"Get over it. Take your eyes off Cuba's riches. You will never own them. You will never dabble your feet in Cuba's clear seas, while peons do your menial work."

Chris baby, you are a Cuban wannabe. Who the hell cares about what you have to say. This issue will be resolved among Cubans, those in exile and those in Cuba, and you, thank God, are not one of us.
Take care of your own country and stop licking the boots of a mass murderer like Castro. Were you in love with Hitler and Pol Pot also or is Castro the only murderer tyrant that you like.

wobbles:

First, what a peculiar moniker. I don't know if it's meant as a description of your person or your opinions.

I am sure that the U.S. had contingency plans for invading Australia in case the Soviets did or even to prevent the Soviets from doing so. There are all kinds of contingency plans for improbable situations. I'm sure Australia even has contingency plans for invading New Zealand. The Northwood Document was such a plan. And, of course, it never happened.

markob:

It doesn't matter to you that Boff was a supporter and apologist for the Soviet Union? Is it possible to be a "moral paragon" and at the same time support the world's most tyrannical regime? The "liberation" that Boff had in mind entailed the suppression not the expansion of human rights. That would have made him a very peculiar kind of "liberator." Thank God Boff is nothing more now than a footnote in the history of moral relativism.

As Ballantyne suggests, it seems that if you're on the "right" side of politics (i.e. Augusto Pinochet) you'll be hounded as a war criminal, whereas if you're on the "left", like Castro, you'll fade away and no one will really care.

This is the case with good old Chaiman Mao, of China, who - it is estimated - killed some 30 million people. Yet for so long, the people of China and the Western world, have focussed on the atrocities of other leaders like Adolf Hitler. Don't get me wrong here, all of these leaders were cruel, abhorrent sods, but let's put things into perspective.

Currently, it is not just Castro who, it seems, will die unpunished, but Zimabwe's Robert Mugabe. Fortunately, the world's media has seen through the Magabe facade. Yet I think it will take some years yet for our mainstream media to wake up to the disasterous reign of Fidel Castro. For now, television programs (namely on our national broadcaster) are more than happy to spout off about Cuba's so-called wonderful health system (ahem, why then do so many try and flee to Florida in all kinds of leaky craft??!!). I was horrified to see a recent Foreign Correspondent program exonerating Cuban doctors who were working in troubled parts of the globe. Far from seeing these doctors as being used by Castro (or gladly participating) as a kind of Marxist missionary crew, the program portrayed them and the program as being of the most notable humanitarian value!!

Grey,
The document itself is proof that they were planning to do it and there was more than one general involved. The reason it wasn't implemented is because Kennedy would not approve it. (Maybe GWB would). The document is also believed to have been declassified in error and was never meant to be seen by the public - that's why it's so interesting.

Contingencies are one thing but it's the METHODS considered that are of concern.

Shooting down civilian planes, staging bogus enemy attacks, blowing people and things up, just to claim "self-defense" and some sort of moral superiority?

Cubano; I am no apologist for Castro but nothing Boff ever said about the USSR can justify the murderous wars waged in Latin America in the 1980s. That is the point. And unlike Castro's crimes these crimes are our crimes so therefore for any moral agent here it is elementary logic that these crimes are the ones that matter. The effect of concentarting on Castro's crimes is to create the groundwork for these other crimes and hence is a morally illegtimate enterprise. I ask a question; was the US assualt in Central America in the 1980s justified? Yes or No?

markob:

Do you mean: Was the spread of Communism in Central America something that the U.S. should have supported? No. What a nice "bridge" Central America would have made between the U.S. and the Marxist states of Venezuela and Bolivia! What would have been next? Mexico?

Chris Shaw:

The mafia no more owned "Cuba, its politicians and economy" than it does Australia's. The "well-researched books and documentaries" attesting to this falsehood are published by Ocean Press, Castro's overseas publishing house, located, of all places, in North Melbourne, Australia. Of course, your own "knowledge" doesn't come from these propaganda books but from the fictional Godfather II (what a great populist you are!).

You say that your "money's on Castro." I'm sure that doesn't mean very much. Besides, Castro doesn't need your money. His personal fortune is estimated by Forbes Magazine at $US950 million, and he wrung every penny of it from the blood and sweat of his hapless people.