This piece, originally published at The Huffington Post, was co-written with Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, a non-profit research center in Washington D.C.

Think of how angry Americans would be if Pakistan's government let Osama bin Laden emerge from his cave of refuge and take up open residence in Islamabad?

A scene just like that is the reality here in the United States where Luis Posada Carriles, who ranks in the top ten list of the world's most prolific terrorists, is living freely in Florida--despite his known involvement in blowing up a civilian airliner and other bombings and assassination attempts over more than forty years. Since May, when a Federal judge tossed out the minor charges of immigration fraud leveled by Alberto Gonzales's Justice Department, Posada has been enjoying life in Miami's hard-line Cuban exile community. The U.S. media has all but forgotten about him. His victims, however, remain seared by this remarkable injustice and so should we.

Today [October 6th], after all, marks the anniversary of the mid-air destruction of Cubana Airlines flight 455, which took the lives of 73 passengers and crew, including the Cuban Olympic Fencing team and a group of teenage Guyanese science students on their way to Cuba to go to medical school. Their families will commemorate this day of loss, as they have for 31 years, wondering whether Posada and his co-conspirator Orlando Bosch--who is also living freely in Miami--will ever be brought to justice.

But for those of us in the United States, the case of Luis Posada Carriles is not only about a long overdue legal reckoning for the victims of terrorism, it is about the hypocrisy of the purported leader in the global fight against international terrorism now harboring a renowned purveyor of terrorist violence. "The United States cannot tolerate the inherent inhumanity of terrorism as a way of settling disputes," declared a 1989 Justice Department ruling that Orlando Bosch should remain detained or deported after he illegally returned to the United States from Venezuela. "We must look on terrorism as a universal evil, even if it is directed toward those with whom we have no political sympathy."

That principle was ignored by the administration of George H.W. Bush which, urged on by politically powerful rightwing Cuban exiles in Florida, set Bosch free in 1990. Following in his father's footsteps, George W's administration has politicized the Posada case as well, allowing him to go free and flaunting the credibility of the U.S. war on terror in the process.

Make no mistake, this former CIA asset and demolition trainer is a resolute and unrepentant advocate of terror. As early as 1965, declassified CIA intelligence reports cite Posada's operations to blow up ships and other targets, financed by benefactors in Miami. Documents uncovered in his office in Caracas link Posada to a string of sabotage attacks on consulates and travel agencies that did business with Cuba in the summer of 1976. Those same records contained information on the route of Cubana flight 455.

Indeed, the part Posada played in the first atrocity of aviation terrorism in the Western Hemisphere is especially well corroborated. Declassified FBI reports place him in meetings in Caracas where the attack on the plane was planned. According to a secret CIA intelligence report, a high level informant overheard Posada declaring, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner and Orlando has the details" only days before the plane exploded after take off from Barbados. Confessions by the two Venezuelans who brought the bomb on board--plastic explosives stuffed into a large tube of Colgate toothpaste--and who worked for Posada, noted that their first calls after the airliner plunged into the ocean were to Posada's office. "The bus has gone off the cliff and the dogs are dead," they reported.

Both Posada and Bosch were arrested in Caracas. Posada was held in Venezuela for nine years for the aircraft bombing but escaped from prison in 1985. (He then went to El Salvador to work on the Reagan administration's illicit contra resupply operation.) In the spring and summer of 1997, he orchestrated a bombing campaign against Havana hotels and discotheques that resulted in the death of an Italian businessman; "That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time," Posada noted in an interview with the New York Times a year later in which he publicly took responsibility for the attacks. "I sleep like a baby."

Three years later, at age 73, he was caught in Panama with 34 pounds of C-4 explosives, which he planned to use to blow up an auditorium where Fidel Castro was scheduled to speak.

After serving only four years of a prison sentence, Posada and three co-conspirators were inexplicably pardoned and freed; still wanted in Caracas for the bombing of flight 455, Posada became a fugitive once again. But in March 2005, he illegally entered the United States and surfaced in Miami, sufficiently comfortable in the cradle of the anti-Castro exile community to announce his presence to the media and actually seek political asylum. If Orlando Bosch could live freely in Miami, why couldn't Luis Posada?

For two months, the Bush administration basically pretended that he was not there. But this is the post 9/11 world. Massive and embarrassing publicity finally forced Bush's hand. On May 17, 2005, DHS agents detained Posada on illegal entry charges, and then indicted for lying to immigration authorities on how he came to the United States.

Yes, you read that correctly: one of the world's most infamous terrorists charged as an illegal immigrant. Using the counter-terrorism provisions of the Patriot Act, the administration could have certified Posada as a terrorist danger and detained him indefinitely. But apparently the Justice Department viewed his brand of political violence is different than those other terrorism suspects with Middle Eastern names.

The Administration could have also accepted Venezuela's formal petition for Posada's extradition. After all, Posada is a naturalized Venezuelan citizen; the crime was planned in Caracas, and he is a fugitive from justice from Venezuela. But Bush has his priorities: it is more important to mollify rightwing Republican Cuban-American voters in Florida who would view Posada's extradition as a betrayal and as a victory for Chavez and Castro, than to turn over a terrorist to the country that has a legitimate claim to hold him accountable for the first act of airborne terror in the hemisphere, a devastating crime.

The charade of detaining Posada on immigration violations has not been lost on the U.S. courts. Indeed, last May a Federal Judge dismissed the entire illegal entry case against Posada, citing prosecutorial misconduct and incompetence. Without even a slap on the wrist, he returned to Miami a free man, limited only in his movements by the ironic DHS decision to place him on a government "no fly" list.

To date, Bush has made a mockery of his motto that no nation should harbor terrorists and all nations should take steps to bring those who commit acts of terrorism to justice. If his administration will not certify and detain Posada for the international criminal he is, if his administration will not extradite Posada to Venezuela because Bush doesn't like Chavez, the administration still has one option to redeem itself: the Justice Department can indict Posada for the hotel bombings in Havana ten years ago for which he has publicly claimed credit.

The known body of evidence in this case is strong: the FBI has an informant who witnessed Posada's meetings in Guatemala where the bombings were organized, and saw a bag of 23 tubes of plastic explosives in the offices Posada used. Couriers have told how they were recruited by Posada associates to transport the explosives in Prell shampoo bottles and in their shoes. Federal authorities are also in possession of an August 1997 fax, in Posada's own handwriting and signed "Solo"--one of his nom de guerres--stating that "if there is no publicity, the job is useless" and arranging for funds to be "sent by Western Union from New Jersey." Additional evidence was gathered during a rare FBI trip to Havana late last year and presumably turned over to a federal grand jury which as been impaneled in Newark to hear this case.

With a new attorney general designate soon to face confirmation hearings, the Senate Judiciary Committee has the opportunity to voice its concerns about the way the Justice Department has allowed a known terrorist to go free. Retired judge Michael Mukasey, who is known for being tough on terrorism, should be given every opportunity to disassociate himself from the political contamination of this case and to commit the Justice Department to finally holding Posada accountable for his acts of international violence.

Prosecuting Posada matters. It would put our country on the side of justice for a crime that took place in Cuba that was inspired politically to hurt the Castro regime. This, in turn, would send a signal to Cuba and the world that Washington is serious about deterring acts by terrorists using U.S. soil as their base of operations. It would end a dramatic and hypocritical inconsistency in our policy toward terrorism. Moreover, the families of Posada's many victims deserve their day in court.

And, who knows. If we take the man known as Latin America's Osama bin Laden off our own streets, someone might just help us take America's bin Laden off theirs.

-- Peter Kornbluh & Sarah Stephens

Sooner or later, US policymakers will have to dismantle this last relic of the Cold War, our flawed and futile isolation from Cuba, and think and act anew.  The following reflection, by a young bartender living in Washington, is a reminder of how personally destructive the old policy is and how modern presidential campaigns are more than TV ads but also the sum of personal encounters that can take place in unexpected ways.

My girlfriend is Cuban-American, and much of her family remains on the island, so what happens on U.S. policy toward Cuba, especially whether Cubans here can travel there to visit their families, is quite more than an abstraction to me.

She and many like her feel cut off from the lives of blood relatives and it is an enduring ache for them all. I watch her suffer on a daily basis. I lived with her family for six months while studying in Havana, care for them deeply and I feel cut off from them as well.

Cuba, surprisingly, has poked its head into the middle of the U.S. presidential campaign, and a little piece of the campaign poked its head into Washington the other day at the restaurant on Capitol Hill where I happened to be tending bar.

Senator Obama dropped in and had dinner with a group of key supporters from New England that had come down to see him. Drying glasses and pouring drinks from a discrete distance, I still could hear his remarks to the group and was heartened by what I heard.

Among other things, he once again mentioned how Latin America has been neglected and it will not continue to be neglected if he is elected president. He said he has an upcoming article in NY Times Magazine that will continue his work to outline his foreign policy for the campaign.

Obama, bucking conventional wisdom, had earlier traveled to Miami, the heart of support for tight sanctions on Cuba, to argue for loosened restrictions on families with relatives in Cuba, a position which earned him a special place in our hearts at home.

He concluded his remarks this night by saying that he is very positive about the campaign and they are focusing on winning Iowa, where his internal polls show that he and Hillary are tied.

Anyways; at the end of the dinner I waited among the 17 supporters who, I am sure, paid a lot of money to fly down from Boston and attend this special dinner.

Entonces [and then], I scribbled on a napkin, "As an American with close ties to family in Cuba I am very excited about your support for family travel. I urge you to take it to the next step and vow to allow all Americans to travel to Cuba. The Cuban American community supports you!"

As he left he shook my hand and I asked him if I could give him the note. He said "please." As I handed him the note I told him that what he has done in regards to Cuba is great and that he should take it farther and propose ending the embargo. As he walked away he read my note and thanked me for my support.

It was pretty neat. I am not saying that he is going to base his foreign policy on advice from a random bartender, but he is a people person and maybe it will make him think a little bit. I signed the note with my first name only, and maybe if he reads this post he will remember me, and my reasons for caring, and learn my last name.

--Sarah Stephens

Talk to anyone who worked with Raul Castro, or anyone clued in to the process that produced Cuba's economic reforms in the early 1990's, and you get the same story: that he supported those reforms and is not averse to the use of market mechanisms to improve Cuba's economy.

But with his brother in power, we could never know Raul's preference for Cuban economic policy if he were in charge.

That may soon change.

Fidel Castro has not appeared in public for more than a year, and in the video released last week he doesn't appear capable of taking back the reins of executive power that he delegated in July 2006.

With Raul Castro now serving as interim chief executive, Cuba is engaged in an economic policy debate of potentially great consequence. (To follow this issue, check out our blog, The Cuban Triangle.)

Fidel Castro started this debate, but the longer it goes on the more it seems to follow a path that he would not have planned.

Delivering his last major policy speech in the formal lecture hall of the University of Havana in November 2005, Fidel confronted his generation's mortality. "The veterans are disappearing," he said, "and making room for new generations of leaders." He asked whether socialism is "irreversible," and his answer was clear. "This revolution can destroy itself," he said. "We can destroy it, and the fault would be ours."

To ensure the long-term political survival of socialism, Fidel argued, Cuba needed to put its economic house in order.

At the time of that speech, Cuba was reaping the benefit of Venezuelan oil, high nickel prices, and stronger tourism revenues. With breathing space, Fidel was asserting his orthodox economic thinking. He reduced the number of joint ventures with foreign investors by about 100, and squeezed Cuba's small entrepreneurial sector.

In the speech, he detailed the black-market activity that pervades Cuba's economy, from pilfered inventories to off-the-books entrepreneurship, and he wanted to put an end to it. He called for more control and policing. He threatened to close Cuba's remaining private restaurants and to give a "Christian burial" to private taxis that help Cubans get to work amid insufficient public transit. He planned to deploy teenage "social workers," who were already watching the till in gas stations, to combat corruption in bakeries, pharmacies, and cafeterias.

But then Fidel fell ill, delegated executive power, and left public view.

As interim leader, his brother Raul made the economy his priority, telling Cuba's legislature that he is "tired of excuses." He settled the state's debts to farmers and tripled prices paid to milk and beef producers. He ended abusive pricing at Cuba's airports, where high landing fees and refueling charges were making Cuba a less competitive tourism destination. He changed customs regulations to allow Cubans to receive video equipment and car parts from relatives overseas -- a change in direction from a policy that seemed to seek to squeeze every possible bit of revenue from visitors. Rather than "bury" private taxis, he ordered police to stop harassing them -- a small step, but the first bit of good news that Cuba's entrepreneurs have received in years. Private restaurants remain open. Fidel's social workers returned to their normal jobs.

And under Raul, the debate about Cuba's economic future took a different turn.

Articles in official media showed that many of Cuba's socialist enterprises are dysfunctional, abusing consumers, and able to operate only because employees use black-market fixes to keep them going.

Officials took up the discussion of the black market, but unlike Fidel, they aren't scapegoating "egotists" and "cheapskates" who skirt the law. Raul Castro and others argue that Cubans resort to "indiscipline" because they can't make ends meet with meager state salaries. There's a big difference between blaming greed and saying people deserve a day's pay for a day's work. There's also a big difference between targeting the black market and targeting a root cause, which is the stark inequality of income in Cuba's workforce.

Last July 26, Raul Castro gave his first major policy speech. He told folksy stories about milk and farm production that ridiculed the bureaucracy and low productivity of state agriculture. He stated a need to examine and expand the practices that work in the agriculture sector, which would imply an expansion of private farming, where productivity is highest. He called for increased foreign investment. He called for "structural changes" which, in Marxist terms, could imply a change in property relations and a selective shift away from state ownership. He closed by quoting Fidel, seven years ago: "Revolution is a sense of the historical moment, it is to change all that must be changed."

This speech was preceded by a process where the party, state enterprises, research centers and other institutions across Cuba were summoned to describe problems and solutions that would raise output, productivity, living standards. It was followed by grass-roots discussions now taking place in workplaces, union locals, and neighborhood Communist Party units.

This debate is producing proposals that were taboo one year ago: to expand private agriculture and small enterprise and provide micro-credits, have the state stop providing services it provides poorly, grant autonomy to state enterprises, expand foreign investment. Some of the proposals and calls for change have emerged on foreign websites and in interviews with foreign media, and through the Internet these ideas have recirculated in Cuba.

Having unleashed this debate and highlighted fundamental economic problems, Raul Castro has yet to make major decisions. That will likely occur once his own policy team completes its work and, as one Cuban economist argues, "political consensus" is obtained.

Cuba's political system has an orthodox wing -- its detractors call it the "Taliban" -- and there are indications that its weight is felt in the current debate. A new salary policy, geared toward increasing state salaries so workers could cover their basic needs without outside income, was promised for June 2007 but not delivered. A study of "socialist property" that could promote fundamental reforms was initiated last fall, but later it was announced that its results would come "within three years." And the sharpest comment in Raul Castro's July 26 speech -- that instead of guaranteeing milk to children only, Cuba's goal should be to supply milk to all who want it -- was dropped from the text printed in Cuban newspapers the next day.

Taking all this into account, it is my view that Cuba will initiate some degree of economic reform during the coming year.

I reach this conclusion for three reasons.

First, while there are differing opinions within the Cuban political system regarding economic policy, there is consensus that something must be done -- for both political and economic reasons -- to address the unfinished business of the reforms of the 1990's, especially income inequality. That task requires a degree of economic growth that small-scale changes cannot provide.

Second, if the Cuban government's intention were to stand pat, it would surely be directing an old, tried-and-true message to the Cuban people now: that Cuba is besieged by a hostile U.S. Administration that perceives weakness, and this is a time to concentrate on defense and to avoid experimentation in domestic policy. But Raul Castro's message has been the opposite.

That is because, third, as more and more time has passed with Fidel Castro offstage, Raul Castro has steadily raised expectations for policy changes that will improve Cubans' daily lives. He has done so through small initial policy steps, through his public speeches, and now by pushing a discussion of economic problems and "structural changes" to Cuba's grass roots organizations. It is hard to conceive that a politician in any political system, much less one in Raul Castro's circumstance today, would embark on a strategy of raising expectations to this degree if his intention were not to deliver results. It bears noting that Raul Castro has tempered expectations by telling the Cuban people not to expect dramatic improvement overnight.

There are two kinds of policy change that could liberate productive energies and yield positive results in Cuba. One is administrative change that would make the state sector more productive: decentralization, greater flexibility for state enterprises, new policies to bring more foreign investment. The other would involve granting more space for private economic activity. My guess is that we will see a combination, with initial moves in the agriculture sector.

A turn to significant reform would change the trajectory of Cuba's domestic policy and would carry political implications in Cuba and abroad. The Cuban public would surely welcome an economic improvement and the government gain support. And those who have called for change in Cuban policies -- dissidents, the Bush Administration, European governments -- would have to decide how to react.

President Bush is awaiting the day when "the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away" and views that day as a moment of opportunity for the United States and others to exhort Cubans to change their political system. He may be waiting for a moment that, in practical political terms, has already passed. Change in Cuba, however gradual, is far likelier to come from within the system itself as it grapples with its economic future and the prospect of Fidel Castro's entire generation soon leaving the scene.

-- Philip Peters

I attended a briefing by Leonard Weinglass (he of the Daniel Ellsberg/Pentagon Papers fame, of the Amy Carter tribulations, and other famous efforts to achieve justice against at times huge odds) at Howard University's Law School on Wednesday, 12 September. I was stunned by what counselor Weinglass revealed.

As a military officer for 31 years, I occasionally encountered Cuba. In exercises, I recall vividly that when we wargamed "the Cuba scenario" what happened was that the U.S. Navy, the FBI, the Florida State Police, the Coast Guard, and a host of other folks got involved not in invading Cuba, but in preventing a group of Cuban-Americans in Florida from doing so. I might add that such actions violated U.S. law and so, in the exercisesâ€â€which were in my view very realisticâ€â€we spent our time attempting to stop several hundred small boats, loaded with automatic weapons, explosives, and lots of Cuban-Americans, from getting to Cuba. So, I was acquainted with some of the vagaries of U.S. Cuba policy.

At Howard University last week, I learned the truth about yet another vagaryâ€â€"The Cuban Five." Here's a quick backgrounder.

Because the Cuban government had come to much the same conclusion as the U.S. military and did not want to be invaded by a bunch of Cuban-Americans from Florida, it decided to send five Cubans to Florida to spy on this "invasion group". (And what I haven't mentioned is that this group of Floridians is considered to be a group of terrorists by Cuban authorities. Why? Because over the past few years this group has allegedly carried out terrorist acts in Cuba and killed by some counts over 3,000 Cubans. One of these acts was to bring down a Cuban airliner with 76 souls on board, all of whom perished.)

When these five Cubans began reporting back to Havana about what they were discovering in Florida, the picture became very clear. In short, Cuban authorities were convinced that their country did indeed have much to worry about.

So, in Havana the thought was, let's give this evidence our five "spies" have gathered to the U.S. FBI. Surely, the FBI will then understand what the U.S. military already understands, i.e., the threat to peace in the Straits of Florida is in Florida not in Cuba. And so Havana did just that. It gave to the FBI the evidence its five men had gathered in southern Florida.

What did the FBI do? Well, here is the crux of the matter. The FBI turned the evidence over to the U.S. Government and it, in turn, used the evidence not to investigate and, if necessary, arrest and prosecute the law-breaking Cuban-Americans and their supporters in southern Florida, but to arrest and eventually imprison for life the five men who "spied" on these fine, loyal Floridians.

When the case came to trial, a change of venue was warranted and asked for because no Miami court was going to give the Cuban Five a fair trial, since the city is largely in the hands of some of the very Cuban-Americans and their supporters who've allegedly perpetrated these atrocities on the Cuban people and are prepared to invade the island. But the change of venue motion was denied. And of course the five were convicted.

But on appeal, in a decision by three of the judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, the trial's results were thrown outâ€â€as of course they should have been on the denial of the change of venue motion alone. The Five returned to Cuba and their families, right?

No, because in a full meeting of the 11th Circuit Court with all 12 members present, the ruling of the three members was reversed and The Five went back to jail, where they have been now for nine years.

The case is being reviewed yet again even as I write. That is one of the reasons that Leonard Weinglass gave the briefing at Howard University that I attended. He wanted to inform us of this apparently egregious miscarriage of justice and solicit our support in getting the decision reversed.

If the facts are as counselor Weinglass reported, it is hard to believe that this case ever happened in the first placeâ€â€unless, of course, one contemplates the real power of this group of Cuban-Americans in Florida and the hold they exercise over the U.S. Government.

But this case sort of takes the cake: to punish with life sentences men who came here to determine how and when their country was going to be attacked by people breaking U.S. law. These men were unarmed, not intent on any physical damage to the United States, and were motivated to protect their fellow citizens from invasion and repeated attacks by Cuban-Americans living in Florida.

And we have to ask also, just how is it that we have become a safe haven for alleged terrorists? How is it that weâ€â€the United States of Americaâ€â€may rate a place on our own list of states that sponsor terrorism?

If the facts are as counselor Weinglass reported, this case is truly the bottom of the pit. I had great trouble believing it, but I had nothing with which to refute Mr. Weinglass' superbly delivered presentation. But more than that was my four years inside the Bush Administration. You see, I know the depths to which our government is capable of sinking. Torture. Lies. False intelligence. Tyranny. Is the continued failure to resolve fairly this case against the Cuban Five, even though it began in the second Clinton administration, really so unbelievable when cast against the characters of the current administration?

Talk to your congressman or woman, please. This is a travesty. And, by the way, if you can disprove any of what Mr. Weinglass contends, fire away. America has many disastrous actions chalked up to its discredit at the moment, so to be disabused of one of such heavy import would be a gift from the gods.

--Lawrence Wilkerson

(All photos: Havana, 2005 by Marc PoKempner)

An astute pundit named Rufus Miles observed that 'where you stand depends on where you sit'. In last Friday's simpleton roast of Cuban health care on ABC’s 20/20, the standers were mostly sitting in Miami, and the rest were sitting in Langley. (For the full dose see transcript or video ). In fact, the CIA turned out to be the only second opinion John Stossel sought for the whole story.

It was a sample of what I call “retro-reportingâ€Â--a McCarthy era piece against voodoo communismâ€â€no kidding, the video actually has sinister Soviet soldiers marching against a red-flagged Lenin backdrop. But the trouble is that it’s supposed to be real 2007 journalism. On health care, no less.

Stossel goes on to accuse “communist regimesâ€Â of hiding facts, yet it’s Stossel who proves no facts of his own, content with phantom sources “doctors tell usâ€Â, “a Venezuelan womanâ€Â. Or else disgruntled Miami, with its 45-year baggage. He posts seamy photos from unabashedly biased sources, with no proof of where they were taken or when. In fact, no reporting for the story was ever done inside Cubaâ€â€just some B-roll showing healthy babies (sic?).

Not to mention the absence of Cuban health officials. In fact, Stossel portrays it as just another communist plot when the UN and World Health Organization publish statistics from Cuban health authorities. Are we supposed to take this seriously?

ABC Newsâ€â€shame on you--gets away with it because of a fatal twist in US foreign policy: most Americans are banned from travel to Cuba by our own government. So we join the ranks of the vulnerable, and have no choice but to swallow Stossel whole.

God forbid that Michael Moore’s movie and its reference to Cuba might make us stop to think that we could and should have better health care in America. Stossel would prefer we keep on stepping, and when it comes to Cuba, be just scared enough to cross the street altogether.

Because health care in our country is in trouble.

Take a look at the state of Florida itself. It should make any human rights-loving Cuban-American turn their crosshairs around. This summer, the Health Council of South Florida released Miami-Dade County’s 2007 Community Health Report Card: access to health care got a pretty scary “Fâ€Â. So did the rate of uninsured (28.6% total, more for Hispanics and blacks); as well as overweight/obese adults at 60.6% and babies born with low birth weights at 9%. (But the news was not all bad: lower death rates for strokes, hepatitis rates, and reduced domestic violence all got an “Aâ€Â.)

Access to health care is just where Cuba excels. Despite its poverty, as I pointed out in the Huffington Post recently, Cuba makes health care available to all its citizens,

scoring comparably with the U.S. on many health indicators at a fraction of the cost. In fact, a Gallup Poll conducted last December revealed that 96% of Cuban citizens said they had regular access to health care, no matter who they were or what their income. That's a pretty high score for any poll. And it was Gallup, not Fidel Castro.

Which brings me full circle to Stossel once again. I’ve spent nearly two decades in Cuba covering health care, and just as important, being a patient in regular Cuban hospitals and clinics.

So here are some facts you didn’t get from Stossel:

 Cuban health statistics are as good as it gets. One reason you can tell is because not all of them are glowing: maternal mortality is still a problem in Cuba, as is increased threat from diabetes. This and other data are publicly available. Moreover, organizations like the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), which maintain permanent offices in Havana and regularly send evaluation teams to Cuba, have issued positive reports after firsthand assessments from visits to provinces across the country.

 On Cuban hospitals and “elitesâ€Â: Sure, Cuban hospitals are dilapidated, and after the economic nosedive of the 90s, they’re just now getting the repairs and remodeling they need. Yes, Michael Moore’s 911 responders went to one of the already-refurbished facilitiesâ€â€but it’s the hospital that also serves 156,000 people living in one of Havana’s most overcrowded neighborhoods, not a hospital built for government elites.

 On the claim that Cuban women are subjected to “a widespread practice
of forced abortions when there might be indications of problems with the fetusâ€Â (ABC’s website summary):

This is patently false. By law in Cuba, abortion is accessible and free. However, for years, abortion rates have been going down in Cuba, not up. When congenital malformations occur during pregnancy, women are informed of the situation and their options in order to make a personal decision. At the same time, entire facilities like the Children’s Heart Center in Havana and a national network of special schools are dedicated to children who are born with congenital problems.

 In this context, it’s more than ironic that ABC has never reported on the US embargo on Cuba that prevents the Heart Center from directly purchasing a medication vital to keeping blue babies aliveâ€â€blue babies who had problems in the womb, but who were born and treated thanks to the Center.

The bottom line is: as we look for serious reform to reshape our own health care, it would do us good if ABC took off the Cold War blinders, and instead made an honest attempt to draw lessons from experiences in Cuba and elsewhere. And in so doing, 20-20 producers might have brought us another story: just a few weeks ago, YM Biosciences-USA received a license from the Treasury Department to test a Cuban cancer vaccine in American children victimized by inoperable brain cancer. But then again, what a network chooses not to cover says volumes.

-- Gail Reed

Last weekend, when the Latin American Studies Association met in Montreal, I suppose some member of the Bush administration was celebrating somewhere, one of the emptiest political victories this crowd has ever tried to ring up.

However small, this incident reminds us of the declining state of our diplomacy, our loss of influence in the Americas, and a loss of intellectual imagination that afflicts both sides of the political divide here in the United States.

Here's the back story.

The Latin American Studies Association, or "LASA," is the largest professional association for individuals and institutions involved in the study of Latin America. A quarter of its members live outside the United States. Its scholars study everything from democracy and civil society in Mexico, to Chile's use of memorials to heal its society after Pinochet, to the region's increasing rejection of the free market policies that Washington has championed.

Through much of its history, LASA has had its massive conferences here in the United States. Our government welcomed this; not only do conventions attracting thousands of participants spend good money, but academic exchanges are properly understood as expressions and instruments of diplomacy. Good scholars and research help us unlock the mysteries and menaces we see from afar. This has been received wisdom, until recently.

Since 2003, the Bush administration has been systematically excluding scholars from Cuba and preventing them from attending the LASA conferences. In 2003, only about half of the Cuban academics who sought to attend the Dallas conference actually received visas. The following year, none were allowed to go, and this pattern of exclusion has persisted.

LASA finally decided that if the Cubans couldn't attend the conference in the United States that they would stop meeting here. So, it pulled out of an agreement with the City of Boston and moved its thousands of participants and eleven-hundred workshops to Montreal.

When the American Association of University Teachers asked the State Department why it wouldn't allow the Cubans to attend, they were told that Cuban participation "would be detrimental to the interests of the United States."

So there you have it. It's detrimental to our interests for Cuban scholars to attend a meeting of the most important Latin American studies institution if it occurs on U.S. soil. Who are they kidding?

And what abject hypocrisy!

Look at what the U.S. State Department said, in its 2006 Human Rights report, about the status of academic freedom in Cuba:

The government restricted academic freedom and continued to emphasize the importance of reinforcing revolutionary ideology and discipline. Academics were prohibited from meeting with some diplomats without prior government approval.

I guess it's okay if we do it, huh?

But hypocrisy alone isn't the issue. The Bush folks have the world wrong. They don’t talk to governments with whom they disagree. They scorn intellectuals, academics, and research. They imagine a region that can be divided between supporters of Castro and Chávez and supporters of the U.S. and President Bush. And they can be strikingly disengaged from the declining currency of American power and the waning support for our policies and ideas.

The LASA conference was titled "After the Washington Consensus," and what better emblem of our disengagement than to see such a vibrant academic exchange taking place in Canada, because our policy of excluding Cubans forced LASA to meet elsewhere.

And so a conversation -- no, a thousand conversations -- that should have occurred inside the United States was instead exiled to Canada. Boy did that serve Fidel Castro and the Cubans right! (I hope the author of the visa policy got the laugh he wanted.)

The day after I got home from Canada, the Financial Times ran a scolding column by Nancy Soderberg, our former U.N. Ambassador and a Clinton-era security advisor, and it was a reminder to me that the Bush administration has no monopoly on this kind of foolishness.

The column was addressed to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina's first lady, and the leading candidate to succeed her husband as their nation’s president after the balloting that will occur on October 28th. Among Ms. Soderberg's demands were that Argentina reject Hugo Chávez and pay more respect to the kinds of economic policies that are denounced by opponents of neo-liberalism and the Washington consensus.

It might have been nice to let the Argentine people vote first. But assuming the front-running Senator Fernandez does win the election, Ms. Soderberg's advice, premature and presumptuous, was still wrong, for two compelling reasons.

It's simple and straightforward to divide the region into "responsible" and "irresponsible" camps, between Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro adherents and haters. But Latin America, like life and reality, is far more complicated than that.

The countries of the region negotiate separate trade arrangements with each other, they have agreements and arguments with each other, and they pursue their own national interests completely outside the false framework (you're either for us or against us) that President Bush has constructed and which Ms. Soderberg adopted as her own. Argentina will undoubtedly follow its own course, and it should.

Second, who in the region does she think is actually listening to us? US policymakers can shout themselves hoarse telling governments what to do and telling publics who to elect, and we have seen how fruitless this advice can be.

Regional governments, especially those with active lefts, cannot afford to be viewed as "lackeys" of Washington, and citizens are largely indifferent to admonitions from the outside, as voters have proved in the last several years in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Nicaragua, when they took opposite tacks from those advocated by President Chávez or the US Department of State. In other words, they are acting like democracies, something we should applaud and not discourage.

It was discouraging to see a prominent Democratic security expert parroting the administration's view of the region. Small wonder that admirers of the United States like former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark openly talk, as he did at the LASA meeting in Montreal, about our country's declining credentials in the hemisphere.

LASA got the message. They're apparently expecting no big changes in our government's policy of rejecting Cuban scholars for visas no matter who gets elected President. Their next meeting, scheduled for June 2009, will take place in Rio de Janeiro. Good for Brazil, but detrimental to American interests, I think.

--Sarah Stephens

Last weekend, when the Latin American Studies Association met in Montreal, I suppose some member of the Bush administration was celebrating somewhere, one of the emptiest political victories this crowd has ever tried to ring up.

However small, this incident reminds us of the declining state of our diplomacy, our loss of influence in the Americas, and a loss of intellectual imagination that afflicts both sides of the political divide here in the United States.

Here's the back story.

The Latin American Studies Association, or "LASA," is the largest professional association for individuals and institutions involved in the study of Latin America. A quarter of its members live outside the United States. Its scholars study everything from democracy and civil society in Mexico, to Chile's use of memorials to heal its society after Pinochet, to the region's increasing rejection of the free market policies that Washington has championed.

Through much of its history, LASA has had its massive conferences here in the United States. Our government welcomed this; not only do conventions attracting thousands of participants spend good money, but academic exchanges are properly understood as expressions and instruments of diplomacy. Good scholars and research help us unlock the mysteries and menaces we see from afar. This has been received wisdom, until recently.

Since 2003, the Bush administration has been systematically excluding scholars from Cuba and preventing them from attending the LASA conferences. In 2003, only about half of the Cuban academics who sought to attend the Dallas conference actually received visas. The following year, none were allowed to go, and this pattern of exclusion has persisted.

LASA finally decided that if the Cubans couldn't attend the conference in the United States that they would stop meeting here. So, it pulled out of an agreement with the City of Boston and moved its thousands of participants and eleven-hundred workshops to Montreal.

When the American Association of University Teachers asked the State Department why it wouldn't allow the Cubans to attend, they were told that Cuban participation "would be detrimental to the interests of the United States."

So there you have it. It's detrimental to our interests for Cuban scholars to attend a meeting of the most important Latin American studies institution if it occurs on U.S. soil. Who are they kidding?

And what abject hypocrisy!

Look at what the U.S. State Department said, in its 2006 Human Rights report, about the status of academic freedom in Cuba:

The government restricted academic freedom and continued to emphasize the importance of reinforcing revolutionary ideology and discipline. Academics were prohibited from meeting with some diplomats without prior government approval.

I guess it's okay if we do it, huh?

But hypocrisy alone isn't the issue. The Bush folks have the world wrong. They don’t talk to governments with whom they disagree. They scorn intellectuals, academics, and research. They imagine a region that can be divided between supporters of Castro and Chávez and supporters of the U.S. and President Bush. And they can be strikingly disengaged from the declining currency of American power and the waning support for our policies and ideas.

The LASA conference was titled "After the Washington Consensus," and what better emblem of our disengagement than to see such a vibrant academic exchange taking place in Canada, because our policy of excluding Cubans forced LASA to meet elsewhere.

And so a conversation -- no, a thousand conversations -- that should have occurred inside the United States was instead exiled to Canada. Boy did that serve Fidel Castro and the Cubans right! (I hope the author of the visa policy got the laugh he wanted.)

The day after I got home from Canada, the Financial Times ran a scolding column by Nancy Soderberg, our former U.N. Ambassador and a Clinton-era security advisor, and it was a reminder to me that the Bush administration has no monopoly on this kind of foolishness.

The column was addressed to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina's first lady, and the leading candidate to succeed her husband as their nation’s president after the balloting that will occur on October 28th. Among Ms. Soderberg's demands were that Argentina reject Hugo Chávez and pay more respect to the kinds of economic policies that are denounced by opponents of neo-liberalism and the Washington consensus.

It might have been nice to let the Argentine people vote first. But assuming the front-running Senator Fernandez does win the election, Ms. Soderberg's advice, premature and presumptuous, was still wrong, for two compelling reasons.

It's simple and straightforward to divide the region into "responsible" and "irresponsible" camps, between Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro adherents and haters. But Latin America, like life and reality, is far more complicated than that.

The countries of the region negotiate separate trade arrangements with each other, they have agreements and arguments with each other, and they pursue their own national interests completely outside the false framework (you're either for us or against us) that President Bush has constructed and which Ms. Soderberg adopted as her own. Argentina will undoubtedly follow its own course, and it should.

Second, who in the region does she think is actually listening to us? US policymakers can shout themselves hoarse telling governments what to do and telling publics who to elect, and we have seen how fruitless this advice can be.

Regional governments, especially those with active lefts, cannot afford to be viewed as "lackeys" of Washington, and citizens are largely indifferent to admonitions from the outside, as voters have proved in the last several years in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Nicaragua, when they took opposite tacks from those advocated by President Chávez or the US Department of State. In other words, they are acting like democracies, something we should applaud and not discourage.

It was discouraging to see a prominent Democratic security expert parroting the administration's view of the region. Small wonder that admirers of the United States like former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark openly talk, as he did at the LASA meeting in Montreal, about our country's declining credentials in the hemisphere.

LASA got the message. They're apparently expecting no big changes in our government's policy of rejecting Cuban scholars for visas no matter who gets elected President. Their next meeting, scheduled for June 2009, will take place in Rio de Janeiro. Good for Brazil, but detrimental to American interests, I think.

--Sarah Stephens

Firms from China and India will be drilling for oil off the coast of Cuba, but U.S. companies are prohibited from bidding on the contracts, according to a recent report.

Let's just stop for a minute and tell the truth about U.S. Cuba policy. It's dictated by a few hardcore Cuban-Americans, who live principally in Florida, and who pay vast sums of money into the political coffers of such luminaries as Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Ray Martinez, Lincoln Diaz-Balart, and others.

In return, these congress persons vote forâ€â€and, worse, cajole their fellow feckless congresspersons to vote with themâ€â€legislation that grants millions of taxpayer dollars to the people in Florida who run the "anti-Castro campaign". This campaign consists principally of these folks putting the money in their pockets and lifting their standard of living. Rarely if ever do they do anything to advance democracy in Cuba. What's wrong with this picture?

Well, for starters, not a lot that anyone would object to these days because this is the way most politics is conducted in America today. Whether it's Iraq, ENRON, U.S. actions to help Katrina victims, or thousands of dollars stored in a congressperson's freezer unit, Washington politicians are not noted for their brainpower, their honesty, or their decency. When you find one who breaks this moldâ€â€like Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraskaâ€â€he or she can tolerate only one or two terms in Washington and then they must return to heartland America and take a month or two of resuscitation so as to revive their fundamental feelings about what America ought to be about.

But policy toward Cuba is different.

Cuba is only 90 miles off our coast. It's 11 million people are very talented, possessed like the city-state of Singapore of a lot more brainpower and energy than their island's size would indicate, and incredibly altruisticâ€â€the most recent manifestation of which is that they send more than 30,000 of their medical personnel overseas to help impoverished people who otherwise could not afford any medical care.

These really decent people also live on an island where oil exists. Oil on land and oil offshore.

But because of the stupid policy that those old SOBs in Florida have us locked into, American companies cannot offer to recover the oil that Cuba possesses. Instead, China may be doing the drilling. Or Venezuela whose leader, Hugo Chavez, loves the U.S. so much that he bashes us every chance he gets.

What's wrong with THIS picture?

The bottom line here is so simple it makes your head hurt (like President Bush and our Iraq policy).

We need immediately to lift at least that part of the U.S. economic embargo on Cuba that deals with our oil companies so that they can bid on drilling in Cuban territory. Leave the rest of our idiotic policy in place if you want to (America seems incapable of changing it). But since access to oil relates directly to our national security, let's do this little bit immediately.

Since I know that every American with a brain (which is most of them) understands the truth of what I'm saying, why can't we do this?

Because the Cheney-Bush lock on stupidity is impenetrable as long as the separate but equal branch of government known as the Congress refuses to find its courage and reverse this stupidity.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

(Cuban doctors attend to an injured Pakistani refugee after the 2006 earthquake.)

With Steve Clemons and others, I recently visited Cuba (March 2007). One of the areas of Cuban activity on which we focused was what has been described as one of the world's best systems for delivering healthcare to impoverished peopleâ€â€in Cuba, in Venezuela and elsewhere in South and Central America, and increasingly in sub-Saharan Africa. We visited Cuba's medical "contingency brigade", for example, and talked with doctors and other healthcare personnel about the brigade's recent, highly successful tenure in Pakistan following the devastating earthquakes there in 2006. The passion in the doctors' eyes as they related their experiences in delivering basic healthcare in isolated, freezing regions of Pakistan was truly heartwarming. Some of the human interest stories the doctors related brought laughter to us all and served to demonstrate conclusively how deeply these medical personnel had been touched by their almost year-long experience in Pakistan. They were proud to announce that as a result of the good relations thus created, Cuba was asked to open its first-ever embassy in Islamabad. Talk about effective public diplomacy!

We also visited the Finlay Institute: Center for Research-Development and Production of Human Vaccinesâ€â€incidentally, one of the places that the jacobin Undersecretary of State for International Security Affairs, John Bolton, alleged in 2002 was manufacturing biological weapons. We didn't find any such activity (and we did discover that at best the Institute has a rudimentary Bio-Level III capability and no Bio-Level IV capabilityâ€â€the latter needed if one is to engage in sophisticated biological agent research and development). After the visit, we assumed that Bolton's insights were right up there with the CIA's in 2002-2003 with respect to Saddam Hussein's mobile biological weapons labs. It's safe to say we considered the assessment by the former commander of the U.S. Southern Command, Marine General Charles Wilhelm, as more definitive: "During my three year tenure, from September 1997 until September 2000 at Southern Command, I didn't receive a single report or a single piece of evidence that would have led me to the conclusion that Cuba was in fact developing, producing or weaponizing biological or chemical agents."

In March of this year, what we did find at the Finlay Institute, for example, was information about its having developed a serogroup B meningococcal vaccine (VA-MENGOC-BC), one that had virtually eliminated that deadly disease among the children of Cuba. Moreover, we discovered that there was a significant incidence of the disease among children in the western U.S., but that due to the embargo on Cuba our doctors and health officials had been unable to avail themselves of this new and very effective (more than 80%) vaccine.

One of the most dramatic moments for us occurred when we visited one of Cuba's hospitals in Havana and plowed through a waiting room of people from all over the worldâ€â€poor people who had come largely to have eye surgery of some sort, many to have cataracts removed so their blindness or near-blindness would be eliminated. Speaking to some of them was, again, heartwarming. They all said that they were there because of Cuba's outreach. Again, what public diplomacy!

I had reason to compare starkly what I had seen in March in Cuba with what I experienced up close and personal in the U.S. in June, July and August. My 91-year-old Dad and my 87-year-old Mom were caught in the clutches of the U.S. healthcare system. During this time, Medicare was raped, pillaged, and plundered to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars until I intervened, stopped the vicious cycle of short-term hospitalization followed by therapy and rehabilitation (both mostly on the taxpayers' dollars), completely colluded in by all medical personnel, and said "Enough!" and moved my parents to a full care and assisted living facility nearby. Not only did the financial outlay stabilize and become the burden mostly of my parents rather than the U.S. taxpayer (my parents are relatively affluent), but their health improved as well.

My rough calculations informed me that, with trips each time through the emergency room at the local hospital, a five-day hospital stay, and a 21-day stay at the nearby therapy and rehabilitation centerâ€â€all mostly on Medicareâ€â€my parents likely used up close to a quarter of a million dollars of taxpayer money. My conclusion: the U.S. healthcare system is so broken that "broken" is not sufficiently descriptive. (And let me add that as a veteran and a retired military officer, I have not used the TriCare Health system since leaving the U.S. Army 10 years ago; I fear the results too much. When I need a doctorâ€â€not often, thank God, so farâ€â€I go to a nearby civilian-run clinic and pay cash for or charge whatever expense I encounter. It's in and out, like going to Wal-Mart for a loaf of bread and some eggs.)

We could learn much and benefit from how the Cubans deliver healthcare, particularly applicable to our rural areas and our inner cities where impoverished people predominate. And in the process, the contact would benefit Cubans. They would be able to study what is strong and robust about the U.S. healthcare systemâ€â€the high technology components, for exampleâ€â€and at the same time learn that freedom and democracy are pretty good items too. But we won't do soâ€â€not until we change our Cuba policy, "the stupidest policy on earth."

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

Since Fidel Castro handed power to his brother Raul, a frequent observation is that the country is in stasis, waiting for the other shoe to drop. This may be true to a large extent, and it is certainly how I characterized the situation after seeing the situation in Cuba earlier this year. At the same time, a look back at the period since Raul Castro was handed control provides some sense that the younger Castro is beginning to put his own stamp on Cuba’s affairs.

The most recent indication of change is the coverage of a gradual release of dissidents from Cuban jails, which has been reported on by Howard LaFranchi of the Christian Science Monitor, among others. The Havana-based Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation has indicated that the number of dissidents in Cuba that are imprisoned declined by 20 percent since 2006. This doesn’t excuse the fact that nearly 250 others remain in prison, but, as LaFranchi reports, the decline “is leading some Cuba experts to conclude that some kind of new day is dawning on the Caribbean communist island.â€Â

Earlier this summer, at the July 26 speech commemorating the Cuban revolution, Raul Castro hinted at his desire for economic reform. He alluded to the importance of foreign investment and vague “structural and conceptual changes [that] will have to be introduced.â€Â [Raul has a history in favor of economic reform, and was the one who convinced his brother to implement economic reforms in the mid-90s. Michael Voss of the BBC takes a look at one of the few reforms that has survived.]

He has sent other signals on openness, suggesting back in December 2006 that Cubans should “ ‘fearlessly’ engage in public debate and analysis.â€Â As Anita Snow of AP writes:

"The first principle in constructing any armed forces is the sole command," said the younger Castro, who became Cuba's provisional leader five months ago when Fidel Castro stepped aside after emergency intestinal surgery. "But that doesn't mean that we cannot discuss. That way we reach decisions, and I'm talking about big decisions."

Finally, amid recycled rhetoric about American imperialism and bravado, Raul called for dialogue with the United States in both his July 2007 and December 2006 speeches. While such moves are not unprecedented, they are additional short steps away from his older brother, who did and does not speak of dialogue with the United States with any regularity.

All of the above are minor signals, to be sure, and stand alongside a host of practices that continue to deny information and basic freedoms to the Cuban people – like the decision earlier this year to expel a number of journalists who wrote stories unfavorable to the regime. But the calls for dialogue and economic reform and the gradual release of dissidents are developments worth watching.

This is particularly so because minor signals are all we are likely to see for the foreseeable future. Raul Castro isn’t likely to specify any reform program, at least not while his older brother is still alive and apparently opining on U.S. presidential elections. The world should not expect Raul to spell out the second coming of Perestroika or Glasnost anytime soon, even if it turns out that those are the policies he is slowly pursuing.

Still, as the days tick by, the world continues to see glimmers of what a post-Fidel Cuba might look like. Let’s hope that, for the sake of the Cuban people, positive trends in Cuba accelerate and that the United States starts thinking in earnest about sending our own signals that a new relationship is possible.

-- Jake Colvin