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What opponents of the embargo fail to see - or disengenuously don't want to see - is that the embargo has been a great success. Not in the notion that it has toppled the Castro regime but in the very real fact that it has deprived Casro of hard currency for nearly 5 decades. The Soviets funded "revolutions" across Latin America through Cuba for decades but had to pay nearly US$6 billion in order to keep the Cuban economy afloat. That's US$6 billion that didn't go towards armed thugs in countries whose military spending is a fraction of that total. Thanks to the embargo and the sacrifice of the Cuban exile community many countries across Latin America, SE Asia and Africa are not in the hands of totalitarian, communist dictators.

We would have had total success had the policies against Cuba had real enforcement with teeth.

Prosecute the violators of the Helms-Burton act, stop all funds from the US going to Cuba, arrest the fake devil filled "Pastors for the peace," stop all sales of items from US to Cuba, and cease all foreign aid to contries that trade with Cuba.

I guarentee you that in one year or two the Cuban government would cry out......"TIO!" (translation = Uncle)

Few tyrannical governments fall from the weight of economic pressure. Regardless, Castro doesn’t rule by providing economic comfort to the people of Cuba; He rules through the use of one of the world’s most repressive command and control structures. His government will not fall because of an embargo nor is it likely to affect Raul. However, the selling of this type of “lifestyle” by the new ruling elite will be impossible. Cuba cannot escape the realities that a communist-style economy simply doesn’t work. But the fact is, while Castro is busy searching for yet another handout the rest of Latin America doesn’t need to worry about paid mercenaries toppling their governments. They can instead use monies that would otherwise go to countering Soviet and Castro funded aggressions to build schools and hospitals. Consider how much oil wealth Chavez is channeling to Cuba that would have gone to funding Marxists in Columbia, elections in Nicaragua or political favors at home. The Cuban exile community has made a singularly unselfish sacrifice to isolate Castro and support the embargo despite the occasional yet completely understandable remittances to relatives on the island prison. Castro has tried to live off of those remittances, which amounts to an economic pittance, for the better part of two decades which only helps to illustrate what could have been in Havana if not for the misguided policies of a repressive dictator. Don’t think anyone in the Cuban exile community is expecting thanks but, at the very least, a simple gesture of support and solidarity would be a welcomed change. What’s so irrational about that?

The feast of Saint Ann is the 26th of July review of

Carmichael, Scott W. 2007 True Believer: Inside the Investigation and Capture of Ana Montes, Cuba's Master Spy. US Naval Institute Press (March 3, 2007) Annapolis, Maryland ISBN-10 1591141001 ISBN-13: 978-1591141006

This is an excellent book and makes fascinating, interesting, and informative reading. Any who study Cuba must read it.

The news of the capture of Ana Montes was no surprise to the Cuban-American community here in the US, for we are long resigned to the inaccuracies in US government reports on Cuba, and watch with dismay as even CIA reports describe Castro propaganda as reality. We knew already knew that there were sources in our government committed to the support of Castro.

The first thing that struck me when Ana Belen Montes was caught was: How could the US Government spy-catchers miss the particular circumstance that the feast of Saint Ann, grandmother to Jesus (Santa Ana) is the 26th of July, the date in 1953 when the Castro brothers attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba? Still Ana or Ann is a common name, as in Annapolis, the city of Saint Ann where this book was published. However, as I mentally celebrated the capture of the first major Castro directed mole in the US defense establishment I also noted that the spies second name Belen is the name of the Jesuit Lyceum which Fidel Castro received his most significant secondary education.

In Cuba as in most of Latin America, communists often have such names, one readily recalls Universo (implies conquer of the world) Sanchez one of Castro’s original “12,� “Fabio� (the stealthy guerrilla warrior Consul of Ancient Rome) Grobart Stalin’s man in Havana and said recruiter of Castro in 1948, and Cuban labor-leader Ursinio Rojas (the red bear). What seemed unusual was that nobody, outside of the Cuban-American community, had pondered on Ana Montes name before.

Carmichael discusses in several places the culture of misinformation on Cuba so prevalent in official US government circles. This was so vividly displayed by a major presidential candidate in giving a speech in Miami last month (March 2007) who in error recited one of Castro’s own slogans to Cuban-American audience thinking it was a reflection of the exile circumstance. Only now with the trial and jailing of academics spying for Castro at an “International University� and books such as this is the abysmal level of information on Cuba expounded to innocent students in academia has become apparent to many.

As I read Scott Carmichael’s book sometime later, it became readily apparent how important Ana Belen Montes was and how deeply she had penetrated and influenced the US defense establishment (e.g pp. 135-143 (hard copy edition). It also became clear how insignificant most people in the US government think Cuba, that “small� that 760 mile long island next door, is to the US; and how so many in important positions in the US under estimated Cuba’s espionage capability (e.g. p. 151-152). It seems it was for this reason that the sacrifice of US government careers led to naught in the 1960s and it appears that the prevalent mind set in Washington was, and still is, consider Castro’s espionage threat insignificant to US security.

The author gives a clarion call on pages 175-179. Perhaps betrayed Green Beret Greg Fronius rests a little easier in his grave.

The author is to be commended for his fine work and his excellent book

since we are sharing about good books to read.......I am looking for a book that talks about real property reperations in Cuba when free, or properties that were given back to its owners after a change of communist government.

Any books that talk about this?

Taiwan's leadership and most of its people are exiles, many followers of one political party that lost a savage civil war to the largest Communist Party in the world. These were people fleeing communism and suffering brutal persecution. The new nation of Taiwan has been in a state of war with China for the past 60 years, and they have faced each other in proxy wars.

Yet guess who is one of the largest investors as a group in Communist China? The Taiwanese - in addition to other Chinese nationals who had lived in exile.

There is a tacit understanding that Taiwan Chinese are allowed in the mainland, and that Taiwan permits its citizens to invest in China.

People with a burning hatred of Communism, past victimization in some cases, have been willing, ready, and able to go to the mainland and do business. This with little if any political reforms within China.

But in the end the kind of networking and networks that are being established right now, in the long run are a benefit. Tom Friedman suggests that being interconnected in supply chains brings some sort of peace to the area. In addition, it is also allowing new ideas to come into the country.

What I am trying to say is that at this time in Cuba, were certain parts of the embargo lifted, people in the Cuban, Cuban-American community could go to Cuba and start investing money and establishing closer ties in the island. Much as the Taiwanese have been doing, and many exiled Eastern Europeans did.

If people from Taiwan and say Poland, who were kicked out by the communists returned when that same government was still in power. Why can't the Cubans here do that?

Those ties will help pay off when the Castro's do buy it. If anything, they could help spur the fall of Castro.

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