When is a Terrorist not a Terrorist?

Imagine if you will an American aircraft, let's say it's a United flight from Los Angeles to Mexico City, is blown up in mid-air. It's an unspeakably horrible event that kills 73 people. The World watches in horror. George Bush and Dick Cheney condemn the tragedy in uncertain terms. The NTSB and FBI find that terrorism is the cause and there were explosives in the cargo hold. The administration vows to get the perpetrators "dead or alive" and will not sleep until it is done.

Well, this all happened in 1976

When is a terroirist not a terrorist? When he blows up Cuban jets, that's when. Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Castro militant, has been freed by the "justice" department. He will be allowed to live with his family in Miami.

Posada Carriles has never even been charged with his many terrorist acts, including the downing of the jet bound from Venezuela to Cuba. Venezuela wants him, and we just know how much this "administration" cares about the wants and needs of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela.

Posada has never been charged in U.S. courts in connection with those terrorist acts, his critics contend, because he likely threatened to disclose other violence committed during his decades of covert work with the CIA.

A Bay of Pigs veteran who once served time in Panama for plotting to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Posada has become a political conundrum for the Bush administration. The president and his Republican allies have benefited from the support of influential Cuban exiles in Miami, many of whom view Posada as a patriotic freedom fighter.

Posada Carriles's career is long and quite varied. He has his hand in organizations and acts that were shady, to say the least. He was a member of the famed Operation Condor which was responsible for assasinations throughout South America during the Dirty Wars and the 1976 murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C. Posada Carriles was also responsible for more recent crimes, as in the 1998 Cuban tourist bombings which killed an Italian tourist and wounded many others. About those bombings Luis Posada Carriles said, "It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop." Now, what would the Bush "Administration" say if about 9/11 Osama said, "It is sad that someone died but we can't stop"? I'm sure they'd let him go live with his family!

When politics gets in the way of dogma, people lose. Luis Posada Carriles poses a sticky problem for our government. Not the least of these issues is the knowledge Posada Carriles possesses, as in the Central Intelligence Agency. As in the involvement of people like Kissinger, Nixon and many others in the assasinations of scores in South America. As in the rise of Augusto Pinochet. As in the death of Salvador Allende. As in the deaths of 73 people on an ill-fated plane flight from Venezuela.

When is a Terrorist not a Terrorist? When he's our Terrorist.