Bloggings by boz

Me on Twitter yesterday:

TSA orders extra screening of passengers coming from Cuba in response to Nigeria/Yemen/Netherlands Al Qaeda threat. Take that Castro!!!

Yes, I was being sarcastic. More seriously, Eugene Robinson addresses the issue today:

Cuba is not a failed state where swaths of territory lie beyond government control; rather, it is one of the most tightly locked-down societies in the world, a place where the idea of private citizens getting their hands on plastic explosives, or terrorist weapons of any kind, is simply laughable.

There is no history of radical Islam in Cuba. In fact, there is hardly any history of Islam at all. With its long-standing paranoia about internal security and its elaborate network of government spies and snitches, the island nation would have to be among the last places on Earth where al-Qaeda would try to establish a cell, let alone plan and launch an attack.

The Havana Note suggests that the move could reopen the debate over Cuba's placement on the State Sponsors of Terrorism list, which is the reason TSA ordered the additional screening. I think US attention is focused elsewhere at the moment.