>The US only embargoes Cuba because
>they wouldn't provide any significant
>economic gain to the US
>economy

true.

>(i.e. they have no
>resources American corporations can't take
>from other places).

actually, the reason is that Cuba is socialized aka (that dirty word) Communist. This means that the people aren't starving and therefore are not willing to accept sweatshop wages like any "good" Latin American country.

When Castro took control of Cuba in 1959 the US flipped out. Similar revolutions were bound to happen all over Latin America, so Kennedy started the Alliance for Progress which included founding the School of the Americas... this is where today's militant dictators all over Latin America were trained in how to prevent revolution... to keep the people poor and disempowered to benefit local elites and foreign (meaning US) businesses.

For example, the US has done plenty business with Guatemala whose gov't randomly massacred 150,000 indigenous people in the early '80's in reaction to leftist organization and disapproval of the gov't's policies which drove more and more people into poverty.

> They
>would not help the huge
>trade imbalance

the US is the biggest trade imbalancer of them all, so why would it bother the US if Cuba was too? Nah, you got it backwards. Cuba is socialist. Their trade is far more balanced than most countries. Castro has some effed up policies, but as far as trade and distribution of wealth, he's got good ideas. He was a great revolutionary, but not a great president.

>and they were
>an enemy during the cold
>war.

because they're Communist. The trade embargo against Cuba had Cuba unable to trade with virtually the entire western hemisphere. So they had no choice but to deal with the Soviet Union. Cuba was basically a dependent of the USSR. Cuba had Soviet missiles pointed at the US. That's why they were an enemy during the cold war.

> Hell look to
>China and see how economics
>is more important than ideology
>for American business.
>
>Simple math: 1.2 billion potential customers
>is far more than 11.1
>million

it's true that economics are more important to business than ideology, but don't think population has anything to do with the embargo. That's silly. The embargo is the US waving its dick at the world saying "don't be communist or this is what happens". The reason there's no embargo against China is that China provides us with cheap sweatshop labor and some of the cheapest in the world. Cuba does not, and would refuse to. Yes, Cuba and China are both considered "communist" but China does not behave like it so it's okay.

"I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal labotamy." -- a psychotic drunkard