[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 2]
[Senate]
[Pages 3078-3082]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  CUBA

  Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to speak about my 
two recent fact-finding trips to Cuba. During the first trip, which was 
an incredible journey across the nation of Cuba, I had conversations 
with Cuban citizens, farmers, doctors, nurses, students, a very broad 
cross section of the Cuban citizenry, also some government officials.
  The second trip involved a 1-day visit to the U.S. Detention Center 
at Guantanamo Bay. I would like to begin with details of my first trip 
which took place during January's recess in the Senate. First, I wish 
to publicly thank Ambassador Cabanas, the Cuban--well, I guess since we 
do not have an embassy--he has the rank of Ambassador, but he is in 
charge of the Cuban interest section here. I wish to thank him and his 
staff personally for arranging this and overcoming a lot of difficult 
obstacles to make sure we could take this trip.
  I guess I am the first Senator or Congressman to do this kind of a 
trip. First, we flew from Miami down to Santiago de Cuba. We spent 2 or 
3 days in Santiago de Cuba. Then we drove from Santiago to Holguin, to 
Camaguey, Santa Clara and into Havana. So we traversed about 700 miles 
during the week's period we were there, seeing most of the entire 
nation of Cuba.
  I have not seen--I have not been up to the Pinar del Rio out here in 
the western part. That is one part I have not been. I had visited as a 
Senator 11 years before, but that was only in Havana. This time I 
wanted to see the country. I wanted to see ordinary Cubans in small 
towns and communities, to get a feel for what it was like in the rest 
of the country.
  Most people just go to Havana. That is akin to going to New York City 
and saying you have been to America. It is not the same. There is a lot 
more country to Cuba, a lot more things going on than just Havana.

[[Page 3079]]

  It is clear to me this is a time that is very important in Cuban-
American relations. So I just wanted to share some of the insights I 
gained during my travels across this Nation of 11 million people.
  As I said, I arrived in Santiago on January 17. Over the course of 
the week, we traveled up through the countryside. Again, I wish to 
thank Bernardo Toscano, a Cuban who had been in the United States I 
think three or four times. He had been in Washington two or three times 
working in their interest section and I think once or twice in New York 
with their interest section in New York.
  So we met him. He came with us to Santiago and then served as a host 
and was with us all during our trip.
  Bernardo--I always say, he is an Italian Cuban, Bernardo Toscano--
again, another indication that there are a lot of different 
nationalities that people in Cuba have.
  Bernardo was so gracious, so kind, so informative in taking care of 
things for us. He informed me that he had been to visit 20 States in 
the United States. So he has been to 20 States. Yet a U.S. citizen 
cannot go to Cuba to see Cuba. But the trip we took was fascinating. 
All along the way, from Santiago all up the way, we saw tour buses--
tour buses with people.
  They looked like North Americans, but in fact they were from England 
and Germany and Sweden and Canada, mostly Canada, a lot of Canadians. 
But there were people traveling, visiting different things. Canada 
right now, they have a direct flight from Toronto to Santa Clara. Then 
you get on a bus and go out here, to those wonderful beaches out here, 
which we did not visit. A lot of Canadians and a lot of Europeans go 
there but not Americans. I will have more to say about that.
  But, again, I wish to thank so many people of Cuba, so many people I 
saw, for the warm welcome, the hospitality they extended to me, my 
wife, my traveling companions, and my staff as we traveled throughout 
their country.
  Prior to my election--long before my election to Congress, I was a 
Navy pilot stationed at Guantanamo Bay for 18 months. So this was 
interesting to see the rest of Cuba other than just Guantanamo Bay, 
which is right down here. This is the Guantanamo Bay area. It is right 
near Santiago de Cuba.
  In fact, landing at the airport in Santiago was quite interesting. 
One of my traveling companions I was with was a Navy pilot with me when 
I was stationed in Guantanamo. He is Cuban American. We remembered how 
we were always kind of warned when we were out flying not to get 
mistaken between Santiago and Guantanamo because the runways look 
exactly the same.
  They are both east-west runways, and they are right there on the 
ocean. There is a bay on both of them, and if we weren't careful, we 
might land on one rather than the other.
  All that time that we were flying out of there we never went to 
Santiago--of course, we couldn't--but we used to see it as we patrolled 
the skies around Cuba. So now landing at Santiago was kind of an 
interesting flashback in time to when I was a young Navy pilot.
  I wanted to get a firsthand look at the lives of ordinary people 
outside of Havana. Particularly, I have long advocated in this country 
for a strong public health infrastructure, and I wanted to examine the 
strengths and weaknesses of Cuba's public health system.
  When we first arrived in Santiago, we went to visit the cancer 
hospital, which provides treatment for people from across the entire 
country. I found the doctors there and the leaders of that hospital to 
be very dedicated public servants. The institution has struggled to 
overcome the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, which hit Santiago very 
hard. Again, it would be mutually beneficial for both Cuba and the 
United States if we had better relations and if we had better trade 
relations with Cuba. They might need some medical equipment that we 
have, but we could also learn from them on some of the processes and 
procedures they use in treating cancer patients.
  I was struck by one thing. This was Friday afternoon, and we were 
going through the hospital--yes, they have all the necessary equipment, 
the radiation machines and all the equipment they need to do radiation, 
infusion for chemotherapy. They have all of that. As I said, the 
hospital suffered some damage from Hurricane Sandy and that hasn't been 
all fixed yet--but what was interesting, as I was going through the 
hospital, I noticed a lot of empty beds.
  As we were leaving the hospital, I said to the director: Where are 
all of the people? It looks like you have a lot of empty beds.
  She said: Oh, it is Friday afternoon. We send them home for the 
weekend.
  I said: Really?
  She said a very interesting thing to me.
  She said: Yes. You come to the hospital to get cured, but you go home 
to get well.
  I thought about that, because not too long ago I had an instance in 
Des Moines, IA, where I had visited a friend of mine who was seriously 
ill with cancer--he has since passed away--but he wanted to leave. 
Literally, he wanted to leave the hospital for a Sunday meeting of the 
Methodist Church. He was a Methodist minister and the hospital wouldn't 
let him leave.
  They said: If you leave, then you have to be all readmitted again 
through Medicare, and Medicare will cut off the payments and all of 
that.
  There was all of this, and they wouldn't even let him leave for a few 
hours to go halfway across the city to partake in an award he was 
supposed to receive.
  I thought about that when I saw this hospital and she said: No, we 
send people home for the weekend and then they come back on Monday.
  There are interesting things such as that that we pick up. There is a 
lot the two of us could learn together.
  In Camaguey--we stopped in Holguin, which is also kind of a small, 
rural community, again with a very kind of comprehensive clinic system. 
As we drove on up the road to Camaguey, in Camaguey we had an 
interesting visit. We visited the home of Dr. Carlos Finlay. Now some 
people might say who is Dr. Carlos Finlay?
  Dr. Carlos Finlay was the person who discovered the origin of yellow 
fever that is transmitted by a certain mosquito. A lot of people didn't 
believe him. They just did not believe him, but he persevered. Later on 
it was a person who is sort of famous around here--at least we know the 
name, Dr. Walter Reed--who, when they were building the Panama Canal, 
discovered that Dr. Finlay was right, it was a transmission by 
mosquitoes.
  We were able to visit his home and there is again a whole cadre of 
people there doing research on other transmissions of illnesses; for 
example, the transmission of different diseases by mosquitoes there, 
but again there is a heavy focus on medical research.
  When we went to Santa Clara, we visited another clinic there. They 
call them polyclinics. In other words, they do a lot of different 
things. It is sort of what we might think of in this country as a 
community health center--it is a community health center. Unlike our 
community health centers, people don't have to just go there to seek 
help. The community health centers, the polyclinics, go out there. They 
go out in very rural areas to make sure kids have their vaccinations 
and to make sure people have checkups.
  One of the reasons they have such a low infant mortality rate--which 
some have said is lower than ours and is, in fact, one of the lowest in 
the world, and they have one of the lowest rates of mortality of 
children zero to 5--is because when a woman gets pregnant in Cuba, she 
is visited immediately. As soon as they know about it, she gets visited 
by a nurse; visited by health officials who put her on a better diet, 
make sure she doesn't smoke, provide supportive services for her during 
her pregnancy, and make sure there is someone there for the birth. For 
that child, everything is covered from the earliest time of pregnancy 
through early childhood.
  It is a hands-on approach. It is going out serving people rather than 
making people come in to them. This is one of the key features of what 
Cuba has done. They have made the practice of

[[Page 3080]]

medicine a public service in all aspects. Whether one is a doctor, a 
surgeon, a nurse or various other health practitioners, it is a public 
service.
  Cuba has put a great deal of emphasis on prevention, prevention of 
illness. In fact, I must say I was surprised in Cuba that they have 
gone on an antismoking campaign.
  I was out one night in Santiago. We were out to dinner. We came back 
at about 10 at night, and I noticed a street was blocked off. There 
were a lot of people out there, and I asked Mr. Toscano what that was.
  He asked somebody else and said: Well, in Santiago every Friday and 
Saturday night they block off long streets and they have festivals, 
street parties.
  I said: I want to go there.
  So we parked our car and we walked out. We didn't have any guards or 
anybody around us. We just walked down the street. It was a mile long. 
It was a long street. Late at night, we went down the street, and along 
the sides of the street there were people cooking foods. There were 
little kiosks. We even saw one whole hog on a spit being turned, people 
eating. There were families with kids out there and a lot of young 
people.
  There were a lot of young people out there looking for other young 
people on Saturday night. There was music. Every other block had some 
music, and it was just kind of a wonderful atmosphere.
  I noticed two things that I was looking for during my walk down and 
back--how many people were smoking. I counted four people were smoking. 
There were thousands of people up and down these streets, and I counted 
four people who were smoking. There may have been more, but that is all 
I could find.
  During this entire walk, with all of these people out in the street, 
10:30 at night, Saturday night, I saw one policeman, and he didn't have 
any firearms. He just had a stick. He just kind of walked around with a 
stick. There was this wonderful thing, but the idea that no one was 
smoking, kind of fascinated me.
  But I digress. I want to talk about the community-based health system 
and keeping people healthy. What they have said is it is not just the 
doctors' offices--that is only one component of keeping people 
healthy--it is the entire community, the schools, the community-based 
approach that keeps people healthy. That is something we could learn 
from and do in this country.
  During my visit with health care professionals, they explained that 
in the early 1980s Cuba moved to a comprehensive family practice model 
throughout the country, with doctors, nurses, and other health 
professionals working in teams integrated into the neighborhoods where 
they live and they work. This has become the pillar of primary health 
care in Cuba and obviously has contributed to significant improvements 
in health outcomes. I think their longevity, lifespan, is now even 
longer than ours in the United States.
  These changes and others have helped Cuba improve its health care 
system. There are several indicators of this. For instance, by the end 
of 2013, Cuba reported that its infant mortality rate had declined to 
4.2 for 1,000 live births, the lowest in its history and one of the 
lowest in the world. By comparison, the United States had an infant 
mortality rate of 5.9 per 1,000 live births.
  Also, over the past couple of decades, Cuba has increased the number 
of medical personnel it sends abroad to serve on medical missions, 
filling critical needs in underserved countries. There are currently 
nearly 44,000 Cuban medical personnel working in many countries around 
the world.
  Last year I took a trip to Namibia and South Africa, and I saw Cuban 
doctors working there--actually, sometimes alongside our own doctors 
from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Interesting. We 
can work with them there, but we can't work with them here--so they do. 
They have sent them all over the world.
  Also, in Havana I visited a very interesting place I had never heard 
about. It is called the Latin American School of Medicine. The Latin 
American School of Medicine is about 20 miles west of Havana. It was an 
old naval academy. Evidently, President Castro decided they didn't need 
a naval academy, so they closed it down and made it a medical school. 
Students come from not only all over Latin America but all around the 
world to go to medical school.
  Believe it or not, there are students from America going to school in 
Havana--going to medical school. This blew my mind. I never heard of 
such a thing.
  This is what I found out. In the year 2000, the Congressional Black 
Caucus had a trip to Havana. During that trip they met with President 
Castro. One of the Congressmen, Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, had 
said something about how difficult it was for them to get people in 
certain areas of Mississippi. He said there were large areas in his 
home district that didn't have a single physician. Also, they talked 
about how expensive it was to go to medical school.
  So President Castro invited American students to come there, and they 
worked it out. I think the first class started, if I am not mistaken, 
in 2002. I believe that was the first class. Now, believe it or not, 
there are 108 U.S. students going to this school.
  I didn't see them all because a lot of them, during their schooling, 
go out and work in hospitals, clinics, and different things such as 
that. I met with six of them and it was very interesting. From the left 
is Michael, who was from California; Nikolai from Queens in New York; 
Kimberly, also from northern California; Ariel was from Michigan; Olive 
is from Wisconsin; and Sarah is from New Mexico.
  All of them are first-year students except for Sarah, who is a third-
year student, watches over them, and is their tutor or their leader.
  There are requirements before you go there. They have to be from an 
extremely low-income family and cannot afford to go to medical school. 
They have to be a college graduate and graduated with one of the 
sciences, such as biology or one of the physical sciences, something 
like that. So they must have graduated from college. Third, they have 
to agree that when they graduate they are going to come back to America 
and work in an underserved area.
  Here is the deal: Every one of these students is going to medical 
school. Do you know what it costs them? Zero. Not one cent. The 108 
students pay nothing. We have over 90 graduates of this school back 
here in America right now.
  And that is another thing: Whenever we traveled over to Cuba, I went 
to the clinics and I talked to health people. I always asked them: What 
did it cost you to go to school? Do you have student debt? No. Medical 
school is free. There is no cost to going to medical school--none 
whatsoever. So here are these students, who would never be able to go 
to medical school and absorb that cost, getting a free medical 
education. So again, here is another of the things we could be working 
with Cuba on if we had a little better policy with Cuba.
  The six students I met with are happy and grateful to have the 
opportunity. They were just out of their first 6 months. For the first 
6 months all they do is learn Spanish--Spanish immersion. They had just 
finished that and they were very happy about that, and that now they 
would actually start studying medicine. Again, so many different 
things, but mainly I focused on health care and what they were doing on 
health care.
  I also met with Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez. I had a long lunch 
with him, their former Ambassador to the United Nations and now their 
Foreign Minister. We had a long discussion about our relationship with 
Cuba.
  He himself said it is time we have a new relationship with the United 
States. It is time for a new course. We can't be bound by old history. 
We need to make new history. I think that is what I would like to echo 
here; that we do have a constructive new policy between Cuba and 
America.
  The last thing I did was to pay a visit to Mr. Alan Gross. Right 
here, Mr.

[[Page 3081]]

Alan Gross. This is my staff member, Rosemary Gutierrez, who went with 
us on this trip and made sure what I was hearing was correct in terms 
of Spanish, since I don't speak Spanish fluently. Mr. Gross, as you 
know, has been in prison now for over 4 years. I am hopeful he will be 
released soon on humanitarian grounds. I will be working with our 
government to engage with the Cuban Government in serious and sustained 
talks to resolve his situation and other related issues.
  I might add what we are holding in this photo is a little chain. What 
he does in his spare time is he puts things together out of bottle 
caps, plastic bottle caps. He is now serving a 15-year prison sentence. 
I spent well over an hour with him. I think he is holding up pretty 
well, under the circumstances. Obviously, he is not very happy. Who 
would be happy, being locked up like that? He is confined to his room 
for 23 hours of the day, but he is allowed outside. He told me he walks 
10,000 steps a day and does 50 pullups for an hour each day. So he 
makes these bracelets out of the rings from the water bottles. He also 
reads and watches television. He says he has television and things to 
read.
  I know other Senators have visited with him in Havana, but it is time 
to bring Mr. Gross home. It is time to end this. It is time we do some 
dealing with the Cuban Government on his issue and on some other 
related issues that I don't mean to go into right now but the 
administration knows of which I speak. There is no reason why we can't 
return Mr. Gross to this country this year, and I am hopeful that will 
be done.
  It is time to recognize that Cuba is our neighbor; that it is not 
only our neighbor but it is a sovereign nation and we have to work to 
improve on this relationship with a country 90 miles from our shore. It 
is obvious to visitors, the Cuban people and the American people have a 
great deal in common. In all my travels through Cuba, as we stopped at 
various places--stopped to have refreshments here and there, stopped in 
small communities--I noticed that every small town we went through or 
by had a baseball diamond or maybe two baseball diamonds. It is amazing 
how many people play baseball in Cuba. They have town teams, and towns 
will have two teams, one section of town against the other section--
kids all playing baseball. Wouldn't it be great if we had some kind of 
relationship where some of our small baseball teams in the United 
States could go to Cuba and play? We know they have some pretty good 
players because some have come here to play in our Major Leagues.
  In every place I stopped, and with all the people we talked to, I 
never heard one Cuban--not one--ever say a bad thing about the United 
States of America or about the American people. I never heard it. I 
expected some would say: You know, you are doing bad things to Cuba 
with your embargo and we don't like Americans for this. I expected to 
hear that. I never heard it. Do you know the thing I heard most often 
from ordinary Cubans? Where are you from? I said: I am from Iowa and I 
work in Washington, DC. The usual response was: Oh. Do you know my 
cousin so-and-so, who lives in St. Louis or my cousin so-and-so who 
lives here or there? It seems as though every Cuban has a cousin in 
America someplace. One woman said her son lives in Michigan.
  There is this sense we have a lot in common, and I never felt any 
animosity whatsoever. It is clear we have a lot in common. We are both 
nations of hard-working people who want access to basic health care and 
a good education for our kids.
  That is another thing: I didn't spend a lot of time looking at 
education, but it was clear to me the literacy rate in Cuba is very 
high. Some have said it is the highest of all the Latin American 
countries. I can't attest to that. But it is clear that education is a 
very important part of the Cuban structure.
  Over the years, I have met with many Iowans, business people, 
diplomats who want to improve our relationship with Cuba to facilitate 
more trade and travel with our neighbors. Even with the limited opening 
with Cuba's markets, we have seen tremendous benefits from agricultural 
exports to Cuba from my State of Iowa and other parts of the United 
States. It is only our official policy that stands in the way of much 
greater exports of U.S. commodities and food products plus related 
agricultural machinery, technology, and so forth.
  Here is another thing I noticed: We went through a lot of farms and 
we saw a lot of agriculture--mostly sugarcane, but other things too--a 
lot of cattle. This whole section of Cuba here, in this area of the 
map, is almost all cattle; livestock--goats and cattle--and other 
agriculture. I want to say this: This is the first and only country I 
have ever visited where I went out to see agricultural entities and 
have never seen a John Deere tractor or a John Deere implement of any 
kind. I can go to China. I went almost to the Tibetan border in China 
and saw John Deere equipment. There is John Deere equipment in Africa, 
John Deere equipment in Pakistan, and India. If we had better trade, I 
might see some more John Deere implements down in Cuba, which would be 
great for their productivity.
  We would also benefit from a two-way trade. There are many things 
grown in Cuba we have appetites for, such as fruits and vegetables--
fresh fruits that consumers in our country would enjoy.
  Again, I think Americans really do want to change our policy. I have 
here the Atlantic Council. On February 11 they released the results of 
their latest poll which found that 56 percent of the American people 
support the normalization of relations with Cuba, including 63 percent 
of Floridians who want to normalize relations with Cuba. I think we 
have had a policy of isolation for far too long. As this latest poll 
indicates, the American people think so too. After being in place for 
over 50 years, this embargo has not been effective in any way. Our 
policy has benefited neither the Cuban people nor the American people.
  Both the United States and Cuba have recently taken steps to allow 
for greater travel. It is a significant step forward. The Cuban 
Government has eliminated its long-standing policy of requiring an exit 
permit and a letter of invitation for Cubans to travel abroad. This 
change in policy has allowed for prominent dissidents and human rights 
activists to travel abroad from Cuba.
  Additionally, restrictions on remittances have been lifted. I think 
remittances now from Cuban-Americans and their families are now their 
second largest export or second to sugar.
  The United States and Cuba have resumed low-level talks on migration, 
search and rescue operations, and other issues. I might mention one 
other. When I was in Guantanamo a week or so ago, with a group led by 
Senator Tester, Captain Nettleton, who is the base commander, took me 
around the base. I had been stationed there, as I said, about 53 years 
ago, so I kind of wanted to see some of the old places. As he was 
driving me around, he took me up to the gate, and coming back I said: 
Do you ever have contact with Cubans? He said: Oh yes, we do. In fact, 
2 years ago the last of the Cubans retired from working at Guantanamo. 
They lived in Cuba but worked on Guantanamo just until 2 years ago.
  He told me that recently he went to visit the hospital in Guantanamo 
City. Now that is not on the map but it is right outside of Guantanamo 
Bay, our naval base. He went to visit the hospital there because they 
have a burn unit. They do not have a burn unit on Guantanamo at our 
facility. So they have made a handshake deal and an agreement that if 
we have burn victims on Guantanamo, we can take them to the hospital in 
Guantanamo City. Things like that are happening and are kind of opening 
the door, so we should build on these small but positive changes in the 
relationship.
  The United States should abandon its policy of seeking Cuba's 
isolation. We should lift all restrictions on travel to Cuba. What is 
our justification for denying Americans the right to travel to Cuba? We 
should allow for all U.S. citizens wishing to go to Cuba to do so. This 
would expose more Cubans to our young people, our ideas and 
interactions.

[[Page 3082]]

  When you go to Cuba you see a lot of Canadians, a lot of Europeans, 
and now Cuban-Americans can go to Cuba freely. If you are Cuban-
American you can get on one of about four to seven daily flights from 
Fort Lauderdale, Miami, and Key West to Cuba. If you are a U.S. citizen 
you can't get on one of those unless you have a permit from the U.S. 
Government. If you are a Cuban-American, you can get on the plane and 
go to Cuba and come back, and more and more are doing so. As of last 
year, I believe Americans are now the second largest group to visit 
Cuba, but they are all Cuban-Americans. We have this crazy policy. If 
you are Cuban-American you can go to Cuba, but if you are not, you 
can't. Someone please explain that one to me.
  It is time for us to chart a new course. Our relationship is frozen 
in a Cold War mentality that has not achieved its goals and made it 
difficult to move forward on issues that encourage more trade and 
travel between our two countries. Our policy also fails to promote more 
openness and respect for internationally recognized human rights.
  Multiple layers of sanctions remain in place, making it difficult for 
U.S. businesses to trade with Cuba. Both the Cuban people and U.S. 
national interests would benefit from a modernized and sensible policy. 
Now is not the time to be bound and held back by history. It is time to 
make new history. It is time to begin a new chapter in the relations of 
our two countries.
  I hope the Obama administration and the Cuban Government will seize 
this opportunity to do just that--to modernize, to move ahead, 
recognizing always and foremost that Cuba is a sovereign nation. They 
will not be dominated by America or any other country. We have to deal 
with them just as we do any other sovereign nation.


                               Guantanamo

  I will conclude by saying I had an opportunity on a trip with Senator 
Tester and two other Senators to visit the Guantanamo Bay detention 
center. We toured Camps 5 and 6, which house the majority of the 
detainees held at Guantanamo. We also had a tour of the facilities that 
hold high-value detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
  Based on my own observations on my tour of Guantanamo and reports I 
read about previous conditions, it does appear that detainees are being 
treated more humanely now than previously and that conditions at 
Guantanamo are in line with how the detainees would be treated if they 
were held in the United States.
  However, this trip reinforced my long-held conviction that the 
detention facility at Guantanamo should be closed as soon as possible. 
Its very existence--remote, offshore, not subject to the laws of the 
United States--makes it impossible to justify its existence. That is 
why I introduced a bill to close the facility as far back as 2007. That 
is why I continue to believe Federal courts and Federal prisons are 
fully capable of dealing with these detainees.
  The indefinite detention of hundreds of individuals--some for over 13 
years at this point--has harmed our image abroad, complicated relations 
with friendly countries, and I think really violates the basic 
principles of our Constitution. It is not acceptable. And the existence 
of this facility cannot be justified when there is an alternative--and 
there is.
  I am not alone in advocating for this prison's closure. Military and 
foreign policy officials across the political spectrum have made it 
clear that we must close the detention center at Guantanamo. Leaders 
including Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Madeline 
Albright, Warren Christopher, Robert Gates, David Petraeus, and CIA 
Director John Brennan have all said closing the detention center at 
Guantanamo is critical to our national security.
  Yet I have no illusions regarding these detainees. Some are extremely 
dangerous terrorists with the determination and the ability, if given 
the opportunity, to inflict great harm on the United States and its 
citizens. But, indeed, prisons in the United States are already holding 
many of the world's most dangerous terrorists--criminals who have been 
found guilty in a court of law. These include Ramzi Yousef, the 
mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; Zacarias Moussaoui, 
the 9/11 coconspiritor; and Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber. If we can 
successfully try these terrorists in courts and hold them in our 
prisons, we can do the same with the Guantanamo detainees.
  In closing, I think it is long past due that we reexamine our policy 
toward Cuba. I call upon the Obama administration to not waste any more 
time. Get to it. Let's change our policy. Let's start making new 
history and not be detained by the old history. Secondly, it is time 
that we close the prison in Guantanamo.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.

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