More than a half-million homes destroyed. Three-hundred bridges collapsed. Six-hundred municipal water wells wiped out. Almost a third of Cuba's population without electricity.

Bananas, sugar, yams, vast fields of food -- all gone.

After getting battered from one end of the island to the other by back-to-back hurricanes, Cubans are crying out for help. The risk of water-borne diseases, bacterial outbreaks, viruses and malnutrition is mounting.

But their leaders and ours keep going in circles, sizing up one another to see how they can gain the political advantage out of hurricanes estimated to have done billions of dollars in damage.

And there the Cuban people are: hungry, tired, yearning to be free -- propelled into the eye of this latest political storm.

The U.S. government quickly approved $10 million in aid to Haiti and sent planeloads of supplies as one million were left homeless there from recent hurricanes. And more U.S. aid is coming.

A DANGLED CARROT

But for communist Cuba the Bush administration offered a paltry $100,000 quick hit, dangling the carrot of millions of dollars in aid if a U.S. emergency relief team were allowed into Cuba to assess the damage.

Cuba's response was to call for the end to the decades-old U.S. embargo. No surprise there. Cuba can't get credit lines from U.S. companies under current law, so the regime has to pay in cash for those goods. Good thing, too, because Cuba is infamously bad about paying its debts. Ask Russia, Japan, Canada, Italy and on and on.

For decades, Cuba has mismanaged its economy and conveniently blamed the U.S. embargo. Make no mistake: The crumbling buildings wiped out during Gustav and Ike were a product of 50 years of the Castro brothers' neglect, exacerbated by wind and water.

So that's the lousy history, and we all know it. The question is: Why do we keep repeating it?

Because while the two governments are pointing fingers and the exile community keeps arguing over who's right on how to end the dictatorship, millions of desperate people are being held hostage to hunger and homelessness.

Cuba's foreign ministry pooh-poohed the U.S. aid offer as one more example that the U.S. government ``behaves cynically. . . . They lie unscrupulously.''

BITTER, NASTY RELATIONS

Well, yes, tit for tat. Apparently Cuban officials are fretting that American emergency aid experts would be checking out the Cuban countryside. What are they hiding? Old Soviet missiles unearthed by the storms?

It's not unusual for governments helping others to send assessment teams.

But there's nothing usual about U.S.-Cuba relations. It's bitter and nasty, and the Castros thrive on it.

So let's call the regime's bluff.

Already religious charities are scrambling to assemble shipments for Cuba and Haiti. They know from past assistance efforts that Cuba's militant regime has the structure -- beginning with those spying block committees -- to get basic aid, food and medicine to the masses quickly.

What's another option? Starve the Cubans until they somehow, after five decades of revolutionary propaganda, rise up and free themselves using scraps of lumber and metal from their demolished homes as their weapons?

Think U.S. national security. If this war of words escalates and aid to Cuba from other countries likely falls short, we can expect another rafter crisis.

And once again, the Castro brothers will have released the escape valve and saved themselves.

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