War on Terror? Not If It’s by Anti-Castro Cuban

NY Times: “Cuban Exile Could Test US Definition of Terrorist,” by Tim Weiner, May 9, 2005.

As many of you know, we have NEVER used the term “war on terrorism” to describe the Bush administration’s foreign policy.

There are several reasons for this, not least the fact that it’s all too vague and impossible, since no one can EVER say that terrorism has been DEFINITIVELY eradicated.

It also misses the key point that September 11 –

something the Bushies apparently would love to forget ever happened, except when they can use it to justify giving more handouts to the “security” industrial complex –

actually grew out of a very specific movement, namely political Islam and the jihadist operations associated with it.

And the meaninglessness of the term “war on terror” itself – without any reference to a specific political program and/or identity – is now being revealed by the Bush regime itself,

as it attempts to duck and weave around the case of Luis Posada Carrilles, an anti-Castro Cuban very popular in influential circles in Miami, who is, unfortunately, a terrorist pretty much no matter HOW one defines the term.

That the Bushies want to suck up to the all-too-vicious Miami Cubans is nothing new, of course – in case anyone has forgotten the madness surrounding Elian Gonzalez.

But the contradiction between that sucking up and the prosecution of ANY kind of credible “war on terror” is apparently getting too much, even for the Bush administration and their willing legions of “faith-based” accomplices.

Check out this piece by the usually high-quality Tim Weiner, which appeared on May 9, even though it was written on May 5 … I guess they were kicking it around to make sure Tim was well out of Miami –

a place where I used to live, and which I still love in many ways, despite the insane politics there when it comes to ANYTHING Cubano –

before they let it see the light of day … probably a good idea to hold off, at least in this particular case … (bold emphasis mine):

[Luis] Posada [Carriles], a Cuban exile, has long been a symbol for the armed anti-Castro movement in the United States. He remains a prime suspect in the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner that killed 73 people in 1976. He has admitted to plotting attacks that damaged tourist spots in Havana and killed an Italian visitor there in 1997. He was convicted in Panama in a 2000 bomb plot against Mr. Castro. …

Mr. Posada, 77, sneaked back into Florida six weeks ago in an effort to seek political asylum for having served as a cold war soldier on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960s, his lawyer, Eduardo Soto, said at a news conference last month.

But the government of Venezuela wants to extradite and retry him for the Cuban airline bombing. Mr. Posada was involved “up to his eyeballs” in planning the attack, said Carter Cornick, a retired counterterrorism specialist for the Federal Bureau of Investigation who investigated Mr. Posada’s role in that case. A newly declassified 1976 F.B.I. document places Mr. Posada, who had been a senior Venezuelan intelligence officer, at two meetings where the bombing was planned.

As “the author or accomplice of homicide,” Venezuela’s Supreme Court said Tuesday, “he must be extradited and judged.”

The United States government has no plan yet in place for handling the extradition request, according to spokesmen for several agencies. Roger F. Noriega, the top State Department official for Western Hemisphere affairs, said he did not even know whether Mr. Posada was in the country. In fact, Mr. Posada has not been seen in public, and his lawyer did not return repeated telephone calls seeking to confirm his presence.

Mr. Posada’s case could create tension between the politics of the global war on terrorism and the ghosts of the cold war on communism. If Mr. Posada has indeed illegally entered the United States, the Bush administration has three choices: granting him asylum; jailing him for illegal entry; or granting Venezuela’s request for extradition.

A grant of asylum could invite charges that the Bush administration is compromising its principle that no nation should harbor suspected terrorists.

But to turn Mr. Posada away could provoke political wrath in the conservative Cuban-American communities of South Florida, deep sources of support and campaign money for President Bush and his brother Jeb, the state’s governor.

To jail Mr. Posada would be a political bonanza for Mr. Castro, who has railed against him in recent speeches, calling him the worst terrorist in the Western Hemisphere.

To allow his extradition would hand a victory to President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Mr. Castro’s closest ally in Latin America and no friend to President Bush. …

Alfredo Durán, who was captured at the Bay of Pigs and later led a militant anti-Castro group, said that “after 9/11, it has become inexcusable to defend attacks that could kill innocent civilians.”

“Everybody’s renouncing violence except a small group of ultra-hard-core right-wingers,” said Mr. Durán, now a lawyer in Miami advocating peaceful change in Cuba.

Mr. Durán said that Mr. Posada had never renounced violence and that the question for the United States was whether to denounce him despite his service during the cold war. …

He kept in close touch with the agency after leaving it and joining Venezuela's intelligence service, known by its initials as Disip, where he served as a senior officer from 1969 to 1974, according to the declassified records and retired American officials who served in Venezuela.

In 1974, after a change in government, Mr. Posada set up a detective agency in the capital, Caracas, an office through which many anti-Castro Cubans passed, according to F.B.I. records. He retained his links to Disip, a militantly anti-Castro agency in those cold war days.

Then, amid an international wave of violence by the anti-Castro movement, including the attempted bombing of a New York City concert hall, two attacks shook the United States and Cuba.

On Sept. 21, 1976, in the heart of Washington, a car bomb killed a former foreign minister of Chile, Orlando Letelier, and an American aide, Ronni Moffitt; at the time, it was one of the worst acts of foreign terrorism on American soil.

Fifteen days later, a Cubana Airlines flight with 73 people on board was blown out of the sky off the coast of Barbados in the worst terrorist attack in Cuban history.

Mr. Cornick, the F.B.I. counterterrorism specialist who worked on the Letelier case, said in an interview that both bombings were planned at a June 1976 meeting in Santo Domingo attended by, among others, Mr. Posada.

“The Cubana bomb went off, the people were killed, and there were tracks leading right back to Disip,” said Mr. Cornick, who is now retired.

“The information was so strong that they locked up Posada as a preventative measure – to prevent him from talking or being killed. They knew that he had been involved,” said Mr. Cornick, referring to the Venezuelan authorities. “There was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including mine, that he was up to his eyeballs” in the Cubana bombing.

A November 1976 F.B.I. report, based on the word of a trusted Cuban-American informer, Ricardo Morales, places Mr. Posada at two meetings where the Cubana bombing was plotted. It quotes the informer directly: “If Posada Carriles talks,” it says, “the Venezuelan government will ‘go down the tube.’ ” The document was obtained from government files by the National Security Archive, a private research group in Washington.

So far, the Bush response to September 11 – chiefly invading Iraq – has shown that he and his buddies have little interest in confronting the very real challenge of political Islam.

The Posada case would seem to indicate that they have equally little stomach for actually dealing with anything that even smells like terrorism …

in which case, we have to ask not just how these people can stand up there and talk about a “war on terror” with a straight face,

but even more, how the American people can let them ???