Reply #55: Embargoes, Blacklists and Assassination Plots: Bush's New Cuba Plan

[Judi Lynn]

July 11, 2006

Embargoes, Blacklists and Assassination Plots
Bush's New Cuba Plan
By WAYNE S. SMITH

In May of 2004, the Bush Administration's Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba issued an almost 500-page report that seemed to conclude the Castro government was virtually at the point of collapse. Just a few more nudges--a few more Radio Marti broadcasts, denials of a few more travel licenses, and support to a few more dissidents--and it would all be over. The United States, the report seemed to suggest, would then come in and show the Cubans how to operate their schools properly, make their trains run on time, and grow their crops more efficiently. It was envisaged as such a U.S.-run operation that in July of 2005, a U.S. transition coordinator was appointed. One skeptical observer noted at the time that in the case of Iraq, the Bush Administration had at least waited until it invaded and occupied the country before appointing a transition coordinator. Did his appointment in this case mean the U.S. intended to invade Cuba as well? And if not, what was the U.S. transition coordinator supposed to do from his office in the State Department building? Even today, that remains unclear.

Perhaps OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza's reaction to the idea of a U.S. transition coordinator for Cuba summed it up best. "But there is no transition," he said, "and it isn't your country."

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/smith07112006.html

Wayne S. Smith is now a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and perhaps the most veteran U.S. observer of U.S.-Cuban relations, having been a Cuba analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1957-58), Third Secretary of Political Affairs in the American Embassy in Havana (1958-61), Cuban Desk Officer (1964-66), Director of Cuban Affairs in the Department of State (1977-79), and Chief of the U.S. Interests Section Havana, 1979-82