and all those prisoner releases, those were the transactional details today. the u.s. cut off diplomatic relations with cuba in 1961. today our diplomatic relations were restored by order of the president of the united states. the united states will now move to open an embassy in cuba for the first time since the eisenhower administration, cuba will open an embassy here. travel restrictions will be somewhat relaxed. cuban americans will be able to send more money home. our government and the cuban government will start talking about a host of diplomatic issues. for more than 50 years the united states has been trying to bring about regime change in cuba with this weird unilateral isolation policy that we dreamed up. we isolated them diplomatically from us even though the rest of the world didn t. we isolated them economically from us with the superstrict
it seems preposterous, it seems extraordinary that none of these countries have no automatic way of checking if people are traveling with stolen passports against the interpol list. how difficult is it to set up a system like that? i don t think it s that hard given the fact that interpol has made this database very available. and here in the united states, we use it extensively to do these passport checks. but you have to look at the rest of the world. because even though, even after 9/11, we tightened up all of our terroristic type surveillance and security protocols here, but the rest of the world didn t really adopt that level of stringent protocols that we ve done here. and you also have to look back, we had a couple event notice past, we had the underwear bomber, we had the shoe bomber. you know, you have to look at
passports, it would seem that interpoll has a database of all stolen passports that a billion people, i think, have travelled in the last year alone without any check being made against that list. it seems preposterous, it seems extraordinary that none of these countries have no automatic way of checking if people are traveling with stolen passports against the interpol list. how difficult is it to set up a system like that? i don t think it s that hard given the fact that interpol has made this database very available. and here in the united states, we use it extensively to do these passport checks. but you have to look at the rest of the world. because even though, even after 9/11, we tightened up all of our terroristic type surveillance and security protocols here, but the rest of the world didn t really adopt that level of stringent protocols that we ve done here.
doing stability operations anymore. you guys didn t get the memo. chuck todd. i don t know if ethical is the right word to use, but the pandora s box that may have been opened, the two, the most gripping account of i think in your book, and this is this has been a fascinating read, congratulations. has to do with iran. and the idea, and frankly, when you look at drones plus cyber warfare, okay, we re going to be the best at it now, but what if we introduced what kind of 25 years from now, are we going to regret introducing this technology into warfare? chuck, a great question. we are at the place right now where the united states roughly was for the five or six years after we first dropped the nuclear bomb on hiroshima and nagasa nagasaki, where we had the nuclear bomb, the rest of the world didn t, but we knew it was
against islam. let s not go that direction. i m not sure he did enough, the rest of the world didn t see it that way, in terms of america s crusade against iraq, but nevertheless he tried. there s a good reason not to say islamist, extreme radical jihadists, there s lots of names to call it. the problem with the book why do they want to say islam, rudy giuliani wants to turn it into a police case, islam fascist, why do they have to do a religious they think out of this. they believe crusading is good politics. it s a way to rally the troops, so to speak. it covers up, a distraction from everything they have gotten wrong. this book should be called known and unknown and made up. again and again he is rewriting the history of the iraq war. don t they know india has millions and tens of millions of islamic people. europe has tens of millions of islamic people, bosnia, indonesia, a billion islamic