About a week ago, I stated rather matter-of-factly that Castro likely had colon cancer which had metastisized and probably affected other organs (the liver?).

Now apparently I find that some medical doctors agree with my diagnosis...(via Polipundit)

"(Castro) will be in bed for several weeks."

Although Cuban medicine is generally not considered to be of the same quality as American medicine, it is considered advanced for a Third-World country. Cuban surgeons probably know that bed rest after surgery is now frowned upon. The current trend in post-operative care is to ambulate patients as soon as possible. In the biggest abdominal operations done on patients (liver transplants, pancreas resections, aneurysm repairs) every effort is made to get people out of bed in the first day or two. So, it is hard to imagine what surgery would keep Castro in bed for several weeks if he was not at a terminal stage of his life.

There is something suspicious going on here. If Castro had some non-life threatening condition, why would the authorities not simply say that he had a perforated peptic ulcer which was successfully repaired and that the recovery time would be a week?

My guess - Castro has widely metastatic colon cancer and will be dead in the next several weeks without ever regaining control of the country.

So how did I know?

Sad personal experience.

The rather rapid decline of Castro and his planned for incapacitation sounded exactly like what occured to my father, who from the time he realized there might be something wrong to surgery was only four months, and whose death occured only 2 months later. The cancer creates an intestinal blockage which signals you that something is wrong, but by that time, you've already had the cancer for sometime. Once it gets in the liver, its unbelievably debilitating--which would account for the extended bed rest--the afflicted have almost no energy to do much besides breathing.

You might think that a head of state would be subjected to a regular regimen of colonoscopy exams. President Bush's recent health exam certainly included one. I suggest that it may well be a cultural and generational aversion to such "invasive" exams.

Castro could be dead in a couple of months or possibly last out the year, but while there are treatments that could possible extend his life by a few months, they can't do much but prolong the inevitable.

Castro's death is a moot point now. What really matters now is the future of Cuba.

Cuba is not an "imminent threat", but it is an imminent opportunity, much like the situation in North Korea. The media is reporting, in their own self-interest, that N.K. is this big threat, but the fact is that our strategy there is to hasten and manage their inevitable collapse in the context of the larger dynamics of the region.

Cuba merits the same kind of close attention. The larger dynamics of the Latin American region concerns the ambitions of the Chavez regime, of which Cuba plays an integral part. Chavez has a wonderful opportunity to make Cuba a client state. Will the U.S. stand idly by?

I would hope not.

Somebody should be heading over to Southcom to get some interviews...