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Havana: Fidel Castro suggested that Washington has deliberately failed to check terrorist attacks against Americans because it needed to "deliver a bang" that would justify its war on terror.
In the latest in a series of essays that he has begun writing every few days, Cuba's 80-year-old Maximum leader on Sunday seized on US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's comments last week expressing a "gut feeling" that the United States faces an increased risk of terrorist attack this summer.
"The government of the United States sees and hears all, with or without legal authority," Castro wrote.
"They can prevent any attack on their people, unless there is some imperial need to deliver a bang so that they can carry on with and justify the brutal war which has been declared against the culture, religion, economy and independence of other peoples."
The accusation came at the end of an essay titled "Bush, Health and Education," in which Castro claimed Cubans were better cared for than Americans, and that his poor island nation and its legions of doctors working around Latin America had done more for the region than the US ever would.
Fulminations
Published in the Communist Party youth newspaper Juventud Rebelde, the essay took apart President George W. Bush for suggesting that recent US initiatives had brought Latin Americans closer to quality medical care.
"In Cuba, where health care is not a commodity, we can do things that Bush cannot even dream of," Castro wrote.
Castro singled out the USNS Comfort, a Navy medical ship staffed by hundreds of doctors and nurses dispatched to treat the poor in Central America.
"Bush knows that he is lying and that his tall tales are hard to swallow, but he doesn't care," he wrote. "He is confident that if he repeats it a thousand times, many will finally believe him. The Comfort, with more than 800 people on board, that is, medical staff and crew, will not be able to look after great numbers of people."
He added that, despite Washington's 45-year-old trade embargo, "Bush is discovering that the econ-omic and political system of his empire cannot compete with Cuba in vital services, such as health care and education."
Castro did not mention the recent US movie Sicko, in which filmmaker Michael Moore compares Cuba's health care system favourably to the US'.
Recuperating in an un-disclosed location after intestinal surgery, Castro has for weeks published the essays, known as Reflections of the Commander in Chief.
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