Cuba willing to save 3,000 U.S. lives
• One for each victim of the attack on the Twin Towers on
September 11, 2001

CUBA is willing to save the lives of 3,000 poor people in the United States in a brief period of five years, announced President Fidel Castro, reading out a message addressed to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Fidel made the proposal during a rally of more than 200,000 Cubans at the José Martí Anti-imperialist Tribunal to reject the anti-Cuban measures approved by the U.S. president.

Those 3,000 people from the United States could come to Cuba with an accompanying relative and receive medical treatment absolutely free, Fidel added.

"Would you be willing to concede permission to those citizens to travel to Cuba for a program aimed at saving one life for each of those lost during the atrocious attack on the Twin Towers?" he asked Bush. And, he asked, if people accepted the offer and decided to come, would they be punished?

"Show the world that there is an alternative to arrogance, war, genocide, hate, selfishness, hypocrisy and lies," Fidel exclaimed.

After listing the advances achieved by Cuba in health care, education, culture and other fields, the Cuban president stated that Bush should be ashamed of trying to asphyxiate a people that – blockaded and subjected to more than four decades of economic warfare, armed aggression and terrorist action – has been capable of carrying out such heroic feats.

"Are you trying to strangle the economy and threaten with war the country that has already been able to attain the figure of 20,000 doctors currently offering their services in 64 Third World countries?" Fidel asked. In spite of its possessing the resources of the richest power on earth, the U.S. administration has not sent a single doctor to the remotest parts of those countries, the way that Cuba does, he added.

He also mentioned that the genocide represented by the deaths of more than 10 million children every year and those of tens of millions of people who could otherwise be saved, and die as a consequence of the most diverse forms of plunder and robbery that Third World countries are subjected to lies upon the conscience of the U.S. president and those of the leaders of the richest countries.

In reference to Cuba, Fidel emphasized that Bush has allowed himself to be carried away by the fanatical belief that his reelection in November depends on the support of a well-known terrorist mafia of old émigrés and their descendants, an significant percentage of whom originate from the group of embezzlers and war criminals associated with the Batista dictatorship who took refuge in the U.S., with their overflowing booty and impunity from crime.

Others grew rich from the services they offered over many years in acts of terrorism and aggression that have cost the Cuban people dearly in blood, he added.

During another part of his speech, Fidel affirmed that the errors that are leading Bush to his commitment to this mafia could be decisive – in reverse – in the upcoming elections. "The U.S. people are already fed up with the shameful influence that these groups exercise over the foreign and domestic policies of such an important country. His dependence on these groups will end up costing him a lot of votes, and not just in Florida, but all over the country," he added.

By prohibiting people in the United States from visiting Cuba with brutal threats of repression, Bush is violating the Constitutional principle and right of those who have always felt proud of being citizens of that country, Fidel stated.

Cuban-Americans are already thinking about promoting a protest vote, he affirmed.

He said that perhaps the most shameful of all was to express that the initial moments are decisive, given that the idea is to subsequently prevent – at all costs – a new political and administrative leadership from taking over the management of the country, "completely ignoring the Cuban Constitution, the authority of the National Assembly and the leadership of our Party, the functions of Constitutional law and all the other institutions that the Cuban people have developed, as exist everywhere else in the world."

Fidel emphasized that, given that the above could only be accomplished by sending troops to occupy key parts of Cuba, an intention of militarily intervening in the island is being proclaimed. He recalled that on May 14, he had sent his salute to the role of Cesar as assumed by Bush, taken from the gladiators who were forced to fight until the death in the Roman circus, and reminded Bush that his march on Cuba would not be at all easy.

"Our people will resist your economic measures, whatever they might be," he affirmed. "The Cuban people today has the highest culture and political awareness of any country in the world. It is not a fanatical people, it is a people with ideas. It is not an illiterate or semi-literate people. It is a people who are receiving higher education at as mass level and are being universalized along with their bravery and patriotism. We are millions of men and women with the necessary weapons and more than 200,000 highly trained officers and leaders who well know how to use them in conditions of modern warfare, and an vast mass of combatants who equally know the strong and weak points of those who threaten us."

Fidel warned that under Cuba’s current conditions, in the event of an invasion of Cuba, his own physical absence due to natural causes or otherwise "would not harm in the slightest our capacity for struggle and resistance."

In every political and military leader at every level, in every individual soldier, there is a potential commander-in-chief who knows what needs to be done, and in a given situation, each person could be his or her own commander-in-chief.

"You could not count on one day, hour or minute, not even a second, to prevent the political and military leadership of the country from being immediately assumed. The orders for what should be done have been given ahead of time. Every man and woman would be at their combat post without losing a second."

Fidel reiterated what he had announced in his first message to Bush on what he would do in circumstances like those mentioned, and proposed that the U.S. president and his advisors should not invent any crazy adventures like a surgical strike or wars of attrition using sophisticated equipment, because events could slide out of control. Undesirable things could occur, which would not be good for either the Cuban or U.S. people. "They could destroy the migratory agreement, they could provoke a mass exodus that we would be in no position to stop, they could provoke total warfare between young U.S. soldiers and the Cuban people, something that would be terribly sad. I can assure you that you would never win such a war. You will not find a divided people here, ethnic groups opposed to each other because of deep religious differences, nor will you find traitor generals commanding our troops," he affirmed.

"You will find a people that are solidly united, with a culture and sentiment of solidarity, and with a social and human task that has no historical precedent."