US Cuba Policy: Your Dollars at Work

US policy towards Cuba is crap. If there's a real case to be made for the ongoing antagonism, it's perhaps a human rights case. But human rights issues are not usually a policy-stimulant on their own, but rather a by-product for advertising purposes of preset policy.

What else can we say but that the actual policy is a form of vote-buying at our expense? Nothing like chocolate, after all, although Cuba's closest ally - Venezuela - produces some of the best chocolate in the world.

Maybe Nancy Pelosi can add this corruption to the list of corrupt practices she says the Dems will tackle in the upcoming Congress.

U.S. funds intended to promote democracy in Cuba have been used to buy crab meat, cashmere sweaters, computer games and chocolates, according to a U.S. congressional audit published on Wednesday.

The survey by the Government Accountability Office found little oversight and accountability in the program, which paid out $76 million between 1996 and 2005 to support Cuban dissidents, independent journalists, academics and others.

It also found that 95 percent of the grants were issued without competitive tenders...

President George W. Bush has proposed increasing spending on Cuba-related programs, including propaganda transmissions by Radio and TV Marti, by $80 million over the next two years...

One grantee "could not justify some purchases made with USAID funds, including a gas chain saw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and Godiva chocolates," the report said...

Juan Carlos Acosta, executive director of Miami-based anti-Castro group Cuban Democratic Action, told the Miami Herald he sent those items to Cuba, apart from the chain saw.

"These people are going hungry. They never get any chocolate there," Acosta said, according to the newspaper.