These days, it can be hard to tell that the United States still maintains its 40-year trade and travel embargo on Cuba. Jimmy Carter and Ralph Nader recently touched down on Fidel Castro's communist island in the Caribbean, just 90 miles from Florida's coast. North Dakota's Republican governor John Hoeven went there to drum up farm business for his state. And even Tampa, Fla.'s Democratic Mayor Dick Greco made a furtive trip to Cuba with 15 local business leaders (they caught hell when Florida's Cuban-American community found out).
For the past few months, senior Bush administration and military officials have been debating whether and when to launch a military invasion of Iraq. Had they attended, and actually listened to, a late May conference at American University in Washington, however, they would have received a powerful reality check. It brought together the men (no women), mainly Iraqi exiles, who would rule Iraq after what President George W. Bush has taken to calling a "regime change" in Baghdad.
