Castro has Parkinson's disease, CIA has concluded

Two officials said the CIA is convinced that Cuban leader Fidel Castro suffers from Parkinson's disease.

WASHINGTON - The CIA has alerted policymakers over the potential eroding of Fidel Castro's health.

The CIA recently concluded that Cuban leader Fidel Castro suffers from Parkinson's disease and has warned U.S. policymakers to be ready for trouble if the 79-year-old ruler's health erodes over the next few years.

If true, the CIA's assessment of the nonfatal but debilitating condition would mean Castro may be entering a period where doctors say the symptoms grow more evident, medicines are less effective and mental functions start to deteriorate.

Although Castro's brother Raúl, head of the armed forces, has been anointed as his successor, Cuba analysts fear the possibility of a tumultuous period during which an incapacitated Castro refuses to give up power but can no longer project his overpowering personality to Cuba's 11 million people.

''For Fidel to start shaking in a real and substantial way -- in public -- sends quite a powerful message to people around the world,'' said Frank O. Mora, a professor of national security strategy at The National War College.

more…
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/13177087.htm

Honestly, there's not that many common diseases that cause shaking. There is also surgery (fun brain surgery) and very effective medicines (a large cocktail albeit) that will keep control of it until he's too old for the Parkinson's to matter.

for the disease, and I would not put it past them. It would sure help the island economy!!

power, just because chimpboy is so desperately trying to hold on to his?

is not dimwitted and maybe suffering from TD, like our pResident.

Namely, stupidity. The CIA should alert us all on that one too.

You finally got him CIA. Took 40 years, but you got him!

Wait...

during this "tumultuous period" they talk about.

But then, we'd NEVER go barging into another country all on our own without anyone's support. Nooooo, never!

na na na na nah na.

Parkinson's syndrome Castro has offered aid and Cuban doctors to hurricane Katrina victims.

Cootie * obstructed almost any immediate aid including that of Cuba and many nations around the world.

Parkinson's syndrome Castro has not recently invaded any nation that was not a threat to Cuba. Of course there is that Angola episode that pales against previous and current US episodes doing the same thing.

Cuba has invaded (How many now?) countries that had no direct threat to Cuba? Angola = 1/2 (cause they were being supportive rather than instigating.)

It is a US tradition to invade other unprovoked countries like Hawaii, Panama, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Granada, former Yugoslavia and Iraq x2. These are a few of the ones that we know about. How many of them really had a direct threat to our "homeland?" How many of these were a response to genocide? How many were a call to spread democracy? Most invasions were either about some domino theory that would overtake our democracy for some crazy form of socialism or they were about nipping any such ideas in the bud. (Could be the same thing, but it's not.)

It's about who is REALLY threatened by the terrorist attacks.

We the people really have no choice beyond election days (and that is being denied us) so more and more we are forced to find a voice that will represent us. Sadly, that voice only comes from the Democratic Party as a last resort. (The Greens when they don't have Ralph Nader as their candidate have a much better platform. I am going Green locally to purge constant politicians from my electoral choices and to ultimately legislative obstructions inheirerent in perceived perennial candidates from either of the two parties.

Nevertheless, I support their epiphany, however late it might be for the rest of us.

and the Cuban people are not about to give up the hard-won gains of their revolution for Bush's capitalism.

And his facial expressions are like a warn out LP record - full of ticks and pops. So beyond coke jaw, what's his ailment? A guilty conscience? No conscience?

No love for Castro here -- I keep wondering if he's going to live forever (and he smokes CIGARS!! The horror!!). The socialist love for Castro that will inevitably show up in this thread finds no comfort or support here ... but honestly, has the CIA EVER gotten anything right??

Bake

to consider dropping a habit which could hurt them. Now Cuba is smoke-free in major public places, according to recent news.

As Judi Lynn points out, Mr Castro stopped smoking cigars in 1986. He won a WHO award for his public awareness campaign encouraging smoking cessation. I expected to find the usual uninformed Castrophobic bashing on this thread .. but honestly, do the Castrophobes ever get anything right?

I mean the address of the front of the building is correct. Wait a minute, maybe they subcontracted that part out....

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

After Gee Dubya and the rest of the Duck Soup Posse manipulated the intelligence out of Iraq to hype their claims that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction but also huge stockpiles of those weapons and that those weapons posed an 'imminent threat' to US allies, the powers-that-be really expect us to take their say-so at face value?

The CIA is now headed by a Gee Dubya loyalist. Gee Dubya's Cuban policy has proven to be anything but rational, and the sorts of clamp-downs that the Bushies are thinking risk setting off trade wars with America's European trading partners and a recession here in the USA.

Whatever the truth about Fidel Castro's health may be, I greet this little pseudo-factoid with the same skepticism that I greeted John Bolton's claim that Cuba had a massive bio-weapons program, and I have no great fondness for Fidel, either.

.. while they are swinging trade deals in Cuba with Alimport (a record amount this year). In most all interviews said governors say that Mr Castro is getting older, but he is still as sharp as a tack and astounds many with his intricate knowledge base on a wide spectrum of issues.

who've been in and out of Cuba for various reasons in the past years, many of them, like the governors, sitting with him for dinner sessions which lasted for hours and hours for vigorous conversations.

Not a peep from them about any illness overwhelming him. You're right.

It wasn't that long ago since Miami was making plans to storm Cuba in boats, under the belief he was going to fall over any day from cancer. What they thought they'd do there once they arrived is hard to figure.

:

Posted on Wed, Nov. 16, 2005

FIDEL CASTRO'S HEALTH

• January 1989: Time magazine reports Castro gave up cigar smoking in 1985 because doctors discovered a small malignancy in a lung.

• June 24, 2001: Castro faints as he delivers an outdoor speech in a suburb of Havana. He quickly recovers.

• May 2003: Witnesses say Castro collapsed as he exited an inauguration event in Buenos Aires for Argentine President Néstor Kirchner.

• January 2004: Luis Eduardo Garzón, the mayor of Bogotá, says Castro ''seemed very sick'' following a meeting with him during a vacation in Cuba.

• May 2004: Dr. Eugenio Selman Housein, Castro's physician, says, ''He is formidably well,'' and is healthy enough to live at least 140 years.

• October 30, 2004: Castro fractures his knee and arm after falling at the end of a televised public speech in the central province of Santa Clara.

Compiled by Herald researcher Monika Leal.
(snip/)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/world/cuba/13178027.htm

CIA says Castro has Parkinson's disease

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has concluded that Cuban President Fidel Castro suffers from Parkinson's disease and could have difficulty coping with the duties of office as his condition worsens, an official said on Wednesday.

The assessment, completed in recent months, suggests the nonfatal but debilitating disease has progressed far enough to warrant questions among U.S. policymakers about the communist country's future in the next several years.

"The assessment is that he has the disease and that his condition has progressed. There appear to be more outward signs," said an official who is familiar with the assessment.

Bush administration officials and members of Congress have already been briefed on the findings about Castro. The Cuban leader, 79, has been in power on the island of 11 million people since leading a 1959 revolution and has long been at ideological odds with Washington.


But U.S. diplomats played down the significance of any CIA assessment and said they were not using such intelligence to make policy decisions about Castro or Cuba.

More here: http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?idq=/ff/story/0002/20051116/1613355627.htm&photoid=SGE.DMR86.081105211255.photo00&floc=NW_1-T

If I were the CIA I'd feel pretty angry about that. And inferior.

The only entities that the Cuban government is keeping out of Cuba are those seeking to overthrow the system of government there. Otherwise, the Cuban government and people have been beseeching the US government for decades to allow Americans to be able to go to Cuba to see the island and meet Cubans for themselves.

Cuba doesn't stop Americans, the US government does - by dictate.

They can't even figure out who leaked the name of one of their covert agents... :eyes:

Luckily Cubans has better medical care than most Americans.


Also in Parkinsons the brain is the last thing to go. I'm sure he'll be around long after Bushco is in jail.

And unlike Shrub, J.F.K learned from his mistakes, where was 41 on nov.22

but they can play doctor and find that Castro has parkinsons. What a bunch of wimps.

and stop worrying what's wrong with castro.

Whatever Mr. Castro's medical condition, it's not our business to be babbling speculatively in public about it.

Old people very often get debilitating diseases. It's a part of the aging process, we all die from something.

He's afraid they might find a cure for the guy who just keeps on keepin' on poking him in the eye! :sarcasm:

Film at eleven.

:shrug:

Posted on Thu, Nov. 10, 2005

Bush's Latin team shuffled

~snip~
The personnel changes on Cuba policy are part of the biggest reshuffle of the State Department's Latin America team since President Bush took office in 2001. Chief among them is the arrival of Thomas Shannon as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, the region's top diplomatic post.

Shannon's previous post running the Latin American team at the White House's National Security Council went to Dan Fisk, a former aide to retired Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) who helped draft the Helms-Burton Act in 1996 and has consistently advocated hard-line positions on Cuba.

Fisk, formerly No. 3 in the State Department's Western Hemisphere team, with responsibilities for Cuba, Central America and the Caribbean, boasted last year that the recent tightening of U.S. sanctions was ``challenging the regime in a way that it has not been challenged at least in the last 25 years.''

Among other new Cuba faces: Michael Parmly, head of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana, and Stephen McFarland, head of the Cuban affairs desk at the State Department, both of whom quietly took over this summer.

Then there is Caleb McCarry, the Cuba transition coordinator at the State Department -- a potentially powerful post filled in late July after it was recommended by a Cabinet-level panel that Bush created, the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba.

McFarland is a career diplomat specializing in Latin America and last served as the deputy chief of mission in Venezuela, where he made a name for himself by daring to go outside the U.S. Embassy compound to confront anti-U.S. demonstrators. At the Cuba desk, he replaced Kevin Whitaker, who took McFarland's old job in Caracas.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/13127648.htm
(Free registration required)

Sounds like a group of A-#1 @$$####$.

He "made a name for himself?" What a hero! Went outside and gibbered at the people who came to protest his pResident's meddling in their country's affairs.