Bush’s Posada Dilemma

What is George Bush to do with Luis Posada Carriles? You perhaps have read recently about Posada, the self-professed tourist hotel bomber and U.S. government identified commercial airliner bomber, who illegally snuck into the U.S.

Posada, a former member of the regime of former Cuban dictator Fulencio Batistsa, trained by the CIA in explosives and assassination in the early ‘60s, a Bay of Pigs veteran, a CIA operative from the early ‘60s until the mid-‘70s, a Venezuela secret police official in the late 70s, and a fugitive from Venezuelan custody where he was imprisoned awaiting a third trial for the bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner in 1976 that killed the greatest portion of the Cuban youth fencing teams. It should be noted that during a good portion of Posada’s CIA association, George Bush Sr. was Director of Central Intelligence.

Venezuela has requested Posada’s extradition and so far the Bush administration has refused, putting the lie to Bush’s professed war on terrorism. As it turns out, if Bush agrees with the desired end of terrorist acts, or calculates political advantage, he will forgive terrorist acts. Terrorism aimed at Cuba is OK.

Posada entered the U.S. illegally in March. Entering, no doubt, using one of the plethora of fake passports of which he bragged in a 1998 New York Times interview. An interview, by the way, in which he boasted of bombing several Cuban tourist hotels, one of which killed an Italian tourist. The U.S. government took no measures to apprehend Posada until he held a press conference in May, thereby eliminating, for certain, any opportunity for the Bush administration to deny knowledge of Posada’s illegal presence in the U.S.

So what has been Bush’s response? Posada has been jailed for illegally entering the U.S. If he ships Posada to Venezuela it is likely that Posada may begin to chirp like a bird and tell all, to the presumed embarrassment of Bush Sr. Additionally, extradition to Venezuela would alienate the hard core anti-Castro Cuban expatriates in Florida who exercise an inordinate influence, afforded by their inordinate affluence, over the dispensation of the 27 Florida electoral college votes. Bush’s refusal to extradite Posada will illustrate Bush’s hypocrisy in his so called “war on terror.” On the other hand Bush could extradite Posada to another nation, within which Posada would simply disappear.

So what will it be? Bush will deny the Venezuelan extradition request and thumb his nose at (more likely flip off) the rest of the world which takes note of his hypocrisy and Posada will disappear after extradition to another nation.

In pursuance of Bush’s divine mission, the opinions of others are merely a distraction and in his ridged ideological vision of the world there is no room for doubt.