McCain gets personal, talking about Cuba

John McCain did more than revel in the praise that Mel Martinez lavished on him in Miami today as the Florida senator endorsed the Arizona senator's bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

McCain, in a joint appearance with Martinez, revealed to a well-heeled, predominantly Cuban American crowd that his commitment to ending communist rule in their native country includes a personal element.

More so than in his 2000 White House campaign, McCain has been referencing his years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. So it was that he told his listeners at a downtown hotel:

“There’s a person I want you to help me find when Cuba is free, and that’s that Cuban that came to the prison camps of North Vietnam and tortured and killed my friends. We’ll get him and bring him to justice, too.”

The audience of more than 100, not surprisingly, ate it up.

The Times' Maeve Reston was at the event, and she reports that McCain later told the media he did not know the Cuban man’s identity. But he added: “We have had many of my friends who have done ...

composite drawings of him; they remember his face very well.”

Martinez, who was born in Cuba and came to the United States by himself at age 15 (his parents sent him here but initially stayed behind), had vouched for McCain's opposition to Fidel Castro's regime before turning the microphone over to his fellow lawmaker.

“I would not endorse someone that I didn’t have total confidence is going to be Castro’s worst nightmare,” he told his listeners.

Martinez, who served as Housing secretary under President Bush before winning his Senate seat in 2004 and also serving as chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he planned to stay neutral in the GOP presidential sweepstakes, but changed his mind Thursday night.

He said he decided "that I couldn’t sit on the sidelines. John McCain is a good man; he needs to be our next president, and I basically decided I couldn’t sit idly by.”

Martinez's help can't hurt McCain's efforts to nail down Cuban American votes in Florida's Tuesday primary. But exactly how much help it will provide is unclear.

Veteran Florida political observers note that Martinez's home base is in Orlando, where he established a successful law practice before entering politics. The vast bulk of the Cuban-American electorate is centered on the state's other coast, in the Miami area.

-- Don Frederick       

Comments

[politicalsanity]

A couple of points--

I agree that McCain NEEDS to become the next President. He shouldn't actually BE the next President, but I can see that McCain seriously wants to have the position and will basically do anything to get it.

Secondly, I seriously doubt that the Cuban interregatoris still alive; and I believe that if McCain had wanted to find him, he would have used our intelligence services to find him with pinpoint accuracy. Therefore, its likely his remarks were another example of pandering, this time to the retired military in Northern Florida.

[chad castellanos]

Whats the point of electing "castro's worst nightmare." Florida Cubans have been electing leaders constantly that are pro embargo / anti Castro for the past 40 years. The only people that are suffering from the embargo are Cubans, not Castro. I don't agree with Castro's government, but how long are we gonna keep promising change in Cuba with strict sanctions that have given little results. Perhaps lifting the embargo would make the communist regime disappear...

[Tim Anderson]

For the record, Fidel Castro denies Cuban resort to torture, including of the 1,200 prisoners captured during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion (see his autobiography: My Life, p.260) or by any of the Cuban observers in Vietnam (see Oliver Stone's docos on Fidel). Neither side in the Vietnam war seemed to need much help with torture. But it is bizarre for McCain, as a supporter of the illegal Iraq invasion, to complain about torture. With his support, in the 21st century, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have been synonymous with torture. You can't both organise it and then complain about it John! That's called hypocrisy.

[Ian Repley]

I thought it quite magnanimous of McCain to ask Gov. Huckabee ( http://snipr.com/flftanswer ) about the FairTax in order that many Americans watching would learn more about it. While Huck is my man, it does cause me to think that perhaps McCain might also earnestly consider it as an urgent tax replacement system that will confer substantial benefits upon our country's citizens and businesses ( http://snipr.com/fairtaxslate ).

[dino]

I am very glad that McCain took this step and reached out to the Cuban community.

Castro and his goons sided with the enemy of the United States, and were part of many proxy wars for the Soviet Union. While the USSR crumbled, Castro is left to deal with the repercussions of his involvement against US interests in Latin America, Africa and elsewhere.

Cuba is not poor because of the embargo, its poor because of how the country splurges its resources. Cuba trades with many countries, receives subsidized goods from its allies, and trades at about 500 million annually with the United States. Canada for example, freely trades with Cuba, and Cuba is still the same. China openly trades with the west, and is still a repressive police state regardless. The difference lies in Castro´s figurative middle finger to the USA in different intervals throughout history.

I look forward to the day Cuba crumbles, so that all of the horrors slowly become known to the world. Even the biggest leftist on earth, cannot cover up the huge stain on history that the DDR and the Stasi left. Time is not on the Cuban government´s side, and all of the sympathizers will see the truth to what they have been supporting all of this time.

John McCain gets my vote, thank you.

[Javier]

Long live the Cuban Revolution. Viva fidel

[RickV]

Mr. Frederick's comments would carry more weight if he new enough about Florida to note that Orlando is not on the "other coast" from Miami but rather smack in the middle of the state and not on either the Gulf or Atlantic coast.
None the less his opinion is well on the mark as to Fidel's support of anti-American causes and the use of any means to achieve his goals including torture and murder.

[Roger]

John McCain For President!

When the British soldiers were shooting at us George Washington as a Commander in Chief was always on the Battle Front, on the line of fire, bullets were flying near his head, the sound of Cannons going off and dead soldiers all over the field.
A brave man George Washington was.
John McCain on his own words tells America how he will conduct this wars.
Check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wru8NRLdFE
And the next video shows clearly how much McCain has learned that make him the best candidate to become President:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT8DX02n67U