Cuban President Fidel Castro retires?

I watch this in the news last night and read about it in yahoonews again... well his retirement is long overdue... and i think he wasn't the one controllin cuban for quite sometime now... his brother acted like his regent... but then there were still less improvement in the lives of cubans... I hope this change in the person holding the real power will bring about reforms... Cuba is a very beautiful country... rich in natural resources and culture... and most of it wasted because of the idealism of one man... let's hope for the best for this country... Fidel Castro has all my respect... he is a great man... but times have changed...

I read Fidel Castro's resignation letter at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/19/castro.letter/index.html I find it kind of hard to swallow the terminologies "President" and "Prime Minister" and the part that says "For many years I have occupied the honorable position of President. On February 15, 1976 the Socialist Constitution was approved with the free, direct and secret vote of over 95% of the people with the right to cast a vote. The first National Assembly was established on December 2nd that same year; this elected the State Council and its presidency. Before that, I had been a Prime Minister for almost 18 years. I always had the necessary prerogatives to carry forward the revolutionary work with the support of the overwhelming majority of the people." It makes the whole thing sound like Cuba is supposedly a free and fair country to it's people. That is not what my education taught me, but maybe I am thinking in old fashioned terms. I recall hearing words like "dictatorship" and "communism" in relation to this country while I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. Am I being ignorant? As far as how the US will handle this, I am sure they will think they need to stick their nose into Cuban politics to teach the people about "democracy" and "freedom". I will be interested to see how they make their presence known, no doubt masking it with gifts of "The real thing-cola" and bubblegum for the children. It will be interesting to see if the new US president will take steps toward using military to "guide" the Cuban citizens into a new form of government... it won't surprise me if that happens, especially if the Republicans keep the White House. I personally think the US is sick of the Republicans so there won't be much danger of that happening. Even so, I cannot see the US being totally "hands off" in the birth of Cuba's new era of life without Castro.