Cubanos!

This is coolbert:

From the Chicago Tribune today:

“Around the World”

“Castro counter McCain on torture”

“Havana” - -

“Ailing leader Fidel Castro on Monday denied U.S. presidential hopeful John McCain’s claim that Cuban agents helped torture American prisoners of war [POW] in Vietnam in the 1960’s, calling the assertion ‘a strange legend.’”

“Castro’s Essay: ‘Let me remind you, Mr. McCain: The commandments of the religion you practice prohibit lying,’ Castro wrote in an essay published by the Communists Party newspaper Granma. ‘The years in prison and the wounds received because of the attacks on Hanoi do not excuse you from the moral obligation of the truth.’"

“McCain, GOP front-runner for the the November presidential contest, was held [as a POW] for five years in North Vietnam.”

[Fidel Castro is hardly one to lecture or admonish anyone about lying or other immoral behavior!!!]

What are we talking about here?

It has been over thirty years [1973] now since the American POW’s being held at the Hanoi Hilton were released by the North Vietnamese. Almost exclusively aviators, shot down while on bombing missions against military targets over North Vietnam. Captured, imprisoned, tortured into revealing information, make “confessions”, sign “statements”, etc.

Including John McCain. Shot down, badly injured from bailing out of his downed aircraft, refused medical treatment from the North Vietnamese.

Then subjected to further excruciating torture. Even beyond what was suffered from the shoot down.

[I think McCain suffered broken arms and broken collar-bones. Maybe worse than that??!! McCain during the 2000 election primaries stated that his VA medical casebook consisted of 300 pages, mostly documenting surgeries he has had to correct, over the years, a variety of problems stemming from the bailout injuries and subsequent torture!]

A fate quite common for those imprisoned at the “Hanoi Hilton”. Called the Hilton because it WAS NO HILTON.

The assertion has been made even from the time of the Vietnam War, that Cuban interrogators DID participate in the torture of American POW’s. NOT solely at the “Hanoi Hilton” either. American POW’s held by the Viet Cong [VC] in South Vietnam also reported the presence of “Cubans”. Persons described as SPANISH SPEAKING WHITE MEN!!

I can offer a suggestion as to who these SPANISH SPEAKING WHITE MEN WERE!!

NOT necessarily Cubans. What ethnic Russians would refer to as ninos’ [children in Spanish].

According to John Barron: [speaking here of the KGB officer Oleg Nechiporenko]

"Slender and darkly handsome . . . with his wavy black hair and olive complexion looked utterly Latin. Indeed, Mexican authorities theorized that he was either the child of Spanish communists who had fled to Russia after the Spanish civil War or perhaps the son of a Russian father and a Spanish mother . . . His Spanish was flawless, he spoke the idioms of laborers, diplomats, and students"

And according to Victor Suvorov:

"During the Civil War in Spain thousands of Spanish children were evacuated to the Soviet Union. The exact number . . . is not known . . . As young men they soon became cadets at Soviet military schools . . . they were evacuated [after the Battle of Stalingrad] to the Urals and Siberia, where the Spanish Communist Party . . . organized special schools for them. From then on references to Spanish children appeared very rarely in the Soviet press . . . One of the special schools . . . was known as the E.D. Stasova International School. Some graduates of this school later turned up in Fidel Castro's personal bodyguard, some became leading figures in the Cuban intelligence service - - the most aggressive in the world [that is saying a lot!!!!!] . . . The second generation of Spaniards is used by the Soviet government in many ways for operations abroad."

These Spanish-speaking-white-men encountered by American POW's in Vietnam may have very well been Soviet citizens - - ninos' - - offspring of those original Spanish children evacuated to the Soviet Union during the Spanish Civil War??

Does any of this mean that John McCain is lying about being tortured by “Cubans”? [I do not know if McCain was personally mistreated by SPANISH SPEAKING WHITE MEN!!] NO!! A lie is only when you tell an untruth and know it to be an untruth at the exact moment you are saying it.

Again, Fidel Castro is hardly a man to be lecturing someone about “lying”!!

coolbert.