Oh Luis Posada Carriles, where will you go now?
No, seriously. Beyond the legal aspects of Posada's terroristic ways, his past involvement in blowing up innocent civilians in the name of freedom (and while on the CIA payroll, no less) is having some practical consequences these days.
The Miami Herald is reporting today that Panama, where Posada tried to kill Fidel Castro in a crowded theater during a 2000 summit, has reversed a pardon granted to him by former President Mireya Moscoso in the closing days of her term. (It's long been rumored that she did it under a little undue influence from South Florida Republicans.) For those of you averse to legal terminology, it's the equivalent of winning a "Get Out of Jail Free!" card in Monopoly only to have someone replace it with a "Get Your Ass Back in Jail, Bitch!" card. Ok, so that card doesn't exist, but it should.
Anyhow, with Panama's recent move, Posada is crossing off one more country from his list of second honeymoon destinations. Let's review his vacation rules:
1) Cuba and Venezuela are obvious no-no's, since they both want him for the 1973 bombing of a Cuban airliner that left 76 communist-loving terrorists civilians dead.
2) Argentina, Bolivia Nicaragua and Ecuador are also out, since they have presidents that still believe in the concept of justice and would probably ship him back to Venezuela, thus breaking rule 1.
3) Mexico, El Salvador, Canada, Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala just plain don't want him, having rejected a kind offer from the U.S. to take him so they could avoid sending him to Venezuela, which, again, would break rule 1.
4) Brazil, Chile, Peru, pretty much all of Africa and a good chunk of Asia are part of the 118-member Non-Aligned Movement, which in 2007 released a statement calling Posada an "international terrorist." I'm not sure about you, but I'm not spending money on fruity cocktail drinks and trinkets from a country that's going to badmouth me like that.
You get the point. And if you start to consider that he wouldn't even be able to transit through these countries, well, Posada and family are looking at another vacay at Disneyworld. And since he's living free in Miami, that's not too far a drive.
