Quote Of The Day: Castro's Fate

"Nobody knows anything. I was just at a meeting with a Cuban-American group, and every five minutes somebody's cell would ring. 'Do you know anything?' They want to pop the cork on the champagne."

That's Tamara Lush, the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times' Miami reporter, quoted in The WashTimes. The article continues:

"Especially with authoritarian leaders, there is great effort to conceal any illness," said Jerrold Post, a George Washington University professor who has written extensively on totalitarianism.

Such secrecy was commonplace in the Soviet Union, said [Stalin biographer Robert] Conquest, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "Before [Mikhail] Gorbachev, when [Soviet leader Leonid] Brezhnev fell ill, they kept it a secret."

In fragile political systems such as Russia and Cuba, Mr. Conquest added, "You've got a machine. When one of the plugs is pulled out, it doesn't work the same way."

Note to Fidel's doctors: Pull the plug.

Related Tags: Cuba, Castro, Totalitarianism