John Ensign: “at long last, Fidel Castro's reign of terror over the Cuban people may be coming to an end. Fidel Castro is…”

“at long last, Fidel Castro's reign of terror over the Cuban people may be coming to an end. Fidel Castro is incapacitated. He has handed over control of the government to his brother, Raul. The Cuban Government wants us to believe that it is a temporary measure--that Castro just needs to recuperate from surgery. But we don't know the truth--we can't know the truth, because lies are the byproduct of tyranny. And tyrannies are notoriously opaque. For all we know, it may be that Fidel already has already spent his last day as Cuba's leader. I believe that now is the time for the U.S. Government to push for a peaceful transition to democracy in Cuba. It is a travesty that more than a decade after the cold war ended, a brutal communist dictatorship is still oppressing people 90 miles from our border. It would be an even greater travesty if the United States did not do everything in our power to ensure that after Fidel leaves power--one way or another--Cuba becomes free. Let's join together in support of the Cuban people and in support of freedom, and let's adopt this bill. We need to send a signal to all the dissidents and political prisoners in Cuba that we have no illusions about the nature of Fidel Castro's regime--that we know of their plight and stand ready to help them. When Ronald Reagan called Russia the ``evil empire,'' it brought hope to the dissidents and political prisoners in the Soviet gulags.…”