... So that You may be kept informed

CAMFidel Castro says he and Oliver Stone spoke of Bush "horrors"


Fri Sep 4 02:27:20 EST 2009
Thu Sep 3 16:27:20 UTC 2009

HAVANA, Sept 3 AFP - Fidel Castro discussed the political "errors and horrors" of former US president George W Bush with filmmaker Oliver Stone, the Cuban leader wrote on Thursday.

Castro, 83, in an editorial carried in official media, said he had a long talk with Oliver Stone about his film "W" about the Bush presidency.

Slamming Bush for dragging the United States to war in Iraq and failing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, Fidel Castro said he told Stone "my point of view about Bush's responsibility" for those and other political missteps.

Castro wrote that "after the political errors and horrors of George W Bush", former US vice-president Dick Cheney appallingly justified torture.

"Let's get this straight, it is a question of political ethics: 'the end does not justify the means'. Torture does not justify torture; one crime does not justify another crime," Castro added.

He wrote that "maybe more than half" of Americans supported Cheney's stand, and that "if they did, it would be a sign of the moral bankruptcy that developed capitalism and consumerism can produce".

The former Cuban president, who stepped aside three years ago during a health crisis, did not give a date for his conversation with Stone.

Stone, who has met with Castro for hours of interviews for his documentaries Comandante (2003) and Looking for Fidel (2004), this week premieres a new one about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Castro's closest political ally.

According to Chavez, Stone met in January with Cuban President Raul Castro, news that was not reported in Cuba at the time.