Reply #64: Wrong way on Cuba clear from Idaho [View All]

[Osolomia]

02/15/04

Rep. Butch Otter, R-Idaho, learned something about Cuba even before traveling there this month.

He found out why it was so hard for Americans to go to the island.

"I always thought it was the Cubans telling us we couldn't go," the congressman said in a phone interview Friday. It turned out the problem is the U.S. government.

"What they're telling us is we've picked one country in the world where you can't go, and that's Cuba. I could have gone to Baghdad the day before we started bombing. I could go to North Korea tomorrow.

"That's the only place in the world where I as a free citizen can't go."

Otter greatly dislikes being told that as a free citizen he can't do something, which gets him into arguments with both the Environmental Protection Agency and Attorney General John Ashcroft's Justice Department. So he and the equally conservative Idaho Sen. Larry Craig went to Cuba and decided travel is just one part of U.S. Cuban policy that has to change.

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http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/david_sarasohn/index.ssf?/base/editorial/1076764036318780.xml