Castro slams Bush on sex, lies, drinking

Terrie Albano

During his annual July 26 speech, Cuban President Fidel Castro 
slammed George W Bush's unfounded charge that Cuba promotes "sex 
tourism".

At the national celebration commemorating the 51st anniversary of 
the attack on the Moncada Garrison, Castro said a recent campaign 
speech by Bush in Tampa, Florida, was full of deceitful 
"accusations and insults" that were "clearly aimed at slandering 
Cuba and justifying the threats of aggression and the brutal 
measures that they had just taken against our people".

Bush charged that Castro promotes "sex tourism". Bush then quoted 
Castro as saying, "Cuba has the cleanest and most educated 
prostitutes in the world".

When the White House was asked for the quote's source, it 
provided a link to a research paper written in 2001 by a 
Dartmouth undergraduate student named Charles Trumbull. Trumbull, 
who is now in law school, said the quote Bush used was distorted 
and taken out of context. "It shows that they didn't read much of 
the article", Trumbull said in a telephone interview with the Los 
Angeles Times.

Trumbull, who won an award from the Association for the Study of 
the Cuban Economy for his paper, said it would be inaccurate to 
say the Cuban Government promotes prostitution.

Prostitution was widespread during the reign of Batista and 
American-run casinos. It was outlawed after the Cuban Revolution 
in 1959. Cuban officials have discouraged prostitution, but have 
acknowledged that it hasn't yet been eradicated.

"Many people in the world who know very little about the Cuban 
Revolution might fall victim to the lies and tricks the US 
Government spreads through the huge media available to it", 
Castro said.

"But there are many others, especially in poor countries, who are 
aware of what the Cuban Revolution is about", Castro told the 
July 26 Santa Clara crowd in nationally televised remarks. From 
the very beginning, the Cuban Revolution sought to provide 
education and health care services to all its children and the 
whole population, Castro said.

Cuba's "spirit of solidarity that has led it to co-operate 
selflessly with dozens of Third World countries", and "its strict 
adherence to the highest moral values" and "lofty concept of the 
dignity and honour of its homeland and its people" are hallmarks 
for which "Cuban revolutionaries have always been willing to give 
up their lives", he said.

Cuba is world-renowned for its education and health care, all of 
which is provided free of charge. Infant mortality is lower in 
Cuba than in the US. The Cuban Revolution placed the people's 
physical, mental and moral health as a number one priority.

"Has no one told him [Bush]", Castro asked, that Cuban children 
are protected by law and that they "all attend school, including 
more than 50,000 who suffer from disabilities?"

Searching for other reasons why Bush would "conjure up" such 
falsehoods, Castro referred to Bush's 20-year bout with drinking 
and substance abuse as a possible reason.

Castro extensively quoted from the newly released book, Bush on 
the Couch: Inside the Mind of a President, by Dr Justin Frank. 
Frank argues that Bush may have stopped drinking but shows signs 
of being a "dry drunk". Frank says "dry drunk" isn't a clinical 
term but Bush shows "traits that the recovery literature 
associates with the condition, including grandiosity, 
judgementalism, intolerance, detachment, denial of 
responsibility, a tendency toward over-reaction and an aversion 
to introspection".

Castro said Bush's recent speech is an attack on Cuba's tourist 
industry, a key source of income for the struggling country. "Mr 
Bush does not hesitate either in tarring Canadian tourists", he 
said. For the most part, according to Castro, they are senior 
citizens. They "come to enjoy the exceptional safety and calm, 
the politeness, culture and hospitality that they find in our 
country".

"What would Mr Bush call the tens of millions of tourists who 
visit the United States every year where casinos, gambling dens, 
areas of male and female prostitution, pornography and sex 
abound?", Castro asked.

The 1953 attack on the Moncada army garrison in Santiago de Cuba, 
Cuba's second largest city, by Castro and 160 other opponents of 
the Batista dictatorship, is widely regarded as the beginning of 
the Cuban Revolution, which triumphed in 1959.

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