What does it tell you about a certain country when two men are shot trying to smuggle people OUT of said country?

UPDATE: There are unconfirmed reports that there was actually a lot more bloodshed than reported, including perhaps women and children. Since it's Cuba, as always, details are still sketchy.

Or, Let's play chicken.

Iran, Cuba and Venezuela planning wargames near US borders?

Yes, you read correctly. Paxety has the alarming details.

One of the cherished, oft-repeated mantras of the left over the last two years of post-war Iraq* has been that Bush took us to war for nefarious reasons -- Halliburton! Halliburton! No Blood for Oil! -- and that he lied about Saddam's WMDs -- Bush Lied! People Died! I've had countless arguments with left-leaning folks about this and have given up trying to instill even a wood splinter-sized sliver of common sense into them. Talking to my dog is more more productive and, quite frankly, more satisfying.

One of the salient facts in the whole WMD mess that has always bothered me is that just about every intelligence agency in the world had an analysis that Saddam had them. Now I can see one or two getting facts wrong, where group-think can take hold in any of those agencies. What I can't wrap my brain around is that ALL of them got it wrong. Even Mossad. Mossad, Israel's principal foreign intelligence agency is not inefficient. They have protected Israel against a cadre of concerted, determined, murderous enemies for over a half-century. If they get stuff wrong, Israel ceases to exist. So I take their word fairly seriously when they say Saddam had WMDs. But it just wasn't Mossad that said this: CIA, MI5, the French and Germans, the Russians, even the freakin' UN said it! More recenttly, news came out that maybe our Russian "allies" helped Saddam move the WMDs into safe territory across the border in Syria, another gem of a nation. No matter, though; none of this fits the left's template so it is, of course, filtered out.

In today's FrontPage Magazine there's an interview with a former US Federal agent who, having been there at the start of the war, claims to have directed several teams to sites where Saddam was hiding some of these weapons. Here is a short excerpt:

Iraqis from backgrounds such as Iraqi Police officers, Doctors, Engineers, Iraqi Govt. officials, farmers, tribesmen, etc. identified sites that contained WMDs. They explained in detail why WMDs were in these areas and asked the U.S. to remove the WMDs. Much of the WMDs had been buried in rivers (within concrete bunkers), and in the sewage pipe system. There were signs of chemical activity in the area (missile imprints, gas masks, decontamination kits, atropine needles, etc.) The Iraqis and my team had no doubt WMDs were hidden in these areas.

The Agents and I knew we had found what we had been looking for. We immediately wrote our reports, which included all the source names, their credibility, their contact information, grid coordinates of the sites, and photographs. The reports were then sent to the U.S. Weapons Inspectors (in northern Iraq). This was mid April 2003. We were initially told by the Inspectors that their team was not organized at this point to conduct exploitations of sites. The sites we had identified would require an extensive amount of excavation. The actual ISG was not formed until a couple of months after the war. Not only did ISG not have the people and proper equipment, they advised Iraq was still a combat zone and very dangerous. ISG members further told us that WMD searches were being concentrated in northern Iraq, and not southern Iraq.

This was the first and largest mistake by ISG. During my intelligence gathering the Iraqis had told us that Saddam concentrated on hiding the WMDs in the southern region because the history of prior UN Weapons Inspections had always concentrated in searches of northern faculties. Searches in southern Iraq had primarily been helicopter flyovers. I have respect for every U.S. member of ISG who served in Iraq, but as an organization, the management was poor. They were not organized nor prepared for this type operation. I compare them to FEMA during Hurricane Katrina. Good people, but poor management. Poor management results in disaster and failure.

Read the article and judge for yourself. I didn't need convincing that Saddam was a danger. I'm glad we took him out.

(May we finish what Iran started in 1979, please?)

*The "Iraq War" was over in less than a month and we won. Yes, we won the war. You know how I know that? The guy that was running the country we beat is in custody and on trial for war crimes. (That was pretty easy to figure out, wasn't it?) What we have in Iraq today is analogous to a post-1945 Germany where armed bands of ex-SS soldiers and sympathizers would have terrorized the country. We are not in a war. Reading a little history could clear that confusion up for the libs, but unfortunately most history books aren't written with big letters in crayon...

The following was sent in by our friend Mike Pancier and I thought Id share it with you all.

Val, your essay on photographs the other day reminded me of some of the images that my family managed to smuggle out of Cuba. Much of my family's history remained there and its whereabouts unknown. All possessions, memories, photographs, family heirlooms, gone for the ages. Never seen again by any of my family members, nearly all of which left in the late 50's, 60's and 70's. The few that remained died there.

This is an image that I've been attempting to restore using Photoshop. It is not a great image. But an image of my family's farm, known as la Finca San Pedro. It was my family's farm in the Oriente Province near the town of Palm Soriano where my mother and grandparents settled from the 20's through the early sixties when they began to flee the tyranny brought about them.

This farm was in the family for generations. It was not a ranch; just a small farm where the Rio Cauto ran through. It was a place where the entire family would gather especially in summers. Where all the brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins; the entire family would converge.

Again, it was a small farm, but it was a utopia for the family; for my young mother and her siblings who grew up and spend countless days there riding horses, swimming in the river, and enjoying the natural beauty of a tropical island; the rural life far away from the hustle and bustle of the City.

My family were not wealthy barons. Just common folks who lived and enjoyed their hard work and the fruits which the farm would bear to them.

As Castro and his thugs took over the Island and lied to its inhabitants, and the world, that democracy would be restored, his intent was far from the truth. He confiscated everything on behalf of Stalinist state he vowed to create. Not just the family farm, but the pride and joy of a population. The joix de vivre of a generation. He sucked the life out of someone like my grandfather who as an orphan at an early age, raised by an older sister, became a man of modest wealth by selling shoes; by hard work. Everything he worked at his old was taken away by a bearded tyrant.

The farm was confiscated in the name of the government and converted to residences for loyal party members. The whole family scattered throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, Spain, Mexico. That one place of convergence for the entire family was gone and alas so was the family. Which with the deaths of the patriarchs and matriarchs, grandfathers and grandmothers, and the assimilation into a new society where everyone is too busy to enjoy the wonders around them, we deal with our own lives and if lucky we see some of the family members on certain holidays, weddings, or sadly, primarily at funerals. It has come to a sad reality that it is at funerals that we've seen our cousins grown. Our surviving aunts and uncles aged. Our cousins' kids now teenagers, or in college now, when the last time you saw them, they were in grade school. Many of us have assimilated and will continue to do so until one day our ties to a different world and way of life would be but a mere memory in a few generations.

My late grandmother always used to reminisce about this farm. Her stories to a young child made quite an impression on me. In my innocence, I would always ask her to take me there, not understanding why we could not go. She would tell me when Fidel died, we could see the farm. My departed grandmother, was never able to return. And alas, I myself do not know if I will ever make it there. For what I would see there would probably destroy those images I savored as a child.

In sum, the bearded one, destroyed not just a country, but a people, a way of life. He tainted everything that is good in the people of Caribbean island. He has made cynics of us; pessimists and has filled people with hatred towards their fellow countrymen. How people fail to recognize the evil this man has wrought on this continent and on a people is beside me.

As George Harrison once wrote,

"But all I've got is a photograph, And I realize you're not coming back anymore."

The farm of 1947 is not coming back and all I have is this photo and my memories.

Note to Mike: The photograph of my Tia Amanda's eyes that blesses this blog was taken at El Rio Cauto. My family is from Oriente as well.

Several of my blogging colleagues have commented on a story in today’s Miami Herald. The story is about a book currently available in area school libraries entitled Vamos a Cuba. According to the Herald:

A portrait of kids outfitted as Pioneers -- Cuba's communist youth group -- is emblazoned across the book's cover. Inside pages show scenes of a joyous carnival held on July 26, the anniversary of the Cuban revolution.

After seeing the book, the parent of a Marjory Stoneman Douglas Elementary student promptly contacted officials at the West Miami-Dade school.

''The parent was offended with the book's content,'' district spokesman Joseph Garcia said Wednesday. ``We're following School Board procedure to have the book removed from library shelves.''

Now I’m quite sure that that the book is 100% propaganda and therefore worthless garbage but I’m not too fond of banning books. Book banning is what the Nazis did. It’s what the Bolsheviks did. It’s what castro does. A free society does not ban books. I understand the concern about children being exposed to propaganda but parents have to take responsibility for what their children read. They need to engage their children when they come to them with questions about the stuff they are reading. You can’t win a debate by silencing the opposition. That’s not a debate.

That said, I wonder how long that book would last on library shelves if instead of communist propaganda it featured cartoons of the prophet Mohamed.

More on this story here and here.

Update: (Val) Here's the contact page from Miami-Dade Public School's Library Media Services Web Portal. Perhaps a few questions as to how, exactly, any particular book is chosen for an Elementary School Library are in order? Do they have a standardized list? If so, who puts together that standardized list? The ALA, perchance?

Some folks in Cuba have brass ones:

Anti-government graffiti appears in Santiago de Cuba

HAVANA, April 5 (Roberto Santana Rodríguez / www.cubanet.org) - Anti-government graffiti saying "Down with Fidel" and "Down with the Dictatorship" appeared in Santiago de Cuba last week.

Independent journalist Guillermo Espinosa Rodríguez said he saw the graffiti on March 29 on San Pío Street. He said the authorities immediately removed the graffiti. He said the messages "were even clearer" after the cleansing.

Espinosa Rodríguez said several dissidents were subsequently arrested on suspicion of being the authors of the graffiti.