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Remember that time the U.S. government actually wanted illegal aliens in this country? That time was 1999 and that illegal alien was six-year-old Elian Gonzalez who has just turned 18 and might we say, is as smokin’ as a Cuban cigar.

Elian washed up on the shore of Florida on Thanksgiving Day 1999 after a perilous raft journey left his mother and fellow refugees dead. What followed was an international custody battle between Elian’s Cuban father, who argued that his son was taken without his permission; the boy’s Miami relatives, who refused to let him go back; and the media of both countries, which used the opportunity to bring tensions between the two governments to near Cold War-levels.

Eventually, both the U.S. and Cuba agreed that Gonzalez should go back to his country and to his father. Cut to an American soldier shoving a rifle in his face and ripping him out of a closet, and 12 years later he’s none the worse for it. I’m sure the whole ordeal left no psychological scars even though Gonzalez is now studying at a Cuban military academy. But before you jump to any conclusions, it’s Cuba — everyone studies at a military academy. [MSN]