Cuba & North Korea - Terrorist Brothers in Arms

Cuba & North Korea: Terrorist Brothers in Arms
July 19, 2013 By Humberto Fontova 1 Comment

A North Korean ship trying to sneak missiles through the Panama Canal
after leaving Havana was seized by Panamanian authorities this week.
Somebody tipped off the Panamanians that the vessel was carrying illegal
drugs.

Instead, while searching under sacks of Cuban sugar the Panamanians
found the ship crammed with missiles and mucho military contraband.
(Nuke-rattling North Korea has been under a UN arms embargo since 2006.)

Upon getting caught red-handed the ship's North Korean captain and crew
went berserk. The hysterical captain was crippled by a heart-attack then
tried committing suicide by slitting his throat. The crew ran amok
sabotaging the ship's unloading cranes and battled with the Panamanian
police. No fatalities were reported and the crazed North Koreans were
eventually subdued, arrested and incarcerated inside an old U.S. naval base.

A proud Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli announced the
spectacular bust whereupon Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen issued a
press-release. "This incident should serve as a wakeup call to the
[Obama] Administration, which over the past few months has been leading
an apparent effort to normalize relations with Cuba, that it cannot
continue to engage the Castro regime," read the statement by the former
Chairwoman of the House Committee on Foreign Relations. "This revelation
confirms once again that Pyongyang must be re-designated on the State
Sponsor of Terrorism list as it continues to cooperate with the Cuban
regime, a designated State Sponsor of Terrorism country, in order to
undermine U.S. interests."

At first Raul Castro tried threatening the Panamanians behind the scenes
with stern diplomatic notes. Then last Saturday, in the manner of Don
"Da Godfather" Corleone sending Tom "consigliere" Hagen to Hollywood for
a chat with director Jack Woltz, Castro sent his "Vice Foreign Minister"
(court eunuch) Rogelio Sierra Díaz to Panama for a "chat" with President
Martinelli, whose response was identical to Woltz's. So Castro's court
eunuch scurried home with his tail between his legs.

But instead of the famously equine and bloody Corleone response, Castro
— on the hot-seat, without leverage and without any room to maneuver —
issued a half-heated mea culpa, claiming the two anti-aircraft missile
systems, nine missiles, two Mig-21 fighter jets and 15 jet engines
hidden on the ship. The North Koreans were going to repair the items and
promptly return them to Cuba, says a straight-faced Castro.

Last month North Korea's military chief, General Kyok Sik Kim, and a
much-bemedaled entourage visited Cuba and stayed for a week-long meeting
with, among others, Raul "El Guapo" Castro himself. We came "to find
colleagues in the same trench: the Cuban comrades," snapped the scowling
North Korean general.

Hugh Griffiths, a spokesman for Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute, reports that a few months ago they tracked a secret flight
from Cuba to North Korea that, for some fascinating reason, took a path
over central Africa. "Given the history of North Korea, Cuban military
cooperation and now this latest seizure, we find this flight more
interesting," deadpanned Griffiths. "After this incident there should be
renewed focus on North Korean-Cuban links."

These links, by the way, didn't start last week. On ABC's "This Week"
circa October 5, 2003, host George Stephanopoulos interviewed CIA
weapons inspector David Kay regarding what his team found in Iraq. "I
would contend we've already found things that, if they had been known
last December, January, February, would have made huge headlines," said
Kay. "Clandestine labs in the biological program, North Korean missiles
going to Cuba…"

An article which ran on December 11, 2004 in The Pyongyang Times hailing
a North Korean visit to Cuba gushed: "The Cuban army and people will
fight shoulder to shoulder with the Korean army and people in an anti-US
joint front. Our armed forces exchanged views on strengthening
cooperation in military fields."

All the above notwithstanding, the men today entrusted with America's
defense have traditionally considered Castro's KGB-mentored,
terror-sponsoring regime less dangerous than the Frito Bandido. To wit:
"Today, the Cuban 'threat' is a faint shadow, change is afoot in the
Cuban leadership," wrote then-Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee John Kerry in Dec. 2009. His piece loudly banged the drums for
(further) opening U.S. travel to Cuba, thus (further) securing the
Stalinist regime's financial lifeline—thus (further) enriching and
entrenching the only people in Cuba with guns, who also own Cuba's main
money-maker. Castro's KGB-trained secret police and military, you see,
enjoy majority ownership of Cuba's tourism industry.

Labeling the Castro regime a threat was "just goofy," snickered
then-Senator Chuck Hagel in 2002, while also banging the drums to lift
the "embargo" (i.e. further reward, enrich and entrench the Stalinist
regime that came closest to nuking Hagel's homeland and has succored
every terrorist group from the PLO to the FARC to the Tupamaros–and is
now apparently arming North Korea.)

And lest you think these nowadays vital U.S. officials have "grown in
office"– or even taken much note of the North Korean-Cuban
collusion—here's a fascinating factoid: U.S. State Dept. officials and
Cuba will commence migration talks this very week.

In fairness, Kerry and Hagel figure among a fine tradition of
crackerjack U.S. statesmanship regarding Cuba. To wit:

"Don't worry, Ambassador [Republican Earl Smith, who served as
ambassador to Cuba from '57-59, and repeatedly raised the alarm about
Castro's communist ties]. We've infiltrated Castro's guerrilla group in
the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto 'Che' Guevara have
no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever." (Havana CIA station
chief Jim Noel Nov. 1958.)

"Fidel Castro is not only not a communist –he's a strong anti-Communist
fighter. He's ready to help us in the hemisphere's anti-communist fight
and we should share our intelligence with him." (CIA Cuba "expert" Frank
Bender, April, 1959.)

Raul Castro had been assigned a KGB handler since his visit to the
Soviet Bloc in 1953, by the way. And when arrested in Mexico in 1956,
Ernesto "Che" Guevara was found to have, in his very wallet, the calling
card of the KGB's top Latin American agent, Nikolai Leonov. Many Cubans
knocked on many Washington doors trying to get this across. Obviously to
no avail.

This "blind spot," let's call it, caught the eye of many knowledgeable
Cubans from day one. To wit: "My brothers' feeling of hatred for this
country cannot even be imagined by you Americans," marveled Fidel and
Raul's bewildered sister Juanita while testifying to the House Committee
on Un-American Activities upon defecting in June of 1965. "His intention
– his obsession – is to destroy the U.S."

A surely unrealistic — and probably faded — obsession nowadays. But
surely the Castro brothers haven't come around to favoring our
well-being nearly as fervently as our Secretaries of Defense and State
seem to favor theirs.

So amigos, when it comes to our nation's defense—we're in good hands
with this State Department.

Source: "Cuba & North Korea: Terrorist Brothers in Arms | FrontPage
Magazine" -
http://frontpagemag.com/2013/humberto-fontova/cuba-north-korea-terrorist-brothers-in-arms/