Shortly after hearing a snippet of the chatter during a fund-raising campaign by my local NPR station in which it was asserted that NPR listeners appreciated that they were getting the full story instead of just headlines and soundbites, I heard a report about the latest developments in US-Cuba relations: Cuban President Raul Castro's assertion that diplomatic relations would not be possible until the US returned Guantanamo Bay, site of a huge US naval base and of the 13-year-old internment and torture center for captives in the US "War on Terror," and until the US paid Cuba reparations for the half-century embargo and blockade of Cuba.

In that report, it was stated as fact that the US base was "leased" from Cuba on a permanent basis, as a result of an "agreement" between the two governments of Cuba and the US.