Thursday, April 01, 2004

This is infuriating:

Cuba on Wednesday rejected a renewed accusation by a senior U.S. official that it is developing biological weapons and said the charges were an attempt to seek a pretext to invade the communist-run island.

Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque called a news conference to deny the latest charge by John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security in the Bush administration, who made a similar accusation in 2002.

Bolton told Congress in written testimony on Tuesday that Cuba remains a "terrorist and (biological weapons) threat to the United States."

"I believe the case for the existence of a developmental Cuba (biological weapons) effort is strong," Bolton said in a 25-page statement to the U.S. House of Representatives International Relations Committee....


--Reuters

Notice that Bolton isn't just accusing Cuba of having a bioweapons program -- he's saying that Cuba is a threat to the U.S. as a result of this (alleged) program. I don't know if Cuba really does have a bioweapons program (although I will note that, to the best of my knowledge, every person who's ever alleged that it does has gone by the name "John Bolton") -- but if so, Castro's not stupid enough to have anything to do with a bioterror attack on America. He knows there'd be a violent retaliation, and that this retaliation would be supported even by normally dovish politicians.

This administration just can't let go of the notion that terrorism must be state-sponsored -- Cuba wants to send us biotoxins just as Iraq surely must have been behind 9/11. In reality, the worst threat to the U.S. and the West is from stateless, borderless enemies -- but the administration doesn't want to hear that.

Also note that Bolton doesn't even say Cuba is producing bioweapons -- he says its likely that there's "a developmental Cuba (biological weapons) effort." (Which, I guess, is kind of like "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities.") Let's see: Castro's been in power for 43 years and all he has is a bioweapons "effort." Maybe after he's been in office another 43 years, he'll have some actual bioweapons.

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