Reply #46: I think the embargo should be lifted....

[DealsGapRider]

...if for no other reason than because it's inconsistent with our robust trade policy with China. And I think trade increases the democratization process in repressive countries. That having been said, I think it's ignorant to suggest that the embargo has had the deleterious effect on Cuba that many Castro apologists suggest. After all, the only countries that honor it are the US and Israel.

DU Castro defenders mystify me. Not only do they greatly exaggerate Cuba's successes when it comes to health care and education, but they ignore the widespread poverty caused by the ineptitude of Castro's economic system and the wholesale deprivations of human rights under the Castro dictatorship. This is a country where homosexuals have been kept in concentration camps, where Castro has murdered thousands of political opponents without trial, where criticism of the state can get you sent to prison for lengthy prison sentences, etc. And the notion that it's a democracy and that Castro is democratically elected is pure fantasy. Those who propagate this myth are delusional.

Every Castro supporter on this board should read this column by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post op-ed page (not exactly a right-winger).

http://www.cubacenter.org/media/archives/2001/summer/life_under_castro.php3

Note this line: "The government only recently freed the journalist Jesus Joel Diaz Hernandez, who was arrested in 1999 and accused of violating Article 72, a ghastly edict right out of Orwell that forbids “conduct that is in manifest contradiction with the norms of socialist morality.” In other words, anything the state says it is."

Yeah, Cuba is free my dick.