terrorist != cuban bombers

[saint_monkey]

An interesting article the indy media has dug up:

Setting the tone

Three years ago, after 9/11, President Bush appeared to draw the same line in the sand. Addressing members of the 101st Airborne Division, he declared, “If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist.”

Actions speak louder than words

Earlier this month, three anti-Castro Cuban exiles flew to Miami from Panama after serving four years in prison for “endangering public safety.” They were arrested in 2000 for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro by planting explosives at a meeting the Cuban dictator planned to hold with university students in Panama.

And in case you think they only harbor those that attempt to blow things up, among the people allowed entry are:

Pedro Rémon, sentenced to seven years for the bomb plot in Panama, pleaded guilty in 1986 to bombing Cuba’s mission to the United Nations and later conspiring to murder its ambassador to the UN. A New York detective also fingered Rémon for the machine-gun murders of two political opponents.

Gaspar Jiménez, sentenced to eight years for the Panama bomb plot and falsifying documents, had previously served time in Mexico for the attempted kidnapping and murder of Cuban diplomats there. He was also indicted in Florida for blowing the legs off a liberal Miami radio talk show host in 1976. (The indictment was eventually dropped for insufficient evidence, even though the main witness passed several lie-detector tests.)

Guillermo Novo, sentenced to 7 years for the Panama terror plot, was arrested in 1964 for firing a bazooka at the United Nations, where Che Guevara was speaking. In 1978, he was convicted of participating in one of the worst acts of terrorism ever committed on U.S. soil, the car bombing in Washington, D.C. of former Chilean Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier. (The conviction was later overturned on a technicality, though Novo was convicted of perjury.)

A fourth Panama conspirator, Louis Posada Carriles, left Panama for Honduras. He is still wanted in Venezuela on charges of bombing a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all 73 passengers. In 1998, in an interview with the New York Times from a hideout in Central America, Posada admitted taking part in numerous acts of terrorism, including a wave of Havana hotel bombings in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist. He said his violence was funded by prominent U.S.-based supporters in the Cuban exile community

Terror by association. Perhaps he should have fired a bazooka at Salman Rushdie instead...

Also in the news today, the US today refused to allow Yusef Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, to enter the country. That story, here. Austensibly, because of his support (later retracted on 60 Minutes) of the fatwah against Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses. Maybe Islam is guilty of making rash statements, but I think his life's work shows that he's no terrorist.

Story source: The Independent
Vector: metafilter