More Cuba Nonsense from NPR

Two pieces come from NPR's morning edition today. In one Tom Gjelten looks back at the "history" of US Cuba relations through ten US presidencies from Kennedy to G.W. Bush. In the second report from Greg Allen listens in on the Cuban-American exile community in south Florida.

The Gjelten piece begins as if it might actually be informative describing Kennedy's botched Bay of Pigs invasion and mentioning that Pres. Johnson through "Operation Mongoose," supported Cuban exile militants who trained in Guatemala and Nicaragua and attacked Cuba, sinking ships and bombing a refinery in Havana. That is as close to the truth as this report comes. It then goes on to describe the admirable sending of Cuban troops to Angola in 1975, the more dubious sending of Cuban troops to Ethiopia (since Ethiopia was controlled by military dictators) to stop an illegal invasion from Somalia, and the shooting down of two small civilian aircraft that had repeatedly invaded Cuban airspace as "provocative act[s]." This is history turned on its head--the provocative acts came from the US not from Cuba (this is an excellent link).

As far as the Cuban exile community, NPR would do its listeners a service to even briefly cover its sordid history of attacking free expression and supporting violence and terrorism (and these are the folks who will supposedly bring "freedom" to a post-Castro Cuba).

Here are a two more links of interest regarding Cuba/US relations:
Center for International Policy
A Chomsky essay