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Related: About this forumBowe Bergdahl’s release and Alan Gross’ future - Progreso Weekly
Bowe Bergdahls release and Alan Gross future
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Obamas decision to exchange prisoners with an organization that for decades has been described as terrorist and has remained at war with the U.S. before and after the invasion of Afghanistan has the potential to renew the hopes of Gross and his family.
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After five years of detention in Havana and seeing no significant efforts to resolve his status, Gross adopted an extreme attitude and last April staged a nine-day hunger strike to pressure the White House to begin direct conversations with the Cuban government.
Shortly after ending the fast which was extremely dangerous to his health the U.S. agent learned that neither reasonable explanations nor the most dramatic pleas nor the most desperate gestures were enough to move his government sufficiently to act on his case.
Far from giving any sign that might in any way favor a dialogue on Gross, the U.S. State Department on April 30 released its Foreign Terrorist Organizations list for 2013, wherein it reiterated its harebrained designation of Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, for the 32nd time.
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Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)some things they need like soap and toilet paper. I'd be all for that.
Judi Lynn
(160,211 posts)The U.S. won't "swap" because it's easy to see it would be wildly embarrassing for this country to acknowledge it has been running covert ops against this tiny country after all the noise made over all these years, the crushing embargo, the decades of howling and pointing at a small island, the relentless raids made by various idiot "exiles" and their hired operatives from other countries to harm Cubans and tourists, and most of all, the dirty, filthy, failed Bay of Pigs, after which there was the understanding there would be NO nasty acts against Cuba again, no weird stuff launched by this country.
So whattdya got? One Alan Gross, also in Cuba with HIS face hanging out. No, he of course is not a "development contractor." OMG, ha ha ha ha.
How do they "swap" the remaining 3 men they have royally reamed who came to them for help against the men who were plotting acts of terror against Cubans, the men they THEN imprisoned under appalling circumstances, after a phony trial which was overturned upon the first appeal in no time at all (before they kept shopping until they got an appeals court to do their bidding) for a man they sent to destabilize the Cuban government?
They look awful at BOTH ends of this idea, as they would. Very bad, very underhanded, very slimy, not at all like a great, proud nation which deserves respect throughout the world. Just a bunch of cheap bullies.