CUBA: Lugar, GOP Senate Report Urge Fresh Look at Relations

[magbana]

"Lugar, GOP Senate Report Urge Fresh Look at Relations With Cuba

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, February 21, 2009; A03

Restrictive U.S. policies toward Cuba are ineffective, have failed to achieve their stated purpose of promoting democracy and should be reevaluated to take advantage of recent political changes on the island, according to the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The views of Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) are appended to a report by minority committee staffers that calls for lifting Bush administration restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba, reinstituting formal bilateral cooperation on drug interdiction and migration, and allowing Cuba to buy U.S. agricultural products on credit. Scheduled for release Monday, the report stops short of proposing that the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba be lifted.

A bipartisan congressional majority has long favored easing at least some of the restrictions but was repeatedly thwarted by the Bush White House and the Republican leadership. President Obama pledged during the campaign to lift the travel and remittance restraints, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in written responses to Senate confirmation questions that the administration planned an overall "review" of Cuba policy.

An administration official said yesterday that it was "not unreasonable" to expect that Obama would ease constraints on family travel and remittances to Cuba before he attends the mid-April Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. Latin America and U.S. allies in Europe maintain both diplomatic and trade relations with Cuba.

But Cuba, and Latin America in general, has so far received little attention from the Obama administration amid the turmoil of the economic crisis at home and the Afghan war and other pressing issues abroad. No director for the region has been named within the National Security Council staff, and regional officials at the State Department have remained in place.

Although diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana have been severed and the U.S. trade embargo has remained in place since the early 1960s, additional restrictions on dealings with Cuba have ebbed and flowed since then. Diplomatic interest sections were established in both capitals under President Jimmy Carter, who also opened the door to visits by Cuban Americans to family members on the island.

The embargo was tightened significantly in the mid-1990s with legislation, passed by the Republican Congress but signed by President Bill Clinton, that extended sanctions to third countries trading with Cuba and penalizing foreign countries doing business there. At the same time, Clinton used his presidential authority to allow more extensive nongovernmental exchanges with Cuba and to expand allowable remittances and humanitarian aid by nongovernmental organizations and churches.

In 2003, however, the Bush administration severely restricted person-to-person exchanges and later imposed tight constraints on family travel and remittances. Family visits were restricted to one trip every three years, and then only to visit immediate family members for no more than 14 days. Cash remittances to family members were also sharply restricted. Semiannual meetings on migration issues were ended in 2004, although some Cuban government cooperation with the U.S. Coast Guard on drug interdiction in the Caribbean has continued.

Sales of agricultural goods to Cuba, on a cash-only basis, have been allowed since 2000. Last year, when a series of hurricanes caused extensive crop destruction, those sales rose by 61 percent over 2007 levels.

In his letter to senators, Lugar noted that Obama's election and the replacement of President Fidel Castro with his brother Raúl have generated debate important to U.S. security interests, "broader U.S.-Latin-American relations, and global perceptions of U.S. foreign policy."

"Despite uncertainty about Cuba's mid-term political future," Lugar wrote, "it is clear that the recent leadership changes have created an opportunity for the United States to reevaluate a complex relationship marked by misunderstanding, suspicion, and open hostility.""
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/20/AR2009022003499_pf.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. "Suspicion, and open hostility" are entirely justified, on the part of the very small nation

which has suffered mightily at the hands of a large, steaming, hot and rancid bully which has been breathing down its neck for over a hundred years.

The "conflict" has given a platform to shrieking idiot sadists and psychopaths you would never otherwise notice, putting them in charge of our country's national policy toward a battered, beleaguered, bullied little country ruled by imperious, out-of-touch racists until they were overthrown, and moved here, from which they continued to plot and scheme to get right back square on the backs of their former victims with the physical assistance, and financial backing of U.S. citizens.

It's time to cut these porky little bastards loose, and to make decisions toward Cuba which represent ALL of us.

Stop buying their claims, on one hand, they had to "flee" from Cuba for their lives, so afraid of being eaten by communists, only to engage our politicians in trying to figure out ways we can arrange for these same loud "victims" to finally get the right to go right back there on vacation again, as they always did, in the past, while we blind ourselves to history, and lash ourselves to our own shore, forbidding our OWN ordinary citizens to even step a foot on Cuba's shores, and the "exiles" in Florida suck up multi-million boatloads of our tax dollars annually, running their hate industry, and plotting ways they can get back in there and take over the place before the Cuban governent can guard against them properly on behalf of the Cuban people and their world-famous health and education systems, low crime rate, and common security.

We KNOW how well they ran the island. That's what brought on the violent, painful struggle of the last revolution to rid the island of their evil, poisonous, terminal selfishness, brutal exploitation, and vicious racism. Good for Cuba, but bad for the U.S., as that means they ended up here, and we have far more than enough people like that here already.

Stop coddling the loud little butterball "exiles," stop dumping boatloads of our own tax dollars into their coffers so they can buy our politicians and buy legislation to keep their talons lodged in the backs of the Cubans.

http://penultimosdias.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/ninoskaperez.jpg

Loud Cuban "exile" spokesman from S. Florida,
Ninoska Perez Castellon, the mouth that never sleeps.

http://www.propublica.org.nyud.net:8090/images/articles/alhurra/ap_ros-lehtinen_080623.jpg http://i.realone.com.nyud.net:8090/assets/rn/img/3/4/9/0/13900943-13900945-large.jpg http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com.nyud.net:8090/riptide/OSF-E2016-Pg2-thumb.jpg http://blogs.abcnews.com.nyud.net:8090/photos/uncategorized/menendez_2nd_round_nr.jpg

"She Wolf" Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, Mario Diaz Balart, Robert Menedez

It's time these Cuban clowns start representing Americans in the American capitol, rather than their own special interests.

http://img.photobucket.com.nyud.net:8090/albums/v86/slc987/schutz.jpg http://img.photobucket.com.nyud.net:8090/albums/v86/slc987/meek.jpg

Time for Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Kendrick Meek
to get over their fear of what the Diaz-Balarts, and
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen can do to them, and pull out of
their orbit, and stand up for ALL American citizens.

[Vogon_Glory]

2. When Richard Lugar Speaks, We'll Listen, But Will The Rest of the GOP?

Despite political differences, I've long thought that Republican Senator Lugar has proven himself worth listening to, whether or not I disagree with most of his foreign policy positions or not. The WaPo article makes it look like he's come to his senses, or possibly the Senator has allowed his positions to surface now that Dead-eye Dick and Boosh are out of the White House and the Republicans in the Senate are an increasingly embattled minority.

The question is whether or not the remaining Senate Republicans will vote to support a saner US--Cuba policy. Even excluding CANF and other Cuban exile campaign cash and lobbying, you have to wonder just how many Republicans still in the Senate are still committed to their party's hard-right politics and where it seems to be leading them, despite the cries from the lemmings who've already taken the big leap into the rip currents below.