Jan/2014: Kerry to Vatican: Help free Jewish-American jailed in Cuba

[pnwmom]

22. This isn't about Kerry vs. Cllnton. Hillary laid the groundwork for this during her term.

But it made sense for Obama to wait till after the midterms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/06/05/hillary-clinton-cuba-embargo_n_5457117.html

PARIS (AP) — In her new book, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton says she pushed President Barack Obama to lift or ease the decades-long U.S. embargo on Cuba because it was no longer useful to American interests or promoting change on the communist island.

In excerpts of the book "Hard Choices" obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its release next week, Clinton writes that the embargo has given communist leaders Fidel and Raul Castro an excuse not to enact democratic reforms. And she says opposition from some in Congress to normalizing relations — "to keep Cuba in a deep freeze" — has hurt both the United States and the Cuban people. She says the 2009 arrest by Cuba of USAID contractor Alan Gross and Havana's refusal to release him on humanitarian grounds is a "tragedy" for improving ties.

"Since 1960, the United States had maintained an embargo against the island in hopes of squeezing Castro from power, but it only succeeded in giving him a foil to blame for Cuba's economic woes," she writes. She says her husband, former President Bill Clinton, tried to improve relations with Cuba in the 1990s, but the Castro government did not respond to the easing in some sanctions. Nonetheless, Obama was determined to continue the effort, she writes.

She says that late in her term in office she urged Obama to reconsider the U.S. embargo. "It wasn't achieving its goals," she writes, "and it was holding back our broader agenda across Latin America. ... I thought we should shift the onus onto the Castros to explain why they remained undemocratic and abusive."