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Why not just admit it's nothing to curb Castro's power, and the Cuban people have suffered because of it? The best thing American can do for Cuba is lift trade and remittance restrictions. A strong middle class is the backbone of a successful democracy, and, as the world has witnessed in China, the key to ending the Communist government's stranglehold.

Tell us what the embargo has acomplished in the last 50 years ? Besides putting American citizens in jail for excersizing there right to travel - I can travel to North Korea yet will be jailed if I travel to cuba

It is time to stop having our forign policy dictated by those that will pander for votes from a bunch on non english speaking people in Florida

until Castro has a deathbed confession saying he did not participate in the JFK assination, the US will not change its stance.

Democrats have never wanted the Cuban embargo to actually work to rid the world of Fidel. Time & again Democrats have encouraged foreign nations such as Canada & France to lift their embargos in a pitiful attempt to portray our own embargo as having failed. Democrat Maxine Waters & many others including American "journalists" shook the hand that signed the death warrants for Fidel's enemies in Cuba and toasted Fidel at dinners with wishes of a "long life".

The embargo was an attempt to get the people of Cuba to rise up and overthrow Castro. Well, that didn't work! It's time to end this farce and allow trade with Cuba. Everyone benefits, from Minnesota to the Cuban people.

The track record of the Cuban government indicates that they want to keep the embargo as their central excuse for miserable economic performance. Each time the US Congress seriously considers improving trade relations, Cuba does something to keep the embargo in place. In the Clinton era, they shot down a private airplane over international waters, resulting in the Helms-Burton act. This year they arrested US citizen Alan Gross for giving computers to his few fellow Jews in Cuba, then helped Orlando Zapata Tamayo die from a hunger strike. Had the US unilaterally opened trade when Cuba's sugar daddy (the USSR) collapsed, Cuba would have no more excuses, and the playing field would be human rights, not trade rules.

And what has it acomplished ? Tell me why I shopul;d be jailed for traveling to cuba ?

I thought only communist countrys did that - are you saying you support commies ?

It's astonishing how long the Cuban exile community in Miami has had a stranglehold on US foreign policy. The US does hundreds of billions in trade with countries with as bad or worse human rights records (China; Saudi Arabia). Let's end this self-defeating nonsense once and for all, for the sake of our farmers.

They still owe us a lot of money that needs to be repaid. Maybe when they make a commitment to repaying the debts that they defaulted on when Castro took power we can think about lifting restrictions. If someone owed you a lot of money and told you they wouldn't repay it would you continue to do business with them?

Let's keep quiet about "human rights for all Cubans" until we can remove our colonial prison from the Cuba, you know, the Bush/Cheney gulag where people are held without any rights at all.

The Cuban people are not our enemy, nor may I add, are the people of Venezuela. The whole Reagan obsession with Cold War punishment of Latin American countries that tried populism has left us with a shameful record of supporting these dictators, and hurting their people. It should be the other way around, NO?