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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. T. who wrote (217185)	1/11/2002 12:02:09 PM
From: E. T.	Respond to of 769670

The ghost of terror past As the Bush administration tries to push through controversial State Department nominee Otto Reich, critics suggest the White House has a troubling double standard when it comes to fighting evil. salon.com - - - - - - - - - - - - By Jake Tapper Jan. 11, 2002 \| WASHINGTON -- The pilot was understandably panicked. Nine minutes after takeoff, a nitroglycerin bomb placed by terrorists had detonated in one of the plane's lavatories. "We have an explosion aboard, we are descending immediately!" he yelled to the control tower. "We have fire on board! We are requesting immediate landing! We have a total emergency!" The plane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. A Barbados newspaper later offered witness descriptions of the plane going down, "bouncing on the water first, then flipping over as a wing dipped into the ocean and plunging deep into some 1,800 ft. of water." All 73 passengers and crew died. Local fisherman zoomed to the site and plucked body parts from the surf. Surely no one at the time could have imagined that a U.S. State Department nominee would eventually stand accused of having tried to help the alleged mastermind of the terrorist act. But 25 years later, the details of the explosion have come back to haunt the Bush administration, creating the present firestorm over the nomination of Cuban exile Otto Reich as assistant secretary of state for the western hemisphere. The plane in question wasn't American or Delta or United Airlines -- it was Cubana de Aviacion Flight 455, on its way from Bridgetown, Barbados, to Havana, Cuba Oct. 6, 1976. None of the passengers were American. Some Cuban government officials perished in the plane, but most of the dead were civilians, including some North Koreans, Guyanese, and 24 Cubans -- many of whom were teenagers -- who belonged to the national fencing team. It was the worst terrorist attack ever committed against Cuba. Some might use "terror" to describe Communist dictator Fidel Castro's oppression of the Cuban people, of course, but that doesn't fit the definition of terrorism that's prevailed since Sept. 11. The current definition would, however, apply to Dr. Orlando Bosch, a longtime Castro opponent and the alleged mastermind of the bombing of Flight 455. Now 75 and living freely in Miami, Bosch has re-emerged to highlight a nasty irony in U.S. policy-making: that while some kinds of terror provoke the United States to war, as in Afghanistan, others appear to be tacitly accepted by many American leaders, especially in the Republican party.