Posted on 12/23/2014 8:05:33 PM PST by Steelfish
Bay of Pigs Survivors On US-Cuba Thaw: 'Two American Presidents Betrayed Us'
Richard Luscombe 23 December 2014.
It was presented to the world as a tearing down of barriers, a historic moment of reconciliation between the United States and Cuba’s communist government after half a century of hostility. But inside a small villa a stone’s throw from Calle Ocho in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana neighbourhood the talk is only of one word – betrayal.
The house is the Bay of Pigs museum and library where the ageing survivors of Brigade 2506, the CIA-trained fighting unit that failed to topple Fidel Castro in an ill-fated – and many say ill-advised – 1961 invasion, gather to discuss the affairs of their homeland.
More than five decades after the three-day conflict, which resulted in almost 120 of the invaders dying and 1,200 captured by Castro’s forces when the United States failed to deliver promised air support, the veterans are no longer the youthful and idealistic alliance of students, lawyers, bankers, former Cuban army soldiers and assorted others they once were.
At the last count, fewer than 900 were still alive, most now in their 70s and 80s. But while age may have slowed them physically, there remains much fire in their hardline opposition to the Marxist revolutionaries still running Cuba. And now, after last week’s extraordinary deal between the US president, Barack Obama, and the Cuban leader, Raúl Castro, Fidel’s brother, there is plenty of sadness too.
“The brigade members have been betrayed twice, once in April 1961, and now in December 2014,” said Julio González-Rebull, 78, who flew combat and resupply missions aboard a B-26 bomber from the assault team’s base in Guatemala during the failed invasion.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
And both of those Presidents were Democrats.
‘Two American Presidents Betrayed Us’
Yep, both Democrats.
Add Carter and Clinton.
Bookends, JFK and Obama.
Reagan described JFK as “One last thought,— shouldn’t some one tag Mr. Kennedy’s bold new imaginative program with it’s proper age? Under the tousled boyish hair cut it is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a Govt. being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his “State Socialism” and way before him it was “benevolent monarchy.”
I know one of these guys.
He was a coworker of mine for 15 years, but he is retired now.
He would turn his head to the side and spit whenever he said “Kennedy”.
To the cheering section and Obama's amen corner: If you think that this move by the occupier of the white House will be good for America, you are in for a rude awakening. If it was good for America, he would not have done it.
I find it really difficult to get worked up over Cuba. What threat does Cuba now pose to the U.S.?
Viva La Heróica Brigada 2506!!!
Mainly crowing grounds for a couple of old communists. Who still might stab the US in the back.
Stab us in the back with what? A cigar? Seriously. It seems that a few thousand displaced Cubans in FL run our foreign policy regarding Cuba. Those people left decades ago and they act like they still live there. If they miss it so much why don’t they go back and fight there? Why does this nation bend over backwards for what amounts to a couple of thousand foreigners?
If forgiving and forgetting would make things better for the Cuban people it would probably be a good idea.
But those old communists have not said they have given up their hatred for things capitalist.
Democrats are great for doing that - they did it in Vietnam, with the Church committee which all but destroyed our foreign intelligence network, with Iraq and out attempts to maintain a footprint in that part of the world. and now again in Cuba - it’s what they do.....
Weren’t they requesting air support and were denied during the invasion, Kennedy giving them up?
I seem to remember a movie that starts with this story.
“Who ignore history is damned to repeat it.” George Santayana.
JFK’s “dreary account of mismanagement, timidity and indecision” as Eisenhower described his handling of the Bay of Pigs invasion emboldened the Soviets to install Nuclear missiles in Cuba the following year.
Khrushchev documents in his memoirs how Castro pleaded with him to launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the U.S. in October of 1962. The telegram making the plea sits in the Kennedy Library today. Some think Khrushchev’s fear of Castro’s officers somehow getting hold of the Nuclear buttons was a bigger factor in his decision to remove the Missiles than the “blockade” (in fact, 55 ships breached it) imposed by the Kennedy administration around Cuba at the time.
The prudence of Khrushchev’s decision was revealed the following month by Castro’s second- in - command, Che Guevara. “If the missiles had remained,” he told The London Daily Worker in November 1962 “We would have used them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. We must never establish peaceful co-existence. In this struggle to the death between 2 systems we must gain the ultimate victory. We must walk the path of liberation even if it costs millions of atomic victims.”
He didn’t get his hands on the missiles but Castro emerged the big winner of the Missile Crisis. “Many concessions were made by the Americans about which not a word has been said...perhaps one day they’ll be made public,” said Fidel Castro in a speech in 1966.
“We can’t say anything public about this agreement. It would be too much of a political embarrassment for us.” That’s Robert F Kennedy to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in October of 1962.
The Cuban regime tried to obliterate New York and Washington with a nuclear attack during the October Missile Crisis of 1962. “In November 1962, the Castro brothers’ and Che Guevara’s agents had targeted Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The Holocaust was set for detonation the following week, on the day after Thanksgiving.” (Humberto Fontova)
Castro has been a strong ally of Islamic terrorism. Cuba continues to serve as a base for coordination and mutual support among transnational terrorist organizations. At Tehran University he stated to the thunderous applause of students and faculty, “The imperialist king will finally fall,” (AFP, May 10, 2001). Immediately afterward the Iranian Press Service proudly proclaimed that “Iran and Cuba reached the conclusion that together they can tear down the United States.” (IPS, May 10, 2001).
According to World renown and highly respected American investigative journalist and author, Claire Sterling, : “All of the world’s emerging terrorist bands in the 1970’s were indebted to the Cubans and their Russian patrons for that honeycomb of camps around Havana. None could have started without rudimentary training, and those who didn’t train in Cuba were trained by others who did.” (“The Terror Network, The Secret War on International Terrorism.”)
As reported by Sterling, “Castro was training the advance guards of the coming European fright decade – Palestinians, Italians, Germans, French, Spanish Basques – and forming guerrilla nuclei in practically every Western hemisphere state south of the American border. As far back as 1962, Castro’s camps were taking in 1,500 Latin American guerrillas a year. . ‘Any revolutionary movement anywhere in the world can count on Cuba’s unconditional support,’ declared Castro at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana”. It was then and there that the international terrorism network was consolidated under Castro’s leadership.”
Fidel Castro “jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror. He murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six. He came closer than anyone in history to starting a world-wide nuclear war.” Humberto Fontova. (http://www.carolinajournal.com/opinions/display_story.html?id=11121)
It is suicidal turning a blind eye to Castro, a deadly enemy at 90 miles south of Key West that does not hide his hatred for U.S.
After the restoration of diplomatic relations comes the end of the embargo.
To complete Obama’s betrayal of the American people, with the normalization of relations comes the opening to Cuba of the American and International bank credits that will sustain the Cuban regimen passing to the American taxpayers the same heavy burden that helped to bankrupt the Soviet Union.
Don’t fool yourself, the hatred of the Cuban Stalinist regime towards U.S. remains the same today as 50 years ago, and Cuba was and remain a threat to the security of United. There is a Chinese spy base 50 miles of Havana and a Russian spy station in Havana outskirts. Both capable of listening or US. communications and cyber warfare.
The threat is much worse than you think. It is that of a language of American Oligarche making deals with communist states and actors. This language is then applied in US courts against US citizens and favoring illegals, in particular.
Hiroshima survived the nukes and now is a big successful city, Detroit not so much. This is what the communist language does, it destroys and keeps it destroyed.
So then Obama has it right on Cuba?
As for the Chinese spying I'm sure they have spies right here on our soil.
Being afraid of Cuba - calling them a threat - just does not make sense in this day and age.
I agree they Castros should be destroyed but how do they still strike fear in the American psyche? What justifies the seeming kow towing of the American govt to the former Cubans in Florida? I really don't get it. Is it the money they have?
Nice try. I said I can't get worked up about Cuba. Maybe you should try to explain what threat Cuba is to the U.S. today instead of trying to lay a verbal trap.
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