Fears that Iraq may not be the last American target have been raised by bellicose statements from the Pentagon and US neo-conservatives directed against other members of the "axis of evil" and the so-called "states of concern". The Cuban government fears that it could be a target of "regime change" after the war in Iraq, according to the former head of the US mission in Havana. "There is a certain sense on the part of the Cubans that they might be next," Mr Smith told National Public Radio yesterday. He said that there was a belief on the island that "the ballgame changed with our invasion of Iraq and our policy of pre- emptive war". (The Guardian, Regimes who worry that they will be next. Rulers face conciliation or confrontation, by Brian Whitaker, Dan de Luce in Tehran, John Gittings and Duncan Campbell in Los Angeles, Friday April 11, 2003).

The only one way to reform a totalitarian despot like Castro is to topple his regime. Peacefully if possible, by force if necessary (The Boston Globe, A wave of repression in Cuba, by Jeff Jacoby, page"A 17, April 10, 2003).

At the same time the Bush administration is deploying forces to remove Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction, it is apparently preparing to take out Fidel Castro militarily as well. Far-fetched? Maybe. But in the post-Sept. 11 environment, many Americans are more than willing to accept a scenario in which the United States has to launch a pre-emptive strike against a Cuban government that gives safe haven to terrorists and has the capability to kill millions of us with biological weapons. The trouble with that scenario is that there is no reason to believe it to be true. Yet an administration official told a Senate committee earlier this year that Cuba "has everything you need to build an offensive biological capability ." Federal law enforcement authorities clearly leaked a story to The New York Times earlier this year that Cuban spies have been trying to steal secrets from U.S. military installations. This would shift our prevailing perspective of Cuba from one of a benign Communist annoyance to a more active national security threat. The Cuban-American community in Florida, a critical constituency to the Bush administration if it hopes to win the state in 2004, has been increasingly critical of the President, expressing disappointment that more aggressive actions against Castro haven't been taken. (Iraq, Si! Cuba, No!, by Ed Rabel, Wednesday, April 9, 2003).

As the Bush administration prepares for war with Iraq a growing threat to its rear flank is being ignored, according to senior officials who believe that Cuba's biological-weapons (BW) program is at more advanced stages than officially is acknowledged. In his gagged statement, a copy of which was obtained by Insight, Bolton (Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton) expresses "frustration" at the apparent unwillingness of U.S. intelligence agencies to disclose information about Cuba's biological weapons which could include anthrax, smallpox and variants of encephalitis such as West Nile virus. Recent outbreaks of West Nile virus that have killed more than 30 Americans and infected another 675 have been traced to birds that may have been infected at Cuban bio weapons labs, according to defecting scientists who report Fidel Castro's experiments using animals as carriers of weaponized germ agents (Insight Magazine, Castro Weaponizes West Nile Virus, by Martin Arostegui, October l' 2002).

Recently, the State Department has made a number of unsubstantiated charges against Cuba, the most publicized of which was Undersecretary of State John Bolton's May allegation of a Cuban bioweapons effort. But for all that, not even the State Department has bitten off on the story pushed by a handful of Cuban exiles that West Nile virus was introduced into the United States via migratory birds from Cuba as part of what they allege to be Castro's biological warfare against the United States (CIP Refutes West Nile-Cuban Migratory Birds Conspiracy Theory , by Wayne Smith, Anya Landau, Center for International Policy, September 25, 2002).

On May 211 the State Department published a new list of "terrorist states" with supposed evidence of their wrongdoing. But with respect to the SO- called evidence against Cuba, one can only comment that if this is the best the State Department can come up with, then clearly Cuba should not be on the list at all. Though it strains and exaggerates, the report ends up without presenting a shred of evidence that Cuba is involved in terrorist activities (CIP Challenges State Department's List of Terrorist States, by Wayne S. Smith, May 2002).

Since the heinous terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon this past Sept. 11, there has been a concerted effort on the part of hard-Iine Cuban exiles in Miami and their political allies in Washington to describe Cuba as part of an international terrorist network and to suggest that the United States must act against Castro as part of its response to the September 11 attacks. It is unfortunate that these groups would try to take advantage of the September 11 tragedy to advance their own narrow anti-Castro agenda, when U.S. foreign policy most requires cooperation with all nations willing to work with us in the struggle against terrorism (Keeping Things in Perspective: Is Cuba a Terrorist Nation?, by Wayne S. Smith and Anya K. Landau, Center for International Policy, October 11, 2001 ).

COHA Research Memorandum of July 8, 2003 describes the appeal process exposing the grave injustice surrounding Miami Cuban Spy Trial. Declares the tactics resorted to by U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft in the prosecution of five Cuban "spies" are little better than a scandal; appellate briefs present new evidence of improper legal measures employed by Miami federal prosecutors....

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Updated: 01/16/2008