Andrea Mitchell needs to check out "TheRealCuba.com"...  Maybe Andrea Mitchell will ask Fidel Castro where's the "Great Socialist Revolution" that he and Che Guerra have promised to the Cuban People, but I doubt that will ever happen...

She could have said..  So true Dee..  the MSM could very easilly swing so many of the foriegn policy issues in favor of the USA with their so-called NEWS stories, but oh no, they consiously choose to be anti-American in their reporting, constantly slanting towards our enemies.

Tony sounded very chipper and on top of his game, and couldn't suppress a good-natured chuckle as he got off his "socialism is 0-for-history" zinger!

They also do that in North Korea, where they put them in "Workers Camp" or the Stalinist's Gulags until they wither and die...

Excellent.  A thousand times true for George Tenet's book.

The idea that without the embargo fidel would be gone is as well traveled a myth as the one about the embargo being the reason for Cuba's economic trouble.

Let me explain what happens when you lift the embargo without gaining a single concession.

First American businesses will flock there and sink hundreds of millions of dollars into joint partnerships with the regime. That's because only the regime has authority to conduct business. Not only that those firms will be minority partners because majority ownership by foreigners is forbidden. The the firms will have to accept the terms of Cuban trade which include such things as giving up the right to hire workers, they are provided by the Cuban state which also collects their pay in dollars and distributes 5% of it the workers in Cuban pesos.

After a couple of years of business the government will begin defaulting on its financial obligations like it has every time its gone down this route with other countries. Minority partners will be expelled for complaining too loudly about the situation.

And it goes on and on. The US should not lower the embargo until Cuba makes basic reforms to its economy like allowing private property ownership, allowing independent trade unions and collective bargaining, like legalizing the US dollar, like allowing for the free contracting of employment. In short, when they get rid of the communist system they have. Otherwise we'd just be pumping dollars into a decripit system without deriving any of the democratizing benefits of doing business.