U.S. withdraws phony charges against Cuba
By Monica Moorehead
Every U.S. administration dating back to the days when
Dwight D. Eisenhower was president has attempted to paint a
bogey-man image of Cuba as a security threat to the United
States. How ludicrous!
For more than 40 years, these false depictions have been
created mainly for the benefit of the U.S. public to help
justify a Pentagon military intervention like the one against
Iraq.
The Pentagon orchestrated the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
During that invasion, CIA-trained Cuban right-wing mercenary
forces were repelled by Cuba's people's militias, resulting in
a humiliating defeat for U.S. imperialism.
So it is very rare for U.S. intelligence agencies to
publicly raise doubts about an outright lie against a
revolutionary socialist government like Cuba's. But such a
rarity happened on Sept. 17.
The CIA and other intelligence agencies backed off earlier
charges that Cuba has been developing an offensive biological
program and sharing it with what the U.S. government describes
as other "rogue" states. In 2002, President George W. Bush had
declared Iran, Syria, North Korea and Cuba to be "rogue"
states.
These charges arose in 1999, during the Clinton
administration, with the issuing of a National Intelligence
Estimate report. Later, Bush administration officials made
further allegations claiming that Cuba posed a "terrorist"
threat to the United States. More specifically, the United
States accused Cuba of producing and exporting "dual-use"
items, meaning technology that can be used for both civilian
and military objectives.
The original 1999 report claimed that Cuba "had at least a
limited, developmental biological weapons research and
development effort." (New York Times, Sept. 18)
In the post-Sept. 11 period, the U.S. government is
reviewing a number of intelligence reports that made
accusations against certain countries and governments. This
review comes in light of the widespread knowledge that Bush
used lies to justify attacking and occupying Iraq, especially
the claim that Iraq was hiding "weapons of mass
destruction."
In the spring of 2002 the U.S. government claimed that
Cuba's pharmaceutical industry was producing germs for
biological terror. The Cuban government dispelled this
anti-communist slander.
What the United States will not freely admit is that Cuba is
known worldwide for its scientific advances in medical research
and cures, because its health-care system is based on
prevention and need, not profits.
Besides providing all its people with free medical care,
socialist Cuba has an advanced pharmaceutical industry. It
sells many vaccines that it has developed to other countries,
especially poor ones, at lower prices than the capitalist,
profit-driven pharmaceuticals companies charge.
The biological and chemical weaponry threat does not come
from Cuba. It is home grown.
The only attack with biological weapons in the United States
was in 2001, when letters filled with deadly anthrax were
mailed to several public figures. The anthrax was proven to
have come from U.S. stockpiles. To this day, no one has been
arrested, even though several postal workers died.
Even though the updated NIE does not go far enough in
vindicating Cuba, it is nevertheless is political setback for
the warmongering Bush administration, which wants very badly to
once again make Cuba a colonial possession.
Reprinted from the Sept. 30, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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