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Bay of Pigs Veterans Association Endorses Donald Trump
Townhall.com ^ | October 16, 2016 | Humberto Fontova

Posted on 10/17/2016 11:47:14 AM PDT by Kaslin

“Miami's veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion voted late Wednesday (Oct. 12) to endorse Donald Trump for president, the first endorsement in the organization's 55-year history.”

Fifty years before Benghazi we had the Bay of Pigs:

“Where are the planes?! Where is our ammo?! Send planes or we can’t last!”

The pleas came from Commander Jose San Roman as Soviet tanks, Soviet artillery and tens of thousands of Soviet led troops pounded the 1400 Cuban freedom-fighters he commanded on a bloody and heroic beachhead now known as the Bay of Pigs.

The same heartsick and enraged U.S. Navy men listening to these pleas had escorted these freedom–fighters to that beachhead. Their ships—including the aircraft carrier Essex groaning under a heavy load of deadly Skyhawk jets– sat just offshore.

“If things get rough,” radioed back the heartsick CIA man who helped train and had befriended them, “we can come in and evacuate you.”

“We will NOT be evacuated!” San Roman roared back to his friend Grayston Lynch, a multi-decorated WWII and Korea war hero. “We came here to fight! We don’t want evacuation! We want more ammo! We want the planes that were promised! This ends here!”

Camelot’s criminal idiocy as the U.S.-trained freedom-fighters battle savagely against outrageous odds finally brought Adm. Arleigh Burke of the Joints Chief of Staff, who was receiving the battlefield pleas, to the brink of mutiny. Years earlier, Adm. Burke sailed thousands of miles to smash his nation’s enemies at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Now he was Chief of Naval Operations and stood aghast as new enemies were being given a sanctuary 90 miles away!

The fighting admiral was livid. They say his face was beet red and his facial veins popping as he faced down his commander-in-chief that fateful night of April 18, 1961. “Mr. President, TWO planes from the Essex! That’s all those Cuban boys need, Mr. President! Let me order…!”

JFK was in white tails and a bow tie that evening, having just emerged from an elegant social gathering. “Burke,” he replied. “We can’t get involved in this.”

WE put those Cuban boys there, Mr. President!” The fighting admiral exploded. “By God, we ARE involved!”

Finally JFK relented and allowed some Skyhawk jets to take-off from the Essex. One of these pilots quickly spotted a long column of Castro’s Soviet tanks making for the freedom-fighters. The Soviet tanks and trucks were sitting ducks. "AHA!" he thought. "Now we'll turn this thing around!" The pilot started his dive...

"Permission to engage denied," came the answer from his commander.

"This is CRAZY!" he bellowed back. "Those guys are getting the hell shot out of them down there! I can SEE it!!" Turned out, JFK had allowed them to fly and look -- but not to shoot!

Some of these Navy pilots admit to sobbing openly in their cockpits. They were still choked up when they landed back on the Essex. Now they slammed their helmets on the deck, kicked the bulkheads and broke down completely.

"I wanted to resign from the Navy," said Capt. Robert Crutchfield, the decorated naval officer who commanded the destroyer fleet off the Bay of Pigs beachhead. He'd had to relay Washington's replies to those pilots.

A close-up glimpse of the heroism on that beachhead might have sent those Essex pilots right over the edge. As JFK adjusted his bow tie in the mirror and Jackie picked lint off his tux, the freedom-fighters of Brigada 2506 faced a few adjustments of their own. To quote Haynes Johnson, "It was a battle when heroes were made." And how!

We call them "men," but Brigadista Felipe Rondon was 16 years old when he grabbed his 57 mm cannon and ran to face one of Castro's Soviet tanks point-blank. At 10 yards he fired at the clanking, lumbering tank and it exploded, but the momentum kept it going and it rolled over little Felipe.

Gilberto Hernandez was 17 when a round from a Czech burp gun put out his eye. Castro troops were swarming in but he held his ground, firing furiously with his recoilless rifle for another hour until the Reds finally surrounded him and killed him with a shower of grenades.

By then the invaders sensed they'd been abandoned. Ammo was almost gone. Two days of shooting and reloading without sleep, food or water was taking its toll. Many were hallucinating. That's when Castro's unmolested Soviet Howitzers opened up, huge 122 mm ones, four batteries' worth. They pounded 2,000 rounds into the Brigada's ranks over a four-hour period. "It sounded like the end of the world," one recalled year later to your humble servant here.

"Rommel's crack Afrika Corps broke and ran under a similar bombardment," wrote Haynes Johnson. By now the invaders were dazed, delirious with fatigue, thirst and hunger, too deafened by the bombardment to even hear orders. So their commander had to scream.

"NO RETREAT!" stood and bellowed company commander Maximo Cruz to his dazed and horribly outnumbered men. "We stand and fight!" And so they did.

These things went on for three days—until the inevitable “defeat” after the freedom-fighters had spent their very last bullets.

When the smoke cleared and their ammo had been expended to the very last bullet, when a hundred of them lay dead and hundreds more wounded, after three days of relentless battle, barely 1,400 of them — without air support (from the U.S. Carriers just offshore) and without a single supporting shot by naval artillery (from U.S. cruisers and destroyers poised just offshore) — had squared off against 21,000 Castro troops, his entire air force and squadrons of Soviet tanks. The Cuban freedom-fighters inflicted over 3000 casualties on their Soviet-armed and led enemies. This feat of arms still amazes professional military men.

“They fought magnificently and were not defeated,” stressed Marine Col. Jack Hawkins a multi-decorated WWII and Korea vet who helped train them. “They were abandoned on the beach without the supplies and support promised by their sponsor, the Government of the United States.”

Maybe it’s an odd coincidence that such men are endorsing Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton?


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: veterans

1 posted on 10/17/2016 11:47:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin
Kudos to those who made this stand, then and now.

To them I dedicate...


2 posted on 10/17/2016 11:57:26 AM PDT by DoughtyOne (22 days: Until Presdient Pre-elect becomes President Elect Donald J. Trump. Help is on the way!)
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To: DoughtyOne

This changes forever how and what I think of JFK.


3 posted on 10/17/2016 12:00:59 PM PDT by IC Ken
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To: DoughtyOne

JFK’s weasely ways caught up with him in Dallas a couple of years later.


4 posted on 10/17/2016 12:09:23 PM PDT by fireman15 (The USA will be toast if the Democrats are able to take the Presidency in 2016)
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To: Kaslin

“This is CRAZY!” he bellowed back. “Those guys are getting the hell shot out of them down there! I can SEE it!!” Turned out, JFK had allowed them to fly and look — but not to shoot!

Some of these Navy pilots admit to sobbing openly in their cockpits. They were still choked up when they landed back on the Essex. Now they slammed their helmets on the deck, kicked the bulkheads and broke down completely.”

Another prime example of how left wing rat Presidents hand tie our military to allow murdering pipsqueak dictators to live and kill innocents.

Truman in Korea, when he relieved MacArthur, who was ready to destroy N Korea. Now we are faced with an insane NK leader with nuclear weapons and rockets to carry them.

Kennedy/LBJ allowing the Castro thugs and their serial killer Che to live and kill thousands of innocents in S. America and ?.

LBJ in Nam, not allowing us to destroy the North Viet Communists and the cities they lived in. Thousands of our brave men were killed in their prime or seriously wounded and crippled for the rest of their lives. Thousands of our S Nam allies had to flee Nam with their families to escape being slaughtered after we left them.

BushCo taking out Saddam instead of the Saudi’s, who financed Ben Laden and enabled his jihadists to kill over 2000 innocents on 9/11. Bushco thugs are the same as Democrats in getting us involved in long wars, killing and wounding Americans with no victory or the really bad guys.

Obama/Clinton for killing Gaddafi and setting up a the Arab spring. Obama/Clinton/Kerry trying to kill the wrong people in Syria while enabling Isis to seize our weapons and control of many areas in the middle east.

Obama/Jarrett, Clinton and Kerry trying to kill Assad in Syria when he was never a threat to America. Now they are threatening a war with Russia with their lies and treason. This has resulted in the slaughter of Christians in and around Syria, and an out of control flow of people trying to escape or go to another country to commit more jihad terror and killings.

Obama/Jarrett/Comey/Lynch/Holder ignoring and hiding the terrible attacks by Islamic terrorists on innocent Americans from Boston to San Bernardino, Orlando and ???.

Now they want us to elect Killer Clinton, who will make the above criminals/traitors look like miniature traitors.


5 posted on 10/17/2016 12:22:06 PM PDT by Grampa Dave (We are not electing a saint. We are electing an ass kicker! Vote for Trump! Defeat Illiarily!)
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To: Kaslin

I don’t think Cuban exiles will ever forgive JFK for the Bay of Pigs betrayal.


6 posted on 10/17/2016 12:41:56 PM PDT by Ebenezer (Strength and Honor!)
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To: IC Ken

Well, he stands to be judged as is appropriate.

He was not a great president. I think he has always gotten the Liberal press treatment of him. The whole Camelot scenario tipped their hand. The idolization of Jackie as if some sophisticated aristocrat was another flight of fantasy.

I don’t say this out of full contempt for either of them. It’s just what I think the historic record reveals.

Kennedy acted terribly in the Bay of Pigs incident. To his credit, he owned up to it. Standing up to the Russian over the Cuban missiles was also a mixed bag. I think he gets more credit than he deserved there, but just about anyone would. It wasn’t an easy situation to remedy.

His screwing around on his wife was probably second only to Bill Clinton, and honestly, Clinton’s brush with Kennedy when he was young, may have set him on the same lifetime goal of “bagging” as many women as he could despite being married. Kennedy deserve severe ridicule there.

There he was cheating on Jacqueline and the kids with any woman he could get, including an Eastern Block spy. He was on enough medication to loop a horse. He wasn’t abusing it to my knowledge as he had a bad back and quite a bit of pain, but they were major medications. The public was never informed. And it calls to question his status during important times.

It has always bothered me that his life was cut short the way it was. I don’t even want to see Bill, Hillary, or Obama assassinated. That’s no way to handle the problems they represent. Our system of government checks and balances should do the trick. If it doesn’t, then our system has failed to a degree.

At any rate, Kennedy wasn’t as good as some presidents and he wasn’t as bad as others. By today’s standards he was decent in some ways too.

I do not attempt to play down the Bay of Pigs. It was a major failure on his part. There’s no denying it.

I think pressure was brought to bare on him by the CIA to do something about Cuba. It wasn’t his plan. He wasn’t the driving force behind it, and he should not have given the go on it.

Once he did, he should have followed through. The decision should have been made with that in mind.

I do think Kennedy’s one amazing foresight, was tasking us with traveling to the Moon. I believe it jump started a lot of technological advances. Some people do not agree with this.

What goals does our nation have today. I can’t think of one. If we had a shared goal that would capture the imagination of the nation, it would help pull us together.

It did in some ways back then. When men stood on the moon, it wasn’t just U. S. Citizens that were united, the whole planet was one with us.

We need that again. To his credit, Kennedy did that in his day.


7 posted on 10/17/2016 2:05:40 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (22 days: Until Presdient Pre-elect becomes President Elect Donald J. Trump. Help is on the way!)
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To: fireman15

Yes..., they did.

You might want to check this out also. It’s my comments on Kennedy for better or worse.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3481596/posts?page=7#7


8 posted on 10/17/2016 2:09:39 PM PDT by DoughtyOne (22 days: Until Presdient Pre-elect becomes President Elect Donald J. Trump. Help is on the way!)
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