As my late father often said, it was really tough to run into so many people who did not understand the truth of Cuba and Castro.

Over the years, Fidel Castro always found someone to pull him out of the hole:

1) Batista pardoned him in 1955 after he was found guilty of the Moncada attack in 1953.  Most of the young men who participated in that attack were killed or turned against Castro when he sold his soul to the USSR.

2) He had the good fortune of running into Herbert Matthews of The New York Times.  He was in the mountains with fewer than 20 men and desperately looking for someone to write an article about him.  Matthews was able to make contact with Castro and put him on the front pages.  He got the kind of international attention he desperately wanted.

3) He survived several military engagements.

4) He survived CIA assassination attempts.

5) He was left in power after President Kennedy botched the Bay of Pigs.

6) He survived the Missile Crisis, even though the USSR would have been delighted to take him out of the island with the missiles.  The USSR hated him even more than President Kennedy, especially after he shot down a U.S. spy plane.

7) He benefited from international leftists who hated the U.S. so much that they were willing to believe every lie coming out of Cuba, from health care to education.  Not one of these lefties took the time to do a little research and learn that pre-Castro had an excellent private and public health care system.  And Cuba's literacy rates were among the highest in the Third World.

This was Cuba before Castro's policies destroyed it:

In the 1950's Cuba was, socially and economically, a relatively advanced country, certainly by Latin American standards and, in some areas, by world standards.

Cuba's infant mortality rate was the best in Latin America -- and the 13th lowest in the world.

Cuba also had an excellent educational system and impressive literacy rates in the 1950's.

Pre-Castro Cuba ranked third in Latin America in per capita food consumption.

Cuba ranked first in Latin America and fifth in the world in television sets per capita.

Pre-Castro Cuba had 58 daily newspapers of differing political hues and ranked eighth in the world in number of radio stations. 

Cuba's infant mortality rate of 32 per 1,000 live births in 1957 was the lowest in Latin America and the 13th lowest in the world, according to UN data. Cuba ranked ahead of France, Belgium, West Germany, Japan, Austria, Italy, and Spain.

In 1955, life expectancy in Cuba was among the highest at 63 years of age; compared to 52 in other Latin American countries, 43 in Asia, and 37 in Africa.

In terms of physicians and dentists per capita, Cuba in 1957 ranked third in Latin America, behind only Uruguay and Argentina -- both of which were more advanced than the United States in this measure. Cuba's 128 physicians and dentists per 100,000 people in 1957 was the same as the Netherlands, and ahead of the United Kingdom (122 per 100,000 people) and Finland.

Cuba has been among the most literate countries in Latin America since well before the Castro revolution, when it ranked fourth.

To be fair, Cuba had problems, and it was people like my parents who turned against Batista.  However, poverty, misery, and people leaving in rafts were not among them.

Well, it's over for Fidel Castro.  Maybe we can finally tell the truth about this man and what he did to Cuba and its people.

P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.