Posted on 02/27/2021 4:47:03 AM PST by Kaslin
“At President Biden’s direction, U.S. military forces earlier this evening conducted airstrikes against infrastructure utilized by Iranian-backed militant groups in eastern Syria,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday.
“Since Vietnam, the Democratic Party has supported foreign intervention only if it serves no interest of the United States. If it serves our national security interest, they are hysterically opposed to it…The incontrovertible lesson of history is, if at all possible, don't allow Democrats anywhere near foreign policy," Ann Coulter has observed.
“Where are the planes?” kept crackling over U.S. Navy radios 60 years ago right off our southern coast. The U.S. Naval armada (22 ships including the Carrier Essex loaded with deadly Skyhawk jets) was sitting 16 miles off the Cuban coast near an inlet known as Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs.) The question—bellowed between blasts from a Soviet artillery and tank barrage landing around him—came from commander Pepe San Roman, who led an amphibious force of 1,500 Cuban freedom-fighters.
“Send planes or we can’t last!” San Roman kept pleading to the very fleet that escorted his men to the beachhead. Meanwhile the barrage intensified, the Soviet T-34 and Stalin tanks closed in, and San Roman’s casualties pile up.
"If things get rough," the heartsick CIA man Grayston Lynch, a multi-decorated WWII and Korea vet, radioed back, "we can come in and evacuate you."
"We will NOT be evacuated!" Pepe roared back to his friend Lynch. "We came here to fight! We don't want evacuation! We want more ammo! We want PLANES! This ends here!" Lynch kept sending the requests Washington-ward with all of San Roman’s urgency.
Along with the Bay of Pigs freedom fighters, Castro faced 179 bands of “bandits” (Che be the biggest military threat the U.S. faced since the war of 1812.)
But San Roman and Lynch’s urgency to Washington was futile.
Camelot’s criminal idiocy finally brought Adm. Arleigh Burke of the Joints Chief of Staff, who was receiving the battlefield pleas, to the brink of mutiny. Years before, 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!" (the U.S. Carrier just offshore from the beachhead), "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!" While the Knights of Camelot mulled over their image problems, the men on the beachhead had problems of their own...
"MAY-DAY! MAYDAY! Have Castro jet on my tail! Request ... I repeat! -- Request ...!"
"Sorry," replied the Essex. "Our orders are ..." The Cuban freedom-fighter pilot didn't hear the rest of his death sentence. An explosion and his radio went dead. These messages went on and on, hour after hour, from different pilots in their lumbering B-26s to no avail. By the second day, nearly half of these almost suicidally brave freedom-fighter pilots had met a fiery death from Castro's jets.
This was too much for their enraged and heartsick American trainers at the base in Nicaragua. Four of them suited up, gunned the engines and joined the fight. These weren't Ivy Leaguers. They were Alabama Air Guard officers, men with archaic notions of loyalty and honor. They were watching the decimation of lumbering U.S. B-26’s against Castro’s jets. They knew the odds. They went anyway.
All four died on that first mission. All four (Pete Ray, Riley Shamburger, Leo Barker, and Wade Grey) have their names in a place of honor alongside their fallen Cuban comrades on The Bay of Pigs Memorial, plus streets named after them in Miami's Little Havana, plus their crosses at Miami's Cuban Memorial cemetery.
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 Russian tanks and trucks 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!" the Navy pilot 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 (no tear-squeezers for camera-ops, heaven knows!) admit to sobbing openly in their cockpits. They were still choked up when they landed 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 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 Skyhawk pilots right over the edge. As JFK adjusted his bow tie in the mirror and Jackie picked lint off his tux, the men of freedom-fighting 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 Stalin tanks point-blank. At 10 yards he fired 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’s Soviet-led troops were swarming in but he held his ground, firing furiously with his recoilless rifle for another hour until the Stalinists finally surrounded him and killed him with a shower of grenades.
The freedom-fighters’ spent ammo inevitably forced a retreat. Castro's jets and Sea Furies were roaming overhead at will and tens of thousands of his Soviet-led and armed troops and armor were closing in. The Castro planes now concentrated on strafing the helpless, ammo-less freedom-fighters.
"Can't continue,” Lynch's radio crackled - it was San Roman again. "Have nothing left to fight with ...out of ammo...Russian tanks in view....destroying my equipment.”
"Tears flooded my eyes," wrote Grayston Lynch. "For the first time in my 37 years I was ashamed of my country."
Kennedy was like an Obama or vice versa.
Kennedy let those people down. Alabama voted dimocrat in those days. I remember well my father and other men, all WWII men, mad that America did not stand with those people. You don’t promise help then withdraw it at the minute they are on the ground and in need of it. (But, we got good at running away as we packed and ran out of Vietnam leaving thousands to be executed, put in prison or their gulags for aiding and working with the USA during the war). I remember the Cuban missile crisis well. We were in school every day practicing getting under our worthless wooden desk to “PROTECT” us when a Soviet nuke hit our area. Our area WAS an ideal Soviet target as there was a military base here (since closed by Klinton as punishment for Alabama voting against him in the first election AND the second election) and there is and remains, but at a very reduced capacity, an Army Depot here. They were targets I am sure back in the day. Maybe not so much any more. But, what protection was a school desk from the blast of a nuke overhead our town?? ZIP that is what!!! We’d been dead before we heard the blast!! My father worked at the Depot. He said every military person there was on pins and needles. He said they were all scared. Afraid that a nuke could hit at any moment. Alabama was close enough to Cuba to be prime targets.
The link below is an excellent history lesson of before, during and after the Bay of Pigs, a total disaster by JFK.
https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/bay-of-pigs-invasion
Like Bill Clinton used to say, those warheads have a “use by” date and we gotta do something with them....
Those are our warheads now Ron
Who’s that idiot?
That is Jay Z.
He’s married to Beyoncé.
Rapper/dirtbag...
And moron.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.