[NYTr] BlackAmericaWeb on the US Protectionof Terrorist Posada Date: Fri, 18 May 2007 00:32:22 -0400 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit BlackAmericaWeb - May 17, 2007 http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/kane517 Commentary: If the United States is So Concerned About Terrorism, Why Are We Protecting Luis Posada? By Gregory Kane BlackAmericaWeb.com When a U.S. District Court judge dropped immigration fraud charges against Luis Posada, it caused scarcely a ripple among mainstream news media outlets. Who is Posada, and why should black Americans care? Posada is an anti-Castro Cuban exile and, according to one Cuban government official several black American journalists talked to on a recent trip to the island, “one of the most dangerous or perhaps the most dangerous terrorist in this hemisphere.” And Cuban government officials -- long considered by many Americans to be a despotic, brutal and dictatorial lot -- aren’t the only ones who feel that way. Posada is wanted in Venezuela, where he escaped from jail before he could be tried on charges of blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976 and killing 73 people. He’s also been accused of masterminding bombings inside Cuba, one of which killed an Italian tourist. Our own FBI wanted to charge him with violating America’s Neutrality Act. But, with their usual flair for incompetence, the FBI boys claim they’ve “lost” their files on Posada. Two years ago, Posada skulked into this country and was arrested on immigration charges. The feds squirreled him away in an El Paso detention facility until they could figure out what to do with him. Last week, Judge Kathleen Cardone finally figured out what to do with him: Drop the charges. Cutting Posada loose is wrong on so many levels, it’s hard to know where to begin. But let’s start with the most obvious one, shall we? 1. Posada’s release and being allowed to stay in this country exposes our “war on terror” for the hypocritical sham that it is. Posada IS a terrorist. So is his cohort Orlando Bosch, another anti-Castro Cuban who landed on these shores long before Posada did. Former President George H. W. Bush, the daddy of our current president, allowed Bosch to remain in the United States, in spite of the following warning from an acting associate U.S. attorney general. “For 30 years, Bosch has resolutely and perseveringly perpetrated acts of violence. He has threatened to carry out and has carried out violent acts of terrorism against numerous targets, including countries friendly to the United States and high-ranking officials of these countries Thee United States cannot tolerate the inherent use of terrorism as a means for resolving controversy.” It’s nice to know someone in the Justice Department when Daddy Bush was president knew the definition of terrorism. Daddy Bush clearly didn’t. In fact, anti-Castro Cubans committed a spate of bombings and murders here and abroad under Daddy Bush’s watch when he was head of the CIA. If any of you heard clucking sounds as those jets hit the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, that might have been the sound of some Godzilla-sized chickens coming home to roost. 2. Cutting Posada loose makes Americans seem as arrogant as the rest of the world says we are. Venezuelan officials want Posada back, and they want him bad. The Cubans wouldn’t mind getting their hands on him either. There’s that not-so-minor matter of trying him for the murder of 73 Cubans. But we refused to extradite Posada, all the while piously claiming that those countries harboring terrorists are as bad as the terrorists themselves. What was our reason for not extraditing Posada? An immigration judge ruled that Posada shouldn’t be extradited to either Venezuela or Cuba because he would be tortured. I hope you were sitting down for that one. For those of you who weren’t, I’ll pause this commentary while you pick yourselves up off the floor. Yes, the country that has tortured detainees at Guantanamo Bay and outsourced torture refuses to extradite a known terrorist because he’ll be tortured. We won’t extradite him, and we won’t jail him for violating immigration laws either. Now is the time to ask why black Americans should care about this. 3. Cutting Posada loose is a slap in the face of every black American who has a family member in a federal prison. Some, indeed many, of those black inmates are in prison because they belong there. But there are some who are serving serious time for minor charges (Anybody remember Kemba Smith?). In Baltimore several years ago, two narcotics detectives were found guilty of “stealing” money from drug dealers. Not planting drugs on them and arresting them, but taking their drugs and money and giving them to other dealers as payment for being informants. One of those detectives got over 300 years in federal prison; the other got over 100 years. And they didn’t blow up a plane and kill 73 people. They didn’t bomb any tourist sites. The guy who has yet to stand trial for those things walks around Miami, while black Americans serve stiff time for lesser crimes. But maybe there’s a silver lining to all this. The next time Americans invade a place for harboring terrorists, maybe we should start in Miami. * ================================================================ .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org .List Archives: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ .Subscribe: https://olm.blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr ================================================================