Unhinged Quote of the Day: Charles Rangel on Castro, Cuba, Gitmo

This goes back a few days, but deserves a response with some links.

Neil Cavuto of Fox News interviewed Rangel (HT AmSpec blog), and Rangel treated us to this whopper:

CAVUTO: Well, are you saying you’re for Castro?
RANGEL: No. I want a democratic change. But I don’t believe dancing in the street and spreading out money in Havana and in Miami is the a way to do it.
CAVUTO: Charlie, this guy killed a lot of people.
RANGEL: Well, I wonder how many people we killed at Guantanamo. I mean, we don’t have the human rights record.
CAVUTO: Well, wait — wait a minute. Are you equating Fidel Castro with what’s happening at Guantanamo?
RANGEL: You bet your life, if we’re — if we are talking about human rights.

The Cuba Archive would beg to disagree:

Many prison deaths are officially marked as “heart attacks,” but witnesses tell another story. The project has documented 2,199 prison deaths, mostly political prisoners.

I would suggest that, given the constraints and government pressure they must endure, the Archive’s estimate is very, very low.

Perhaps we could get another unhinged statement out of Mr. Rangel by having him explain why military preparedness has stepped up sharply in Cuba since Castro fell ill. The truth is that it is while they fear invasion from without (which in a better world would, by the way, be the first and best thing that could EVER happen), they also worry about it happening from within (HT Babula Blog):

But Cuba’s efforts appear designed as much to prevent internal unrest as to defend the communist island from the Yanquis.