U S INVASION OF GRENADA 75 stooge" in the region, also had the harshest words for the murder of Bishop. Manley, whose own party is a member of the Socialist International (not the Communist International as many would have us believe), called for the expulsion of the New Jewel Movement (also a member) from the Socialist International. It is possible now, given the passage of some time, to see even more clearly the vacuity of the many arguments and justifications put forward by the U S. First, the estimates of 11,000 Cubans put forward by the U S turns out to be an exaggeration. The "combat engineer" force turns out to be exactly the number stated by President Castro on October 25, 1983—750. They also turned out to be middle-aged civilian construction workers, not lean and hardy combatants. They, like most Cubans, knew how to use small arms but were incapable of offering any but the most token resistance which, of course, they perfectly legitimately did. In fact, there were probably more Americans—-students tourists and pensioners—on the island than Cubans. The military aresnal "discovered" consisted of two or three warehouses, not quite full, containing somewhat antiquated small arms, hardly the stuff from which any threat to the region could have emanated The most damaging misrepresentation was with regard to Point Salinas airport. It had, in fact, a 9,000-foot runway instead of the 10,000-12,000-foot one claimed by the US. It had not been disigned by the Soviets or the Cubans but by Plessy Airports, a British company, which was also the general contractor and worked with several subcontractors among whom figured one American company. The Financial Times of London pointed out in its October 31, 1983, issue that Plessy had categorically declared that it was involved in a civilian project and that the ariport did not have the specially hardened runway and other facilities which a military airport would require. Equally significant is the fact that there has been an all-round in-house condemnation of American intelligence services with regard to Grenada. U S military and civilian leaders acknowledge that they did not even have the most basic intelligence on the island. Intelligence agencies have sought to explain this by pointing to the cutbacks they had been compelled to make in the "liberal" 1970's. But surely as an important point of Soviet/Cuban intervention is claimed, Grenada would have "merited" some attention from the intelligence services, especially since there were, as we have pointed out, around 1,000 Americans on the island and since tourist traffic from the U S was unimpeded till the chain of events in October 1983 that began with Bishop's overthrow. We must thus see the Grenada action as one arising out of the inner compulsions of the Reagan Administration and not out of external causes. The issue of American lives becomes thus not a cause but the occasion for Reagan's decision The presence of Americans on the island was