Thread: Sheehan in Cuba to protest Gitmo prison

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070107/ap_ ... _protest_6

Sheehan in Cuba to protest Gitmo prison By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jan 7, 7:36 AM ET

American "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan called for the closure of the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as she and other activists arrived here Saturday to draw attention to the nearly 400 terror suspects held at the remote site.

Sheehan is among 12 human rights and anti-war activists who will travel across this Caribbean island next week, arriving at the main gate of the Guantanamo base in eastern Cuba on Thursday — five years after the first prisoners were flown in.

"Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not afraid of anything," Sheehan said when asked about the possibility of U.S. sanctions for traveling to communist-run Cuba, which remains under an American trade embargo.

"What is more important is the inhumanity that my government is perpetrating at Guantanamo," she told reporters.

Sheehan, 49, of Vacaville, Calif., became an anti-war activist known as the "peace mom" after losing her 24-year-old son Casey in Iraq in April 2004.

She drew international attention after camping outside President Bush's Texas ranch to protest the war in Iraq, and has been arrested numerous times for trespassing.

Sheehan arrived in Havana early Saturday evening with trip organizer Medea Benjamin of the California nonprofit groups Global Exchange and CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

Benjamin said group members believed they were exempt from U.S. travel restrictions on Cuba because they were traveling as professional human rights activists who will attend a daylong international conference in the Cuban city of Guantanamo on Wednesday, the eve of their protest.

The U.S. military still holds about 395 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban, including about 85 who have been cleared to be released or transferred to other countries.

Attention hungry traitor who has no idea what she is talking about....

Maybe they should allow her to be locked in a room with several of the prisoners so they could all sit down and have a nice warm cozy chat.
I'm sure her son would be thrilled to know his mom was gang raped by the same people that killed him.

MountainDog, you are so right. In a way, Cindy has killed her own son. She is standing up for the people that her son was trying to eliminate. Why was he in the military in the first place? This is a slap in the face to every person in the military, and to every patriotic American. This reminds me of the Jane Fonda incident, apparently Cindy has not learned from it.

Hi Neese,

How the hell can she get on base (on the property)? It's a closed, secure base and people don't just "walk in" whenever they please.

Does she get access 'cause she's a registered presidential candidate?

Maybe she gets an office call with Fidel (or is he dead yet?).

Hi Coto, here is the latest on Fidel:http://www.breitbart.com/news/2007/01/06/070106171829.zj0hmxpg.html
US maintains Fidel Castro is in grips of terminal illness

Jan 06 12:18 PM US/Eastern
The US intelligence community still believes Cuban leader Fidel Castro is terminally ill and has "months, not years" to live, a spokesman said.
Though a Spanish doctor visited Castro last month and denied he has cancer, Ross Feinstein, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, said "The bottom line: He is terminally ill."

"We believe that he has months, not years," Feinstein said, adding that "nothing has changed in the director's assessment" since the doctor's comments on Castro late last month.

US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte told The Washington Post on December 15 that "everything we see indicates it will not be much longer, ... months, not years," for the 80-year-old Cuban leader.

Castro, who underwent an operation on July 27, is "in a process of slow but progressive recovery" and does not need further surgery, doctor Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido told reporters in Madrid after returning from the only Communist-ruled country in the Americas.

Garcia Sabrido, who heads a surgery unit at a major Madrid hospital and is described by the Spanish media as a top gastroenterologist, described Castro's condition as "fine."

In power since 1959, Fidel Castro has not been seen in public for five months, and few medical updates have been made public since his reported intestinal surgery in July. In Cuba, Castro's health is being treated as a state secret.


Castro named his brother and defense chief Raul Castro, 75, as Cuba's interim leader on July 31.

And Fidel Castro's absence at a December 2 military parade stunned people and sparked speculation he might be seriously ill, or near death.

Castro also sat out the National Assembly's last session of the year, marking only the second time in 30 years that the Cuban leader has missed an assembly meeting.

Then, in a statement released December 30, Castro was quoted as saying his recuperation will be a long process but that "the battle is far from lost."

US officials say privately they have doubts about Garcia Sabrido's assessment of the octogenarian revolutionary's health.

Cubans accustomed to decades of Castro's dominant presence in official media have not grown used to his absence of the past few months.

News reports in December said the Cuban leader was too ill to receive his old friend, Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who was on the island for nearly a month.

US lawmakers back from a trip to Cuba on December 18 cast doubt on officials there who insisted Castro was not dying and would return to power.

"'He'll be back,' was the story, and 'he doesn't have terminal cancer,' is what government officials told us," Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, said at the time.

"In fact, we were told while we were in Cuba that the medical doctors treating Fidel Castro are sequestered, are isolated even from their own families," he said.

Raul Castro has reached out to the United States more actively than has his brother in the past four months, calling for negotiations. The countries do not have full relations, and the United States has an economic embargo on Havana.

The United States so far has said it is not interested in negotiating until there is political opening in Cuba.

We can only hope that Cindy defects, I am ashamed that she is representing our country. Maybe Hugo or Fidel will let her stay in their countries because we don't want her.

"What is more important is the inhumanity that my government is perpetrating at Guantanamo," she told reporters.

Well ms sheehan, why don't you fly over to Iraq and protest the way Al Quida is treating OUR prisoners. They don't get the same "special" attention the prisoners in Gitmo do.

Can somebody tell me who is the source if her funding. Who is paying for all these trips to wasington and cuba? Can anyone tell me who or what organzation is fueling this loser.[/b]

I think a nice middle eastern tour would do Cindy some good. Yes, I am sure they have a nice bridge to dangle her body from. And personally, she would probably look better without that ugly head anyway. At least she would not be able to spew ignorance.

Who in their right minds would ever support that nut case financially? I wouldn't be seen in public with her and she is anything but a poster child.

Her name is out there but it ain't pretty. She's a walking smear campaign.

Dixie