I was in Cuba recently, legally, on a humanitarian mission delivering medical supplies…yes, it was an excuse or loophole that allowed me and a small group of Americans to visit Cuba, but we actually did bring supplies with us and deliver them and we all had a great time for a couple weeks all over Cuba
While I was there, several of the Cuban government officials I met, during casual conversations, mentioned to me that the CIA has been flying small planes over the Cuban tobacco fields at night and spraying them with powerful herbicide to kill the tobacco, in an effort to destroy the Cuban economy, which depends so much on the money earned from the crop
I’ve never heard anything about this on the news…First, do you believe it? I do…Second, is this something the USA should be doing? I’d like to see the candidates asked about this at the next presidential debate:cool:
The only time the US government even thinks about Cuba any more is when they need to pretend to care, in order to suck up to Cuban exiles.
If the US government really cared about Cuba anymore, they’d have assassinated Fidel Castro years ago. Especially since his brother appears to be far more reasonable and interested in improving relations with the US.
the hope is that if the cuban economy is destroyed, the commie govt will collapse and cuba will be free
keep dreaming
all the really radical cubans who wouldve participated in a ‘cuban spring’ left years ago on a life raft or whatever…the ones who are left accept the commie govt
If the USA really wanted to topple the Cuban government, they would let anyone who wants to travel there and spend whatever they wanted. Cuba would then have to explain to their own people why their relatives have nice houses and cars in Miami and they have crap in Havanna… why their relatives send them nice computers that are considered obsolete junk in the US, but Cuba won’t let them hook them to an internet… Why Americans and the rest of the world can travel everywhere, send money, their money is good everywhere, but Cuba - no.
Blaming crop failure and other economic problems on the USA is convenient, and the Cubans probably milk it for all its worth. The USA backs them up by embargoing the island’s products and preventing Cuban relatives from visiting.
Even the Cuban air force has the radar and equipment to spot and shoot down small planes, especially crappy little things going 120mph, let alone heavily laden crop dusters. It’s 90 miles each way the shortest distance, they must see them coming. How many acres do they think one plane can cover in one trip unles it’s a Galaxy C5A? Think they’d detect that coming in? Didn’t they shoot down a bunch of bozos dropping leaflets from a small plane about 10 years ago?
There is no way there is any truth to this. Any aircraft low and slow enough to crop dust a field could easily be shot down with a couple of machine guns. Then Cuba could go to the UN with the proof and embarass the US. This is just Snowball blowing up the mill.
Plus, how much acreage does a small plane really cover? Especially if it also needs to carry eough fuel to fy for 3 hours or more there and back as well. To do significant damage, they’d need to be flying hundreds of planes every night, in the dark, and hit specific targets. And, not collide with each other while running dark… And not one of those planes ever put down with mechanical difficulties… and there are not hundreds of crop-dusters parked on the Key West or Miami airfields…
I’m sure the US government would do it - they’ve sprayed fields of drug crops (and occasional non-drug crops by mistake) in the name of the “war on drugs”. But as others have said, there’s no way they could pull it off in Cuba secretly and without being shot down.
They used local fields with the approval of the local governments so they did not have to travel a long distance to each the target, nor did hey have to worry about radar or anything more sophisticated or organized than hand-held firearms; plus, they were only targetting small fields identified in remote areas, not entire countrysides.
how many square MILES (lo siento, KILOMETROS) do tobbacco fields cover in Cuba? How far is most of that from the USA and nearest airfields?
No, the way to destroy Cuba’s economy would be to make tobacco less in demand than 50 years ago. And raw sugar…
Now there’s a theory for you. So the rise in the use of High Fructose Corn Syrup and the increasingly effective anti-smoking campaigns are simply part of a diabolical plan to take down Castro’s regime eh?
Yes. And there are no crop dusters there. And the airfield can be seen with the naked eye from the Cuban side. Anything going into Cuban airspace can be easily shot down by the cuban military just across the fence line.
Yes, and really, in actuality, the U.S. government doesn’t want to harm Cuba’s economy. In fact, the better the Cuban economy, the more Cuba can buy from the U.S., and the fewer (annoying) people who try to swim to Florida.
