You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Caribbean-Latin America
A Cuban Exile Snarls At Democrat Che Guevara Apologist Bob Beckel
2011-09-10
“I still have my Che Guevara poster. Che Guevara was a freedom fighter.” (Bob Beckel on FoxNews’ “The Five” Sept. 5th)

If Bob Beckel’s “freedom-fighter” had been allowed his fondest bit of “freedom-fighting” Bob Beckel’s incinerated remains would fit in a gin bottle today. “America is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination!...If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City.”

For the record: Ernesto “Che” Guevara was second in command, chief executioner, and chief KGB liaison for a regime that jailed more political prisoners per capita than did Stalin’s during the Great Terror and murdered more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler’s murdered (out of a population of 70 million) in its first six. Many, perhaps most, of those murdered and jailed by the regime Che Guevara co-founded were Batista opponents.

The Stalinist regime Che Guevara imposed on Cuba also stole the savings and property of 6.4 million citizens, made refugees of 20 percent of the population from a nation formerly deluged with immigrants and whose citizens had achieved a higher standard of living than those residing in half of Europe. Many opponents of the regime Che Guevara co-founded qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Che GuevaraÂ’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in StalinÂ’s Gulag. Most of these had been Batista opponents.

“Don't put him in a list of fascists. The fascists (Batista) were the ones he was trying to get rid of.” (Bob Beckel on FoxNews’ “The Five” Sept. 5th)

For the record: According to the Cuba Archive Project, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps, torture and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. According to the Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War, Nazi repression caused 172,260 French civilian deaths during the occupation. France was nation of 42 million in 1940. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million in 1960. My calculator reveals that Beckel’s freedom-fighter caused an enormously higher percentage of deaths among the people he “freed” than the Nazis caused among the French they enslaved and tortured with the SS and Gestapo.

Beckel tells the “Fox Five” that the CIA killed many more people than Che and implies that in the 50’s the agency was Che’s enemy.

In fact during the late 1950’s the Castro brothers and Che Guevara had no better friends--and Fulgencio Batista few worse enemies--than the CIA. “Me and my staff were all Fidelistas,” (Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s “Caribbean Desk’s specialist on the Cuban Revolution” from 1957-1960.)

“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except (Republican) ambassador Earl Smith.” (CIA operative in Santiago Cuba, Robert Weicha.)

“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever.” (crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel 1958.)

“Listen, we (the U.S.) did not have the most stellar reputation in Latin America and South America during the 1950s and '60s….when the CIA was complicit in the assassination of Allende, that was killing a head of state.” (Bob Beckel)

Ground control to Major Bob: Allende died in the 70Â’s. But whatever. The leftist proverb that he was assassinated by the CIA was spun and spread only by the hardest of hard-left wackos. Not even AllendeÂ’s own family believed it. An investigation including an autopsy by Chilean authorities just last month confirmed that Salvador Allende committed suicide. Surely you read the New York Times, Bob?

“(Che) did help Fidel Castro get rid one of the biggest thugs and murdering bastards there ever was, and that was Batista in Cuba.” (Bob Beckel)

Batista was a mulatto grandson of slaves born on the dirt floor of a palm roofed shack in the Cuban countryside. As President (via honest elections 1940-44, bloodless coup 1952-58) he always enjoyed the support of CubaÂ’s labor unions. And under Batista, according to a study by the International Labor Organization, the Cuban workforce was more highly unionized than the U.S. work force, with CubaÂ’s Industrial laborers earning the 8th highest wages in the world.

“Cuba’s laborer’s always maintained a stony indifference to Fidel Castro’s movement,” admitted Cuba’s richest man and Fidel and Che bankroller Julio Lobo, who knew because he employed thousands of them.

So hereÂ’s Bob Beckel bashing a black politician of lowly origin who enjoyed overwhelming unionized labor support--while hailing the lily-white rich-boys, Fidel and Che, who outlawed labor unions and sent such as Richard Trumka and Jimmy Hoffa to the firing squad or prison. WhereÂ’s Trumka, Hoffa and Maxine Waters on this? Using liberalsÂ’ own standards Beckel sure sounds like an elitist--and a racist to boot.

No doubt Beckel picked up the leftist proverb about Batista as “one of the biggest murdering bastards there ever was” from a meme hatched in 1957 by a Fidelista Cuban magazine publisher named Miguel Angel Quevedo. The meme asserts that Batista’s police and army “murdered 20,000 Cubans” and is still parroted by the MSM/Academia axis.

For the record: Ten years after he hatched and spread the lie, Quevedo (from exile, he scooted out just ahead of a Fidelista firing squad) confessed to the lie and greatly regretted how the lie helped the propaganda campaign to put Fidel and Che in power. The regret for the calamity he helped bring upon Cuba was such that, that right after signing the letter, Miguel Angel Quevedo put a gun to his head and blew his brains out.

“The idea of picking Che Guevara and calling him a mass-murder is crazy.” (Bob Beckel)

“Certainly we execute!” boasted Che Guevara while addressing the hallowed halls of the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 9, 1964. “And we will continue executing as long as it is necessary! According to the “Black Book of Communism,” those firing-squad executions (murders, actually; execution implies a judicial process) had reached 14,000 by the end of the ’60s, the equivalent, given the relative populations, of almost a million executions in the U.S. “I don’t need proof to execute a man,” snapped Che to a judicial toady in 1959. “I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him.”
Posted by:Anonymoose

#14  Beckel's brother Graham is a character actor and conservative. Yeah you've seen him before. Hannity loves to have them on together to argue. Graham eats Bob's lunch.
Posted by: Frank G   2011-09-10 20:05  

#13  Yes indeed Beavis, and a fine neighborhood to have lived in.

Y'know, that bourdain guy mentioned she was the worst thing to have happened to American cuisine. I have been to a lot of places, had a lot of food, Ms. Deen had a recipe for a lime shrimp lettuce wrap that had me drooling so much my wife got mad. After 10 minutes of one of boudain's show all I wanted to lick was an electric outlet.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2011-09-10 19:24  

#12  Beckel must be the "fairly unbalanced" part of Fox. The guy's an idiot and revels in being an idiot.
Posted by: JohnQC   2011-09-10 18:33  

#11  I assume you mean Ms. Deen she was a neighbor on Wilmington Island when I lived in Savannah. The old Lady and Sons was to me better than new incarnation. She used personally go around passing out her cheese biscuits.
Posted by: Beavis   2011-09-10 14:46  

#10  That may be true, but when I listen to Paula I end up with german chocolate truffles ;)
Posted by: swksvolFF   2011-09-10 14:38  

#9  swksvolFF  I could stare at Kimberly Guilfoyle and Dana Perino for hours
Posted by: Beavis   2011-09-10 13:57  

#8  He was Mondale's '84 campaign manager.

LOL
Posted by: Beavis   2011-09-10 13:52  

#7  Ah, "journalist". That explains it...
Posted by: tu3031   2011-09-10 13:48  

#6  That show is a waste of time, but in that time slot it has improved my cooking skills.
Posted by: swksvolFF   2011-09-10 13:45  

#5  Beckel is a journalist who works for Fox.
Posted by: badanov   2011-09-10 13:35  

#4  Who the fuck is Bob Beckel?
Posted by: tu3031   2011-09-10 13:12  

#3  And to remind everyone, some of the empty suit's campaign offices prominently displayed Che posters.

If everyone can remember, I and several others on this board went ballistic over the posters.

Guevera was a murderous psychopath. There is no way around the fact that he was a horrifically delusional and completely crazy anti social personality. If Che had been in the California health care system, he would have been locked up at Atascadero or Patton.

I just want to vomit every time I see a Che tee shirt or a Che poster. Can someone ever talk sense to these idiots that they need to pick their heroes more carefully.
Posted by: Bill Clinton   2011-09-10 12:10  

#2  "Stay away from my man, bitch!"

-Hanoi Jane
Posted by: swksvolFF   2011-09-10 11:57  

#1  Â“If the nuclear missiles had remained,we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is worth millions of atomic victims."
-- Che Guevara to the London Daily Worker,
November, 1962
Posted by: Anonymoose   2011-09-10 11:34  

00:00