It reads like some kind of bizarre, Michael Moore style parody of the Bush administration:
Sometime last March, one of the worst terrorists in the Western hemisphere slipped across the border into the USA. Once in the country, he gave several interviews, made press releases, and was seen by many people. And yet up until a week ago, the State Department denied his presence in the country.
Then, last night, they finally, sheepishly arrested him, after he issued a press release saying that he was planning on leaving the country again - apparently one too many insults for the Department of Homeland Security to withstand.
(more below the cut)
And yet, that's the strange story of the case of Luis Posada, a Cuban exile who stands accused and convicted (in absentia) of the bombing of a Cuban airplane over the Bahamas in 1976, who bombed several hotels in Havana, killing an Italian tourist in 1997, and who, in 2000, was arrested for trying to smuggle in 33 pounds of C4 to the Ibero-American summit in Panama in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro.
His arrest has placed the Bush Administration in a rather precarious position. On the one hand, he is a terrorist. On the other hand, he is the beloved hero of the Cuban Exile population in southern Florida, who are worth enough electoral votes to swing an election. They want to deport him under charges of entering the country illegally, but the State Department has stated that they will not extradite him to Cuba or to any nation allied with Cuba (in other words: Venezuela). That rules out the only two countries willing to take him.
Nightline did an excellent job of detailing the story, a couple hours ago, including an excellent interview with the President of the Cuban National Assembly, who pointed out the hypocrisy in Bush's current unwillingness to fight terror.
I think bringing Posada to justice would be the right thing to do, both morally and politically. What do you think?
You can read more here and here. I wasn't able to find a link to the full Nightline story, unfortunately, which was rather disappointing.