Cuba

From RationalWiki

Invasion instructions: print off. Throw darts at printed version. Land disgruntled Cuban exiles where darts landed. Pretend it was nothing to do with the government when it all goes pear shaped.

Cuba is a poor island nation in the Caribbean.

Originally a Spanish colony, Cuba was "liberated" by the United States in 1898 at the conclusion of the Spanish-American war. It was then controlled for a good many years by US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Since 1959 it has been run by the Communist Party, and the head of state for almost fifty years was revolutionary leader Fidel Castro,^[1] despite assassination attempts by the CIA too numerous to count. Until the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba was the USSR's major Western Hemisphere ally.

Located ninety miles off the coast of Florida, Cuba poses a grave threat to U.S. sovereignty. Or tourist dollars, anyway -- though the US maintains a trade blockade against Cuba, it is honored by almost no one else in the world, making Cuba a popular destination for European tourists who want to go somewhere that isn't overrun by Americans.

While the nation has very limited political freedom (press, speech, dissent, etc. are all restricted), it does offer universal health care to its citizens. With the exception of people who try to exercise political freedoms, of course.

The United States still has a lease on a chunk of land at Guantanamo Bay where it operates a Naval base and prison for "enemy combatants".

Cuban cigars are excellent and can be legally bought in such bastions of freedom as North Korea, Switzerland, Libya, the Cayman Islands, Belarus, and Liechtenstein, but not in the United States.

If you've ever wanted to buy a classic car on the cheap, or just wanted to get a test spin in the "new" Packard, Cuba is the place to go. Somehow, some way, desperate Cubans have made US cars from the 1950s still drivable.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ On February 24, 2008 his brother Raúl Castro was "elected" as the new President.