Once again, this accusation has been made with scant evidence to support it, and that's shameful. There are enough grave issues staring us in the face in Cuba. Complicating matters with unsubstantiated claims only makes the U.S. government look bad and obscures efforts to make progress where it is most needed.
During a Cuba conference in Coral Gables, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, on Saturday charged that Cuba has "amassed weapons of mass destruction." Ros-Lehtinen's
accusation is not new. Defectors have raised similar suspicions.
In May of last year, John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said Cuba had "a limited offensive biological warfare" capability, one that it has shared with "rogue" nations. Bolton, however, did not follow-up his statement with hard, convincing evidence.
Cuba does appear on the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism, but mostly because Cuba has granted safe haven to Colombian rebel groups and because it has criticized some U.S. counter-terrorism efforts. The analysis accompanying the Cuba listing does not mention biological or chemical weapons.
Plenty of others say the Cuba-WMD charge is nonsense. Retired Gen. John Sheehan, former commander in chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, which helps keep watch over Latin America, flatly says he never saw any intelligence suggesting Cuba manufactures or traffics in WMDs.
Who is to be believed? Look at it this way. If Cuba were producing anthrax, smallpox or some awful weapon just 90 miles off U.S. shores, would the Bush administration have
committed so many lives and dollars searching for them in Iraq?
If so, then the Bush administration needs not only better intelligence, but a better globe, or at least a road map to its own hemisphere.
Very serious issues affect U.S.-Cuba diplomacy, including human rights violations, support for foreign insurgencies, trashy treatment of American diplomats in Havana and
immigration problems.
Instead of addressing these difficulties with creative policies, a key member of Congress is recklessly waving the WMD charges, even as grim doubts and skepticism hover around the quality and use of intelligence that led to war in Iraq.
It's put-up or shut-up time in the Cuba-WMD trial: The accusers must scare up evidence, not frighten people with unsubstantiated claims.
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