Obama State Dept. authorized Richardson to offer concessions in exchange for Gross
Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. It appears the Cuban dictatorship still considered Bill Richardson an enemy when they unceremoniously slighted him on his recent visit to the island. In spite of Richardson's long history of being sympathetic to the brutal Castro dictatorship, the regime did not want to accept the gifts the Obama administration was willing to give them in exchange for the release of American hostage, Alan Gross.
According to sources cited by the New York Times, the U.S. administration authorized Richardson to offer the criminal Castro government two gifts: 1) the promise of getting the process starting to get them off the State Department's list of State Sponsors of Terror, and 2) waive the probation of one of the five Castro spies due to be released from prison next month:
Bill Richardson had chits to offer Cuban officials in Havana this week if they released Alan Gross, the American contractor serving a 15-year sentence for distributing satellite telephone equipment.
Mr. Richardson, who has negotiated prisoner releases from Cuba to North Korea, had State Department approval to present at least two things, said four people with knowledge of the negotiations. One was a process for removing Cuba from the list of states sponsoring terrorism. The Obama administration was also willing to waive probation for one of the “Cuban Five,” as a group of Cuban agents accused of espionage in the United States are known on the island, so he could go home after he leaves prison next month.
It is apparent that the Castro regime believes their hostage is worth much more, and they are holding out for a higher ransom. Nevertheless, besides the bizarre sequence of events that surrounded Richardson's last visit, this latest revelation brings up another interesting point: It appears the Obama administration is willing to go to extreme measures to secure the release of Alan Gross.
By promising to begin the "process" to remove Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terror in exchange for the release of Gross, the Obama administration is basically rewarding the Castro regime for its act of terrorism when it took Gross hostage in the first place. The contradiction is also present in the promise to waive probation for the soon to be released Cuban spy. After spending months calling the Castro regime's trial of Alan Gross a perversion of justice, the Obama administration is more than willing to pervert U.S. justice by arbitrarily reducing the sentence of a convicted spy.
No reasonable or compassionate person wants to see Alan Gross spend one more second in a Castro gulag, but is capitulation to a criminal dictatorship the only way to gain his release? There are other methods to secure the freedom of Alan Gross, which are much more effective and do not require capitulation. The only problem is these methods require strong and principled leadership in our foreign policy to carry out, something the U.S. has been lacking since late January of 2009.
I guess you could say, as Abba Eban is quoted in a post above as saying of the Palestinians, Castro never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
But if we gave them more, as Israel tried so often and it only made the Arabs more violent, so it would only make Castro ask for more.
I propose the same solution here that I proposed in the above post, do not offer anything to Castro. It only emboldens him to think he can have it all. Instead make it harder for him so that he will eventually fall.
OK. So he WAS an envoy for Obama, which he basically had to be, since he couldn’t possibly hope to get anywhere without something to offer for the hostage, and he couldn’t offer it without official authorization from the administration. Obviously he failed miserably, since Castro, Inc. has no real incentive to play ball, and they know perfectly well Obama is neither strong nor really antagonistic. He’d like to resolve this for campaign purposes, but if he was truly serious he’d have taken a different tack a long while back. Castro, Inc. wants another Elián-type outcome here, and unless it were to cost them too much to hold out, they can keep stringing this thing along indefinitely. And again, in this photo, Richardson looks like he’s wearing some kind of brown pancake make-up on his face. Maybe it’s a reverse Michael Jackson thing. Sheesh.
Maybe, like Boehner, it's just the way his skin looks.
Or maybe, he was trying to show solidarity with the Cubans.
If so, now he can wash his face.
If Castro, Inc. winds up getting ANY gain from having imprisoned Gross, even if it's not as much as the regime may have wanted, it will be a travesty and a scandal, and a defeat for justice and the US. Unfortunately, Obama is extremely unlikely to see it that way, or rather, to act accordingly.
Check out the tourists in the background. A gay couple, perhaps?
So basically the Richarson MSM story is really a cover up. I thought so. In essence they made it look like he never talked with them to save the Admin the embarrassment.
My how some things never change........
The truth begins to reveal itself and it's very ugly. Ohbummer never fails to remind me of Jimmy Carter!
"Cuban agents ACCUSED of espionage in the United States" reads the NYTimes article.
Only "accused?"
Try "CONVICTED." And the convictions all withstood several appeals.
Unreal
But the NY Times isn't biased or anything. It's just, uh, focused. Very.
Seriously, Richardson's hair is painfully lame. Don't these people have image consultants?
[...] CUBA Bill Richardson went to Cuba to intercede on Alan Gross’ behalf and was resoundedly turned down: Alberto de la Cruz writes on how the Obama State Dept. authorized Richardson to offer concessions in exchange for Gross [...]