- SANTA CLARA, Cuba
(Reuters) -- Cuban leader Fidel Castro questioned President Bush's mental
fitness on Monday and rejected as "lies and slanders" recent
charges by the American that Cuba encourages sex tourism.
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- Addressing the nation on the anniversary of his initial
guerrilla uprising 51 years ago, Castro portrayed Bush as a dangerous religious
fundamentalist bent on destroying Cuban socialism. He accused Bush of exhibiting
"strange behavior and bellicosity."
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- "Let's hope, in Cuba's case, God does not instruct
Mr. Bush to attack our country," Castro said. "He had better
check on any divine belligerent order by consulting the Pope."
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- In a speech in Tampa on July 16, Bush had accused Castro
of welcoming sex tourism, as he courted Cuban-American voters in Florida,
a pivotal state in November's election.
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- Havana strongly denies tolerating sex tourism.
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- Castro said the accusations were aimed at justifying
steps by the Bush administration last month to restrict visits and cash
remittances from Cubans in the United States.
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- "Mr. Bush's lies and slanders and those of his closest
advisors were fabricated in a hurry to justify the savage measures taken
against Cuban-born people living in the United States who have close family
ties in Cuba," Castro said.
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- Castro quoted extensively from a recent book "Bush
on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," by Dr. Justin Frank,
a Washington psychoanalyst and a Democrat.
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- The book labels Bush as a "dry-drunk" whose
abstinence and strict Christian beliefs make him a rigid leader with paranoid
tendencies and a simplistic worldview.
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- Bush, who gave up drinking in 1986, has acknowledged
that he "used to drink too much" but said he did not believe
he was addicted.
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- Castro also quoted from other recent books critical of
Bush, including Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men" and "Against
All Enemies," by former counterterrorism official Richard Clarke.
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- The references "help to explain the strange behavior
and bellicosity of the U.S. president," Castro said.
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- Cuba's communist government was born of a revolution
against a corrupt U.S.-backed dictatorship that allowed Mafia-run gaming
and prostitution to thrive in Havana in the 1950's. Prostitution was banned,
but returned during the severe economic crisis Cuba has undergone since
the collapse of Soviet communism.
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- Castro, who will be 78 on August 13, looked cheerful
in his trademark olive-green military fatigues as he handed out awards
for revolutionary excellence before his speech at a university theater
in Santa Clara, 176 miles east of Havana.
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