I know something that all you bitter rural folks don't know...
Posted on 04/15/2008 3:20:52 PM PDT by slickeroo
Former JFK Speechwriter Joins Obama
Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:09 AM
JFK called Ted Sorensen his "intellectual blood-bank." No presidential speechwriter has ever earned such a tribute. Now the 80-year-old Sorensen has jumped aboard the Obama campaign as an enthusiastic adviser.
"Senator Obama is the one candidate who can restore America's moral authority and regain the respect essential to our security," he recently declared. "Both JFK and Obama were cerebral rather than emotional speakers, relying on the communication of values and hope rather than cheap applause lines."
"The Republicans have allowed a communist dictatorship to flourish eight jet minutes from our borders," started one such cerebral speech by JFK. "We must support anti-Castro fighters. So far these freedom fighters have received no help from our government." The date was October 1960, during a bitter presidential campaign, prime time to "communicate values and hope," also known as "talking the talk."
Four months later, on April 16 1961, 1,400 of those very Cuban freedom-fighters that "we must support" were slugging it out with 51,000 Castro troops, squadrons of Stalin tanks and his entire air force at a beachhead now known as the Bay of Pigs.
JFK was no longer a candidate. He was now commander in chief, one who vowed: "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty," another soul-stirring pledge authored by Ted Sorensen. The applause lines from the inaugural speech had long faded and it was time for the knights of Camelot to "walk the walk."
JFK had already done a bit of "walking" by forcing the CIA and military planners to change the landing site for the Cuban invasion. Then by holding up his approval of an invasion a year in the making till 24 hours before the planned D-day. Then by canceling 80 percent of the pre-invasion airstrikes. This last was the vital element of the invasion as planned under Eisenhower and was stressed repeatedly as such by it's CIA and military planners.
JFK's last minute cancellation of airstrikes gave Castro's air force free rein over the invasion site, and the results were exactly as the planners repeatedly warned against. After their supply ships were sunk, the Cuban freedom-fighters found themselves stranded on a tiny beachhead with one days worth of food, water and ammo against a Soviet-lavished force over ten times its size while strafed at will by Castro's delighted pilots.
For three days this force of mostly volunteer civilians battled savagely, inflicting casualties of 20 to 1. After fighting off several air attacks from Castro's planes on his ship, CIA man Grayston Lynch finally learned of the canceled airstrikes. Stunned and enraged he radioed his brothers on the beachhead. "If things are really rough," he told Cuban Cmdr. Pepe San Roman, "we can come in and evacuate you."
"We will not be evacuated!" Pepe roared into his radio between artillery concussions. "We came here to fight. This ends here . . . And where are our planes?!" Soviet 122 mm Howitzers were pounding 2,000 rounds into the desperately embattled men (and boys). "Send our planes or we can't last!" San Roman yelled while his casualties piled up.
San Roman's desperate petition to Lynch worked its way to Washington D.C. and Navy Chief Adm. Arleigh Burke, who conveyed it to his commander in chief in person.
"Two planes, Mr. President!" Burke sputtered into his commander in chief's face. The U.S. carrier Essex was stationed 30 miles off the Cuban coast, dozens of deadly Skyhawk jets on deck , armed to the teeth, and primed for action. Knowing what was going on scant miles away, their pilots were chomping at the bit, banging their fists, kicking bulkheads and trying to control their rage.
"Burke, we can't get involved in this," replied JFK.
"We put those boys there, Mr. President!" the fighting admiral exploded. "By God, we are involved!"
Ammo finally ran out. "Russian tanks overrunning my position" San Roman was on his radio again to Lynch. "Destroying my equipment." crackle . . . crackle . . . crackle . . . "How can you people do this to us?" Finally the radio went dead.
"I broke down completely," recalls CIA man Grayston Lynch, who took that final message. "Tears filled my eyes. Never in my 37 years had I been so ashamed of my country." And Grayston Lynch doesn't break down or disparage his commander in chief easily. He carries scars from Omaha Beach, the Battle of the Bulge and Korea's Heartbreak Ridge.
The battle was over in three days but the heroism persisted for almost another two years. Through 18 months in Castro's prisons and torture chambers, none of the Cuban freedom-fighters broke. They even refused to denounce the nation that betrayed them, convinced this doomed them to death by firing-squad. "We will die with dignity!" and upright Comdr. Oliva repeatedly snapped in the very face of his communist captors, who under guidance from Stalin and Beria's former henchmen, kept demanding a "confession."
A guilt-stricken JFK finally ransomed the surviving freedom fighters back from Castro's dungeons and assembled them and their families in the Orange Bowl on Dec. 29 1962. "I will never abandon Cuba to communism!" he thundered (again reciting a Ted Sorensen draft). Apparently those Cuban refugees families had not been subject to enough of JFK's and Sorensen's "communication of values and hope."
"I promise to deliver this Brigade banner to you in a free Havana!" Vowed JFK to the delirious crowd. Such was the power of his "communication"and the hope of his audience that many broke down in tears of gratitude. Sorensen must have been immensely proud of himself.
JFK "solved" the Missile Crisis, by "communicating some values" to Nikita Khrushchev in the form of a pledge to maintain Havana utterly unfree. In his memoirs, the Butcher of Budapest reveals them: "We ended up getting exactly what we'd wanted all along. Security for Fidel Castro's regime. Until today, the U.S. has complied with her promise to not interfere with Castro and to not allow anyone else to interfere with Castro."
JFK made his solemn pledge to Khrushchev two months before summoning those thousands of Cuban exiles to the Orange Bowl for another pledge. Sorensen is widely credited with drafting the text of the Missile Crisis "solution" and even hand delivering to the Soviet courier. He also crafted JFK's Orange Bowl oration/pledge.
In his spirited Obama endorsement, Sorensen stressed JFK's "emphasis on the importance of ethics and moral courage . . . I believe Obama will do the same."
He should know.
***** Humberto Fontova is the author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him." Visit www.hfontova.com.
Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.
Maybe Sorenson can ghost-write Obama to a Pulitzer too.
80 years old, huh?
The only change this brings will be the result of incontinence.
Wonder what Sorenson looks like? Look up “pompous” in the ol’ Webster’s.
Wasn't that Renfields position to Count Dracula?
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