Terrorist Takes Refuge in America

Another interesting instance of DoubleSpeak/DoubleThink here: The Bush Administration has made no move to detain a known terrorist, and former CIA operative, Luis Posada Carriles. He has been connected to the bombing of a Cuban jetliner, killing more than 70 people in 1976. However, because he operated from Venezuela and attacked Cuba -- both "enemies" in the contemporary frame -- perhaps the Administration is being decidedly political here. To me, this reads as: "He's one of OUR terrorists. He can stay."

Read an article here: http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_5891605?nclick_check=1

Or just this excerpt: "So for now, Posada's a free man - even though the administration has sufficient evidence to arrest him for his role in either the 1976 airliner bombing or the 1997 Havana bombings. For that matter, Posada easily could be detained under Section 412 of the Patriot Act, which calls for the mandatory detention of aliens suspected of terrorism."

--- Since when does the Administration decide against enacting the PATRIOT ACT?

"The administration's approach to Posada contrasts jarringly with its approach to suspected Al-Qaida terrorists. With the latter, the administration wastes no time on legal niceties. Foreign nationals have been illegally "rendered" to countries where they faced torture, interrogated in secret CIA prisons and sent to languish at Guantanamo, sometimes on the flimsiest of evidence. Even U.S. citizens suspected of terrorist activities have been dubbed "unlawful enemy combatants" and deprived of their constitutional rights. So why is the administration dragging its feet on arresting and charging Posada?

--- I guess the hate of Cuba and Castro outweighs the Global War on Terror.

"It's not as if the evidence against Posada is seriously in dispute. In 1998, for instance, he "proudly admitted authorship of the hotel bomb attacks" to the New York Times, describing them "as acts of war intended to cripple a totalitarian regime[."]"

--- Which totalitarian regime is worse? That of Castro, or that of Bush... If "acts of war intended to cripple totalitarian regime" are warranted in some cases and not others, who gets to decide? Right, the guys with the most guns.