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When Kennedy Caved—Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Surrender
Townhall.com ^ | October 23, 2021 | Humberto Fontova

Posted on 10/23/2021 3:55:56 AM PDT by Kaslin

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1 posted on 10/23/2021 3:55:56 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: max americana

The constant fade from color to B&W to color to B&W in “Thirteen Days” was very annoying.

Kevin Costner must have been out of his mind to do that.

I did like the actor who played the F-8 recon lead pilot in that part. Seemed a natural.


2 posted on 10/23/2021 4:14:36 AM PDT by SaveFerris (The Lord, The Christ and The Messiah: Jesus Christ of Nazareth - http://www.BiblicalJesusChrist.Com/)
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To: Kaslin
I had just returned from Germany and been discharged from the Army, Medic, Spec-4 during the summer of 62 but my brother was in the Navy on a destroyer out of Gitmo during the entire fiasco.

He said he was sure we were going to get in a shooting war, {as were most Navy enlisted men floating around that island}.

Tensions were sky high, and no peons knew the truth about the real terms of the deal.

JFK and his baby brothers created and protected communism in South America.

It's only fitting that a demonRAT judge just released lil bobby kennedy's killer a few weeks ago.

In a just state, he'd have been cooked decades ago, but in kalifornikator...

And don't tell me it was a federal crime, he could have been prosecuted for first degree murder at the state level, but back even then...the golden state...

3 posted on 10/23/2021 4:18:52 AM PDT by USS Alaska (NUKE ALL MOOSELIMB TERRORISTS, NOW.)
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To: Kaslin

Bump for later comment.


4 posted on 10/23/2021 4:31:14 AM PDT by Laslo Fripp (The Sybil of Free Republic)
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To: Kaslin

It might have been a bad deal, but still a whole lot better than nuclear war.


5 posted on 10/23/2021 4:31:31 AM PDT by Renfrew
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To: Kaslin

The lionization of Kennedy by his hagiographers is one of the great academic crimes of the 20th Century.


6 posted on 10/23/2021 4:35:28 AM PDT by Chad C. Mulligan
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To: Chad C. Mulligan
In college we studied this event....the professors held it up as a model of expert negotiation. We didn't know the extra details of the situation then that we do today.

JFK violated the Monroe Doctrine and in doing so paved the way for the communist turmoil in Latin and South America.

We paid a heavy price by allowing Castro to stay. Part of the strategy should have been Castro goes and the missiles in Italy and Turkey stay.

7 posted on 10/23/2021 4:50:24 AM PDT by ealgeone
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To: Chad C. Mulligan

Well-said


8 posted on 10/23/2021 4:54:31 AM PDT by SaveFerris (The Lord, The Christ and The Messiah: Jesus Christ of Nazareth - http://www.BiblicalJesusChrist.Com/)
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To: Kaslin

I was in the fifth grade in GITMO. We were bussed home and then immediately transported with our mother to a US Destroyer that was to evacuate us to Norfolk. Everyone on base was required to maintain an evacuation bag at all times.

Our ship was laden with old munitions that were being taken to be dumped at sea when they got orders to evacuate us. The ship couldn’t keep up with the convoy, so we were on our own.

The crew slept on deck, and civilians took shifts sleeping in the bunks. The mess hall had to run 24 hours to feed everyone.

A Russian submarine tracked us the entire trip. Many on board feared they were going to attack. We found out after the fall of USSR they had orders to torpedo us if hostilities broke out between the US & USSR.

When we finally made it to Norfolk, it was bitter cold. We didn’t own any cold weather attire: only shorts & tee shirts.

We spent the winter in The States, with no communications with Dad. He did manage to talk with Mom once via shortwave radio after the hostilities eased.


9 posted on 10/23/2021 5:09:51 AM PDT by gitmo (If your theology doesn't become your biography, what good is it?)
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To: Kaslin

I was just your average E-4 draftee over the Berlin Crisis, when Cuba came into the picture. I predicted that it wasn’t going to be a Global war over Cuba. In conversation with the guys who were with me, I told them that the Russians are big bluffers and they were in no position to support another war after all they had gone through in less than a generation ago. Everything about JFK was hyped, the media loved him just like any Democrat today. All show, not much go, and the beat goes on just like today.


10 posted on 10/23/2021 5:19:59 AM PDT by Bringbackthedraft (In politicians we get what we deserve, usually the best that money can buy, guaranteed.)
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To: Renfrew
Their was never going to be a nuclear war.
Didn't you see what the Russians said about that?
11 posted on 10/23/2021 5:34:05 AM PDT by skimbell
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To: Bringbackthedraft
Way-back fake news.
12 posted on 10/23/2021 5:36:17 AM PDT by skimbell
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To: Kaslin

Someone is re-writing history here. The Cuban missile crisis was about the Soviets putting nuclear missiles 90 miles from the U.S. Kennedy demanded they be removed and the Soviets backed down. That was a considered a huge win.


13 posted on 10/23/2021 5:51:23 AM PDT by Brooklyn Attitude (I went to bed on November 3rd 2020 and woke up in 1984.)
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To: Kaslin

I appreciate Fontova. But the fact is we damn near incinerated the world. About 20 years ago news surfaced that one of our destroyers was dropping “test depth charges” that had minimal killing power. They got one close to a Soviet sub, which had orders that if it came under attack to respond with its nuke-armed weapons.

Those took the asset of all three top Soviet sub officers to launch. Two agreed. Only one did not.

There is no question in my mind that had that sub launched a nuke, all sides would have released everything they had. You and I wouldn’t be here today, and neither would Fontova.

Khrushchev was being pushed very hard by the Kremlin to stand tough, and it was only a clever maneuver by JFK-—to agree to the first Khrushchev note that offered a removal of the missiles in return for a promise not to invade-—even after he got the second, harder-line message that also required we remove the Jupiter missiles in Turkey-—that saved the world. We later learned that JFK promised secretly to also remove the Jupiters-—which the US was already planning to do-—but that Khrushchev could not mention it publicly-—which he did not.

So it’s nice to think that JFK could have gotten Fidel removed, but not at all what was happening historically. We were very, very lucky then.


14 posted on 10/23/2021 6:24:16 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually" (Hendrix) )
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To: USS Alaska

My father-in-law was a chief warrant officer on B-52s at WPAFB at that time and he told me they were locked & loaded with nukes and airborne in rotations at all time.


15 posted on 10/23/2021 6:24:59 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually" (Hendrix) )
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To: Renfrew

Yep. This is insanity and Fontova, who is usually good, always gets carried away with his hatred for Castro.


16 posted on 10/23/2021 6:25:36 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually" (Hendrix) )
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To: ealgeone

1) We had already, before the crisis, decided to pull the Jupiters.
2) In 1960-61, half the CIA thought Castro was a good guy. On the one hand, JFK got railroaded by the CIA into an invasion that Ike had strongly stipulated that US forces would not be involved no matter what; then JFK indicated he would support the invasion; then he changed his mind after the attempt to assassinate Castro failed.

The time to get rid of Castro was immediately after he took power, but no one could get a consensus then that he was a bad guy. Nothing short of a full US invasion after that would have worked, and Kennedy (rightly) was concerned that a US invasion there would have resulted in the Soviets taking W. Berlin. That was absolutely correct, and we couldn’t have done a thing about it. So the tradeoff was Cuba for Berlin, which in the long run worked much more to our advantage.


17 posted on 10/23/2021 6:30:14 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually" (Hendrix) )
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To: gitmo

We just missed all being incinerated. The Navy was dropping “test depth charges,” not realizing they were over a Russkie sub. It was armed with nukes, and was ordered to respond with nukes if attacked. Fortunately, it required all three of the top officers to agree, and only two did so.

One Russkie sub officer probably saved the world from nuke war.


18 posted on 10/23/2021 6:31:36 AM PDT by LS ("Castles made of sand, fall in the sea . . . eventually" (Hendrix) )
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To: LS
The Soviets were scared to death of another war that devastated their country like WW2. I'm not sure they'd moved on W. Berlin if we moved on Cuba.

And I don't agree with the notion the trade of a permanent communist base 90 miles off our coast was a good one.

That allowed the USSR a base to infiltrate Latin and South America with communist ideology. Could they have done so without it...yes but at a greater cost and effort.

Communism in Eastern Europe collapsed as did the USSR so Berlin came back into the Western world.

However, communism is still in Cuba along with all the problems it presents. Time will tell if it collapses.

19 posted on 10/23/2021 6:39:53 AM PDT by ealgeone
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To: Brooklyn Attitude

Ha! Don’t forget, it was a real relief for Nikita.

He finally had a way out of the situation with Fidel... loaded Russian ships going TO Cuba ... then, ‘dead-heading’ BACK to the USSR.

The system was so ‘unsustainable’ (tr. costly) that Nikita must have welcomed a reasonable way-out, but quick! 🤗


20 posted on 10/23/2021 6:40:56 AM PDT by SMARTY (Republics decline into democracies & democracies degenerate into despotisms. Aristotle)
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