Florida congresswoman pans video clip

[deadparrot]

MIAMI - A congresswoman says a video clip showing her calling for Fidel Castro's assassination footage is fake, though she adds that she wouldn't mourn the Cuban leader's death.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (news, bio, voting record), R-Fla., appears in the 28-second clip being circulated on the Internet by the makers of a new British documentary, "638 Ways to Kill Castro."

In it, she says: "I welcome the opportunity of having anyone assassinate Fidel Castro and any leader who is oppressing the people."

However, the Havana-born lawmaker, recently tapped to become the top Republican on the House International Relations Committee, says the filmmakers spliced clips together to make the sound bite.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061210/ap_on_go_co/congresswoman_castro

[Mika]

1. YouTube clip here. Plus, she has said this several times on radio also.

How can an elected Congresswoman encourage assassinations?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MunPrYJWy0&eurl=

[aggiesal]

11. Say whaaat?

"... However, the Havana-born lawmaker, recently tapped to become the top Republican on the House International Relations Committee, says the filmmakers spliced clips together to make the sound bite. ..."

Doesn't look spliced to me!

[Eugene]

2. "she said it was possible she has ... mentioned Castro's potential assassination"

The remark about assassinating Castro looks continuous.
The director stands by the authenticity of the clip
in a later AP report.

Sunday, December 10, 2006 · Last updated 3:37 p.m. PT

GOP rep. denies Castro killing remark

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

-snip-

The film's director, Dolan Cannell, stood by the authenticity of the footage.

"I can assure you categorically and completely that there has been no distortion
of what she said," Cannell told The Associated Press on Sunday.

-snip-

Full article: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1110AP_Congresswoman_Castro.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. Ordinarily, you'd expect a person in public life would be embarrassed

to have been caught on tape advocating murder, but not one of these "exile" right-wingnuts. They are nothing, if not 100% pushy. Everything's going to be done their way or ELSE, as in the case of Colorado Democratic Rep. David Skaggs whose political career was destroyed completely by Ileana's fellow Congressman, Miami's Lincoln Diaz-Balart, when Skaggs dared to try to get the US taxpayers' funding to TV Marti (a wildly expensive Miami Cuban anti-Castro propaganda project) terminated, as it was all based on a lie.

You may remember they all claimed that the U.S. Government had drugged Elián Gonazalez to keep him quiet and under control, and was using a bogus Elián in news photos, and they could tell this because the little boy's hair looked much longer than it was the early morning he had been retrieved legally from the drunken great uncle's house.

[Mika]

4. You're right Judi. Don't forget that they claimed the Castro pics were faked also.

When the pics of Castro in the hospital reading Granma were published the same wingnuts (including Ileana Ros) suggested that they were faked, and that Castro was dead.

The whole world is faked by the librul media, except their warped perspective/perception.

At some point this M.O. has to be worn out. :shrug:

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

9. What did they do to Skaggs?

I only ask because when I was in high school, one of our social studies projects was write a letter to a congressman at random, and the one chosen for me by the teacher was Skaggs. I got back a picture and a letter from him about the issue I asked about. I knew he left office soon after that, maybe in the early 90's or so.......

[Say_What]

10. Skaggs: "You know that if you kick the Cuba issue, you're going to have a bad day.”

You can search for the mentioned article at the Miami New Times website. miaminewtimes.com This article is from COHA.

<clips>

...Dealing from Principle – Ex-Representative Skaggs
However, in 1993, former Representative David Skaggs (D-CO), in an attempt to trim unnecessary budgetary spending targeted for the Martís, was able to convince his House brethren to block funding for the two operations—a measure which did not meet the same success in the Senate, where it was inevitably defeated. Skaggs paid a high price for his bold move, and came under withering fire from anti-Havana hardliners. Martí’s congressional supporters, led by none other than treasury plunderer Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart responded with a stark warning that revenge would be exacted on those who might threaten the continuation of the Martí operation, making an example of Skaggs by attempting to slash federal funding for projects in his home district. However, Skaggs refused to give up the fight, and he continued his campaign against the project, in particular its television component, until he retired in 1998. Skaggs admitted, "You know that if you kick the Cuba issue, you're going to have a bad day.” As a result of his personal experience, the Miami New Times reported in a November 12, 1998 article that Skaggs bitterly expressed outrage at the “corruption of United States policy that is inherent in our Cuba policy,” explaining, “by corruption I mean the untoward influence of a relatively small segment of the population in Florida and the money that small segment of the population brings to bear, and how it distorts the policy choices this government makes.”

Not only does the overwhelming influence of the Miami anti-Castro power brokers impede any attempt to reduce funding for the programs, but their political firepower also has diluted efforts which should have been made to reform these broadcasting agencies. According to Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC News, he, along with several other journalists and academics, were asked by former CBS News president David Burke, who in the mid-1990s had the job of overseeing Radio and TV Martí, to report on the project’s accuracy, professionalism and sense of fairness. The group then proceeded to pose the theoretical question, what would happen “if {they} concluded that the influential chairman of the President’s Advisory Broadcasting Board for Cuban Broadcasting, Jorge Mas Canosa, should resign?” The response they received was “no way”—there was an upcoming election and Congressional candidates heavily dependent on the Cuban-exile vote would be unwilling to risk provoking the hostility of such a powerful group. As a result, Grossman and his colleagues declined the offer, and the potentially revealing document was never executed. Grossman concluded, “{TV Martí} is a folly imposed on us by politically powerful Cuban exile groups that neither party wants to offend.”

http://www.coha.org/NEW_PRESS_RELEASES/New_Press_Releases_2006/COHA%20Report/COHA_Report_06.03_Radio_TV_Marti.html

[Say_What]

5. Ros-Lehtinen: supporter of known terrorists Bosch Avila and Posada Carriles

...Former Florida Senator Connie Mack, Florida
Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, and Jeb Bush
all lobbied for Bosch’s release from INS custody. . .
The first Bush administration overruled its own
Justice Department by having Bosch released from
prison and allowing him to remain in the country.

http://www.doublestandards.org/landau2.html

Meanwhile, on June 15 of this year, Venezuela again formally asked the U.S. government to extradite him to Venezuela. But it seems clear that the U.S. had and has no intention of extraditing him. The most likely thing is that he will remain in custody for a time under the illegal entry charge and will then be freed. In other words, the Bush administration will then have given shelter to another terrorist, to join others such as Orlando Bosch, who has lived freely and unrepentant in Miami since 1989.

And how did Posada Carriles get out of prison in Panama and return to Miami? Why, because Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her two congressional colleagues, Lincoln and Mario Diaz Balart, wrote to then-President Mireya Moscoso requesting that she pardon him, as well as the three others involved in the plot: Guillermo Novo, who had been convicted of the 1976 murder in Washington of Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier – though the conviction was later overturned; Gaspar Jimenez. Who spent six years in prison in Mexico for trying to kidnap a Cuban diplomat and killing his bodyguard in the process; and Pedro Remon who had pleaded guilty in 1986 to trying to blow up the Cuban Mission to the United Nations.

In August of 2004, in one of her last acts as President of Panama, Moscoso did pardon them all. Jimenez, Remon and Novo, who are all American citizens immediately flew back to Miami to a hero’s welcome. Posada Carriles, who has Venezuelan citizenship, decided to bide his time in Honduras for a few months, but then quietly entered the U.S. in March, as stated above.

http://www.ciponline.org/cuba/Op-eds/102705shelter_terrorists.htm

And she's been tapped to be top Repuke on the House International Relations Committee?? Amazing what the US sheeple will allow.

[Mika]

7. Ros Lehtinen and Lantos make a great pair of wingnuts.

:crazy:

[gr8dane_daddy]

6. Damn I've always hated that woman on Crossfire...

the biggest bush apologist....bitch!

[Say_What]

8. Don't be fooled by the SheWolf, as Cubans on the island refer to her,

the only reason you perceive her as a Bush apologist is because Bush and the Repukes do the GUSANOS bidding when it comes to trying to strangle the Cuban economy. If it were a Dem doing the same thing she would be a Dem apologist. She and her sidekicks, the Ditzy-Balistic brothers (Fidel's favorite nephews) have one agenda: Get Cuba. and they don't care how it's accomplished. :puke: