John Fabrication Kerry

Via Armies of Liberation - Kerry's stances on Cuba open to attack

''I'm pretty tough on Castro, because I think he's running one of the last vestiges of a Stalinist secret police government in the world,'' Kerry told WPLG-ABC 10 reporter Michael Putney in an interview to be aired at 11:30 this morning.

Then, reaching back eight years to one of the more significant efforts to toughen sanctions on the communist island, Kerry volunteered: "And I voted for the Helms-Burton legislation to be tough on companies that deal with him.''

It seemed the correct answer in a year in which Democratic strategists think they can make a play for at least a portion of the important Cuban-American vote -- as they did in 1996 when more than three in 10 backed President Clinton's reelection after he signed the sanctions measure written by Sen. Jesse Helms and Rep. Dan Burton.

There is only one problem: Kerry voted against it.

Well... ok, so maybe he didn't actually mean that he voted for it, per se, but he, you know, kind of voted about it, which is almost the same thing, right?

Asked Friday to explain the discrepancy, Kerry aides said the senator cast one of the 22 nays that day in 1996 because he disagreed with some of the final technical aspects. But, said spokesman David Wade, Kerry supported the legislation in its purer form -- and voted for it months earlier.

He did not just say that Kerry voted for the legislation before he voted against it... My bad, Jane was right - he did indeed.

Kerry will also rue past votes supporting loosened restrictions on travel and cash ''remittances'' that Cubans are allowed to send back to the island, Republicans said. They point to a 2000 Boston Globe interview in which Kerry called a reevaluation of the trade embargo ''way overdue'' and said that the only reason the United States treated Cuba differently from China and Russia was the "politics of Florida.''

If that's what Kerry calls being "tough on Castro", than what does he mean when he makes noises about being "tough on terror"? Does his plan involve funding Saudi madrassas and a bomb belt tax credit?

But there are also constant reminders that Kerry struggles with the complexities of Cuba. Asked in the Herald interview last year about sending Elián back to Cuba, Kerry was blunt: "I didn't agree with that.''

But when he was asked to elaborate, Kerry acknowledged that he agreed the boy should have been with his father.

So what didn't he agree with?

''I didn't like the way they did it. I thought the process was butchered,'' he said.

So he didn't disagree with sending Elian back - he disagreed with the reckless and irresponsible way that Clinton rushed to extradition. We should have assembled a grand coalition to repatriate Elian, and Clinton failed to do that; he didn't make the effort to win the world's approval and pass the global test. But did he have a plan to win the peace, John?