>Cuba - you're kidding, right?


No. As Tom already pointed out, we "owned" Cuba after the Spanish-America war. And it was a Colony for a while. And for all intents and purposes it remained a colony (not politically anymore but certainly economically) up until 1959. I am not implying anything about the change of regime (Castro et al) as I am not a friend of Castro and I don't want to start a diatribe on that particular case 9at least not in this thread), but Batista's (and previous governments) had a lot of unsavory ties to the US government up until the end. In some ways like Noriega was "friendly" for a long time, as you mentioned Panama in your message.