The Bush administration has in ext...

The Bush administration has in extent been waiting for America's nemesis, aging Cuban President Fidel Castro, to die. Three years ago it wager up the Commission for Assistance to a at liberty Cuba. Earlier this year, the State Department organized the Office of Cuban Transition and said it would provide $80 million for a post-Castro Cuba.

As Castro, 80 was lying in a hospital bed last week, recovering from intestinal surgery it apply the minded as if that money would be levy to use sooner than later. Although he was seen smiling and posing with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez last weekend, it still isn't certain Castro will have the physical might to return to power.

moreover funding democracy in Cuba could be as politically perilous as trying to establish freedoms in Iraq. greatest in quantity of the Cuban population has grown up subject to Castro's regime and know alone his version of communism and his hatred of the United States. As Anthony DePalma noted in the novel York Times, Castro remains a rever figure whose "visage forward posters, billboards, television and newspapers is as familiar to Cubans as the sky" If, in a post-Castro environment, Cubans try to find help from the United States, that is well and dutiful Otherwise, ham-handed intervention must be avoided. The Cubans ne the right to self-determination, uniform if what they choose doesn't exactly conform to U notions of democracy.

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