Cuba

It appears that Cuba is on the Bush administration's short list of countries that are just crying out for invasion. Condoleezza Rice said in her confirmation testimony yesterday, "To be sure, in our world there remain outposts of tyranny, and America stands with oppressed people on every continent, ... in Cuba, and Burma (Myanmar), and North Korea, and Iran, and Belarus, and Zimbabwe."
I'm pretty sure Cubans would rather be oppressed by Castro then "liberated" by Bush, who they universally despise. It's not that all Cubans support Castro and don't chafe under the system, but that they are fiercely independent and nationalistic (as well as more educated about American politics than most Americans). I find Cuba's prominence in this list a little chilling in light of the story I read last week about oil. Someone I know and admire feels that Bush's heightening of the economic embargo this summer was a tactic designed to provoke Castro into doing something that would give the U.S. an excuse to invade Cuba. She thinks Cuba has oil reserves off the coast that Bush and Co. have their greedy little eyes on. To be honest, I didn't give that theory much credence, despite the fact that a) this person is stunningly brilliant and b) she knows a lot more about the situation than I do. The problem is that Cuba's current oil reserves are of a low grade and do not meet the island's needs. However, Fidel Castro announced last week that a vast reserve of high quality oil had been discovered in Cuban water. It's unclear just how big that reserve is, but foreign countries are jumping to invest in Cuban oil. I think this may be a story to watch closely.