God, Moore is like a nucleated cockroach with the professional scruples of Geraldo Rivera. And it’s not like Castro would ever stage anything.
Actually, it’s about Moore’s new movie (which is about health care) and the ethics of this particular stunt used in making it.
Personally I would bet you that had the US accepted the Cuban doctors not a single one would have been sent. The reason is that finding themselves in the US, it’s a good bet a good number of them would have chosen to defect, thus embarrasing the Cuban government. This is in fact happening everywhere Cuba sends doctors to, including Bolivia and Venezuela, except in those two coutries the doctors have to make their way to neighboring countries in order to avoid being sent back to Cuba.
“Nucleated”?
But making the offer publicly and then going back on it would have been even more embarrassing.
Nah, another impedinment would have been found. Some pre-requisite for the help, like freeing Cuban spies or something like that.
Please submit your Certificate of Telepathic Powers for review.
Actually I only have a “Predictive Powers Certificate”. For that certificate all you need is to have seen the exact same pattern 10,000 times and be able to extrapolate from it. Cubans all have one of those hanging in their living room, right next to the doctor’s degree all Cubans have.
Predictive patterns can be useful. If Keith Richards and a coconut both fall from a tree, they will hit the ground at the same time, that is an entirely legitimate prediction. You might also aver that one of the two will say something stupid, which gets a bit dicier, since only 50% of the subjects have the capacity to say something stupid. Which is to say, the more conjcture you add, the less reliable your patterns of prediction.
This pattern is well into conjectural wilderness: Castro made his offer, and Bush refused. Entirely predictable, whether Castro was bluffing or no. The scenario that Bush might have accepted is wildly conjectural, having only the most tenuous connection to reality. Hence, your firm assertion to know what Castro would have done in response to something that wasn’t about to happen carries as much weight as any reading of tea-leaves or scrying with entrails, which is to say, zero, zip, zilch, nada.
Since you are positing a response to a nearly impossible event, you are safe from being proven wrong, almost as surely as you are safe from being proven right.
Castro has sent doctors to other countries after natural disasters, so I think there’s a good chance that he would have come thru on that offer this time. But I doubt that any president, Republican or Democrat, would have accepted that offer. I don’t even know that we had a problem with a lack of doctors and/or supplies-- I thought it was more an issue of bungled logistics, where the right stuff never got to the right place. I’ve heard plenty of stories about U.S. emergency aid workers trying to get in to help but who ran into various logistical and/or bureaucratic stumbling blocks.
Actually, Richards would float. 
True enough, it might have amounted to little in practical terms, perhaps only a gesture that affirms that our common humanity supercedes our political differences. As an opportunity to advance cordial relations, or even to advance less hostile relations, its right up there with the “ping-pong” thaw with Communist China. Whether Castro was bluffing or no, he made the gesture, we spurned it. And such a spurning suggests that BushCo cares more about political posturing than about the well-being of its disadvantaged and traumatized citizens.
Which may well be true. Alas, I haven’t the advantage of psychic power bestowed unto others…
Well, I’m not Sam, but this siteputs it at 78 per 1000 as of 1996. This site places it much, much higher - around 50%(!). This site cites studies that show that Cuban women use abortion as a form of birth control.
All data is subject to **elucidator’s ** “only I may decide what’s relevant” caveat.
Is that directed at me? I haven’t claimed any powers other than observational. You however seem intent on assigning them to me, is that what’s called a “straw man argument”? I think it might be.
This is one of those instances where a strawman argument is not fallacious, logically or rhetorically.
Modesty compels demurral. I am only a man. An extraordinarily intelligent and perceptive man, true, but still…
I hate to put it like this, but can you dumb that down for me please? What exactly are you saying? I tried translating the individual words but got nothing intelligible.
I mean only that your purported “pattern perception” ability cannot be meaningfully distinguished from what elucidator calls “telepathy.”
Just to be clear, I am strongly in favor of ending the embargo and having diplomatic relations with Cuba (and Iran, for that matter). You can always talk to your friends, but it’s even more important to be able to talk to your adversaries (if we’re even really adversaries in the first place). I just don’t see this a “BushCo” issue. Correct me if I’m wrong, but has any president ever accepted this kind of offer since the embargo went into effect?
But don’t minimize the potential problems this might have created. I can just the Pit thread along the lines of: “Bush Bungles Again-- Uncertified Cuban Doctors create more harm than good.” We probably don’t have a good way of knowing just how good these doctors are and how they could integrate into our medical system here. I suppose we could have accepted the supplies, if only in the way you accept a gift from someone even if you don’t intend to use it. But without formal diplomatic relations with another country, just letting hundreds of their citizens in willy nilly is probably a bad idea, doctor or not.