CUBA: THE NEXT IRAQ?

There's good news in this New York Times article about Bush policy toward Cuba -- stricter travel restrictions are alienating many Cuban-Americans, some of whom are registering as Democrats, and even the traditionally hard-line Cuban American National Foundation is upset -- but tucked into the article is this rather chilling look into the (possible) future:

The document prepared by the presidential commission listed about 675 specific policy recommendations, many of them steps the administration would favor after Mr. Castro was gone. American involvement, if the successor government requests it, is offered in areas as diverse as tax collection, environmental protection, cultural preservation, mortgage financing and labor relations. Involvement so detailed, critics say, would amount to dictates from the United States, which is likely to control the economic levers of a Cuban recovery.

Yikes.

By the way, who exactly is responsible for this?

The strategy was drafted largely by administration officials who were once aides to Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina...

Bloody hell.

(DISCLAIMER: I'm no Castro fan. I just believe that the hard-line policy has been maintained bullheadedly despite its utter failure to undermine Castro.)