Another Day Of Waiting For Fidel

Weird pronouncements are coming from Cuba, the US government admits they really do not know what is going on, either and we'll just have to wait. Hard, isn't it? Cuban government spokesmen are warning the the communist party will "defend the revolution". Now that sounds almost as if it were a backhanded admission that Castro will not come back to power, but we'll have to see.

"The people know they have a resource, a weapon, a place to defend the revolution if necessary," Rogelio Polanco, editor of the Communist youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde, said on state television Thursday evening.

"Once again, they shouldn't make a mistake, not to fantasize … thinking their desires are reality," Polanco said in a public affairs program discussing how exiles celebrated Castro's recent surgery for intestinal bleeding. "They should not mess up and commit the greatest error of all time."

There is a possibility that this is a false flag operation meant to pull dissidents out into the open for extermination. It would be good to keep that in mind. Meanwhile, the Miami Herald has information on the lack of information that the US has on what's going on.

WASHINGTON – At a time when Fidel Castro is ill and his brother-successor is mysteriously missing from public view, the Bush administration is admitting that it's in the dark on what's really going on in the island 90 miles from Key West.

''Our insight into the decision-making process of . . . this particular dictatorship isn't that great,'' State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Thursday, three days after Castro ceded power to his brother following what was described as complicated surgery to stem gastrointestinal bleeding.

''I don't think there are too many people outside that small core group of people who run Cuba who really know what is going on. I don't have an assessment for you on Fidel Castro's health,'' McCormack said.

President Bush issued a statement later saying the U.S. government is ''actively monitoring the situation in Cuba'' following Castro's temporary transfer of his powers to Defense Minister Raúl Castro, who has yet to make a public appearance.

But U.S. officials have confessed ignorance on events in Cuba in private encounters with lawmakers and other Cuba watchers, people in contact with administration officials say.

White House spokesman Tony Snow has attributed the lack of information to Cuba's status as a ''closed society'' — a government controlled media and a long tradition of secrecy because of fears of U.S. attacks.

Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, a Cuba native who has met with President Bush and other high-ranking administration officials in recent days, acknowledged Thursday that “sometimes people in Miami know more than what the government knows.''

''I've asked and we don't have any more information than what the Cuban government has released,'' Martinez said.

(See, a real dictatorship is usually very good indeed at finding and eliminating spies and at silencing dissent. That would be a clue for the lefties that think the US is turning into a dictatorship, if they'd care to take it.)

So, the strange silence continues in Cuba, even though even Cubans in the street are getting nervous.

UPDATE: Here is the entire text of Bush's remarks.