Harboring Terrorists

Th NY Times puts the Luis Posada Carriles story on its main web page. Posada was pardoned last year by the outgoing president of Panama along with three others who had been convicted in 2000 of plotting to explode a bomb at an international conference in Panama which Fidel Castro was attending. Posada has long been suspected (I thought he had been convicted, but not according to the Times article) of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73. He is also suspected in a bombing in Washington in 1976 which killed a Chilean diplomat and his American aide; Posada has also bragged directly to the Times about bombing a Cuban hotel.

So where is this dangerous terrorist hiding out? Right here in Florida, according to his lawyer. He apparently will request political asylum. If granted, he certainly won't be the first terrorist harbored in Florida--the Times describes the case of Orlando Bosch, who was about to be deported by Bush 41's Justice Department before Poppy himself intervened:

Orlando Bosch, the most prominent face of the violent anti-Castro wing in Florida, said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday in Miami that he had spoken by telephone with Mr. Posada, who, "as everybody knows, is here."

Mr. Bosch, a longtime ally of Mr. Posada's, presented a similar problem for the United States in 1989, when the Justice Department moved to deport him despite resistance from Miami's Cuban-Americans.

The Justice Department called Mr. Bosch "a terrorist, unfettered by laws or human decency, threatening and inflicting violence without regard to the identity of his victims," in the words of Joe D. Whitley, then an associate United States attorney general. Mr. Whitley added: "The United States cannot tolerate the inherent inhumanity of terrorism as a way of settling disputes. Appeasement of those who would use force will only breed more terrorists. We must look on terrorism as a universal evil, even if it is directed toward those with whom we have no political sympathy."

The first Bush administration overruled the deportation in 1990; Mr. Bosch remained in Florida. Mr. Whitley, now general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security, declined to comment on the Posada case.

(See this post for more on Herr Bosch.

So while the Bushies continue to claim successes in the "war on terror" because they've arrested some very-high-up guy in al Qaeda or Zarqawi's operation, whom amazingly enough we've never heard of and wasn't on the FBI's most-wanted list, they continue to harbor terrorists of their own in Florida. The entire Bush administration serves as the textbook illustration for the phrase "the pot calling the kettle black." And the "war on terror" is the biggest kettle of BS to come along in a very long time--an all-purpose excuse to start wars, steal our rights, and raid the treasury.

[Update, 10 AM] Eli at Left I on the News has more about Posada and the NY Times' treatment of the story.