights and democratic freedoms, Mr. Bush bluntly told the assembled nations: "Together we will succeed, because the spirit of liberty still thrives, even in the darkest corners of Fidel Castro's prisons." More recently, his administration revoked provisions that enabled U.S. scholars and representatives of non-governmental organizations to visit Cuba for academic, cultural and professional exchanges.
(snip/...)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040331/COCUBA31/TPComment/TopStories

[BeHereNow]

28. NO FUCKING WAY!!!

Someone wake me- I know I must be dreaming!
Less than a week after buster blather makes JOKES
about no WMD's in Iraq and they parade PNACer
Bolton out to now claim that Cuba has BCW?
These people are INSANE?
Good God when are the people in this country
going to wake up?
WHEN?
WHEN?
WHEN?
This is just fucking unbelievable- the unmitigated gall!
Sorry for ranting, but truly, it is simply too surreal in a
terrifying way.
BHN

[Dr Fate]

29. Bushco already made this claim in 2000...

...it was debunked then- does anyone remember that?

[Dr Fate]

30. Ahhhh - from Post # 18:

May 14, 2002


Carter Challenges Bush Administration on Cuba Bioterror
By Greg Flakus

HAVANA (voa) - Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has challenged the Bush administration to back allegations that Cuba is involved in developing biological weapons and exporting the knowledge to terrorist-supporting nations.

Visiting Cuba's biotechnology institute and speaking before an audience that included Cuban President Fidel Castro, Mr. Carter said he had been briefed by U.S. State Department officials before initiating his trip, and that no one had said Cuba was involved in making biological weapons. He said he had even asked specifically if there were any evidence that Cuba was supporting terrorist activities in other nations, and that no such evidence was presented.

Mr. Carter then challenged those in Washington who have concerns about Cuban biotechnology laboratories to come and inspect them. "In the welcoming address at the airport when we arrived ," Mr. Carter told the Cubans, "your president publicly offered that any person who wanted to come and investigate any allegations concerning this bio-terrorism issue would be free and welcome to come, without restraint, and my presumption is that anyone who does have evidence of this kind will take advantage of this offer."

The allegation against Cuba came from U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton last week. He said Cuba was developing biological weapons and sharing the information with several other nations that have been linked to terrorism. Mr. Carter noted the timing of this allegation just days before his trip to Cuba.
(snip/...)

http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/?articleID=2932

Photos from that trip:

[Hand]

31. They mean a bioTECH threat...

Such as producing low-cost AIDS drugs for Africa... exploring and successfully using traditional medicines in place of expensive imported pharmaceuticals (necessity--foreign exchange)... training med techs to work in their own villages and spreading the example throughout the hemisphere.

Yeah, they're a threat all right--and I for one am damned glad of it!

[rocktivity]

32. Fool us twice?

:headbang:
rocknation

[yellowcanine]

33. Those Cuban cigars that Rush Limbaugh smokes are a bioweapons threat

That and the rum are the only bioweapons threats in Cuba.

[damnraddem]

34. Hmm, this reminds me of something. Now, what could it be?

I guess Dubya just loves going after Weapons of Minimal Detectability.

[pinniped]

35. Has Khrushchev been sending missiles again?

:crazy:

[TXDemGal]

36. What a steaming pile of bullsh*t

These BushCo thugs will never stop. I'd like to say that the way Mussolini died would be too good for them, but that might get Asscrap on my case.

[Hobarticus]

37. Bush just saw "Thirteen Days" and got confused, that's all...

Everyone's too embarrassed to tell him that it's not current events.

[daleo]

38. Bolton = PNAC

They would love to go after Cuba. So many countries, so little time.