MB Civic

A BRUTAL REPLY, Reflections by the Commander in Chief

Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:19:56 +0200

A BRUTAL REPLY

George W. Bush is undoubtedly the most
genuine representative of a system of
terror forced on the world by the
technological, economic and political
superiority of the most powerful country
known to this planet. For this reason, we
share the tragedy of the American people
and their ethical values. The instructions
for the verdict issued by Judge Kathleen
Cardone, of the El Paso Federal Court last
Friday, granting Luis Posada Carriles
freedom on bail, could only have come
from the White House.

It was President Bush himself who ignored
at all times the criminal and terrorist
nature of the defendant who was
protected with a simple accusation of
immigration violation leveled at him. The
reply is brutal. The government of the
United States and its most representative
institutions had already decided to release
the monster.

The backgrounds are well-known and
reach far back. The people who trained him
and ordered him to destroy a Cuban
passenger plane in midair, with 73 athletes,
students and other Cuban and foreign
travelers on board, together with its
dedicated crew; those who bought his
freedom while the terrorist was held in
prison in Venezuela, so that he could
supply and practically conduct a dirty war
against the people of Nicaragua, resulting
in the loss of thousands of lives and the
devastation of a country for decades to
come; those who empowered him to
smuggle with drugs and weapons making a
mockery of the laws of Congress; those
who collaborated with him to create the
terrible Operation Condor and to
internationalize terror; the same who
brought torture, death and often the
physical disappearance of hundreds of
thousands of Latin Americans, could not
possibly act any different.

Even though Bushs decision was to be
expected, it is certainly no less humiliating
for our people. Thanks to the revelations of
Por Esto! a Mexican publication from the
state of Quintana Roo later complemented
by our own sources, Cuba knew with
absolute precision how Posada Carriles
entered from Central America, via Cancun,
to the Isla Mujeres departing from there
on board the Santrina, after the ship was
inspected by the Mexican federal
authorities, heading with other terrorists
straight to Miami.

Denounced and publicly challenged with
exact information on the matter, since
April 15, 2005, it took the government of
that country more than a month to arrest
the terrorist, and a year and two months to
admit that Luis Posada Carriles had
entered through the Florida coast illegally
on board the Santrina, a presumed school-ship licensed in the United States.

Not a single word is said of his countless
victims, of the bombs he set off in tourist
facilities in recent years, of his dozens of
plans financed by the government of the
United States to physically eliminate me.

It was not enough for Bush to offend the
name of Cuba by installing a horrible
torture center similar to Abu Ghraib on the
territory illegally occupied in Guantnamo,
horrifying the world with this procedure.
The cruel actions of his predecessors
seemed not enough for him. It was not
enough to force a poor and
underdeveloped country like Cuba to
spend 100 billion dollars. To accuse Posada
Carriles was tantamount to accusing
himself.

Throughout almost half a century,
everything was fair game against our small
island lying 90 miles away from its coast,
wanting to be independent.

Florida saw the installation of the largest
station for intelligence and subversion that
ever existed on this planet.

It was not enough to send a mercenary
invasion on the Bay of Pigs, costing us 176
dead and more than 300 wounded at a
time when the few medical specialists they
left us had no experience treating war
wounds.

Earlier still, the French ship La Coubre
carrying Belgian weapons and grenades for
Cuba had exploded on the docks of Havana
Harbor. The two well synchronized
explosions caused the deaths of more than
100 workers and wounded others as many
of them tool part in the rescue attempts.

It was not enough to have the Missile Crisis
of 1962, which brought the world to the
brink of an all-consuming thermonuclear
war, at a time when there were bombs 50
times more powerful than the ones
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

It was not enough to introduce in our
country viruses, bacteria and fungi to
attack plantations and flocks; and
incredible as it may seem, to attack human
beings. Some of these pathogens came out
of American laboratories and were
brought to Cuba by well-known terrorists
in the service of the United States
government.

Add to all this the enormous injustice of
keeping five heroic patriots imprisoned for
supplying information about terrorist
activities; they were condemned in a
fraudulent manner to sentences that
include two life sentences and they stoically
withstand cruel mistreatment, each of
them in a different prison.

Time and again the Cuban people have
fearlessly faced the threat of death. They
have demonstrated that with intelligence,
using appropriate tactics and strategies,
and especially preserving unity around
their political and social vanguard, there
can be no force on this earth capable of
defeating them.

I think that the coming May Day
celebration would be the ideal day for our
people, — using the minimum of fuel and
transportation — to show their feelings to
the workers and the poor of the world.
Fidel Castro Ruz

April 10, 2007.