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The U.S. State Department has determined and certified Cuba as a "not fully cooperating country" (NFCC) for not helping with counterterrorism efforts after the island nation failed to turn over at least 11 fugitives in 2024 to U.S. custody. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce made the announcement on Tuesday that the certification, which falls under Section 40A of the Arms Export Control Act, will result in the prohibition on the sale or license for export of defense services to Cuba. "In 2024, the Cuban regime did not fully cooperate with the United States on counterterrorism," Bruce said in a statement....

By almost any measure, John F. Kennedy was a middling president at best, and an occasionally disastrous one. The Bay of Pigs fiasco, the Cuban missile crisis, setting the nation on the wrong course in Vietnam, his nepotism, the spying on political rivals — all must weigh heavily in our judgment of his presidency. And while Kennedy the president was a middle-of-the-range performer at best, Kennedy the man has been relentlessly diminished by the eventual revealing of the facts of his day-to-day life. Conservatives who see in Kennedy a committed combatant in the Cold War and a supply-side tax-cutter must...

Sound recording of a telephone conversation held on October 28, 1962, between President John F. Kennedy and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. They discuss dealings with Soviet Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev for ending the Cuban Missile Crisis. [White House Operator?] connects the call at President Kennedy’s request.

This meme being pushed in the media of the Ukraine/Russia being a new Cuban missile crisis is a hail Mary pass by the Biden administration to paint him as a Kennedy’esq figure to save his presidency. If there is no nuclear attack (likely, hopefully) he gets credit (from the media and leftists) for the greatest diplomatic achievement of the century in averting the destruction of humanity by working tirelessly behind the scenes as the greatest and smartest president that ever lived! If they (Russia) actually do it, Biden declares marshal law, no elections, total government control for the good of...

"The biggest defeat in our nation's history!" bellowed Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay while whacking his fist on his desk upon learning the details of the deal President Kennedy cut with Khrushchev regarding the missiles. Aaw come on, Humberto!' Some amigos retort. 'Gen. LeMay was a serious war-monger and NUTCASE!—the model for Gen. Ripper in Dr Strangelove! Are you saying we shoulda started a worldwide nuclear war with tens of millions incinerated to liberate a two-bit Caribbean island of barely 7 million people?!'Nothing of the sort. In fact, the choice at the time was never between nuclear...

Seven months after the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy, at American University, laid out his view on how the East-West struggle should be conducted to avoid a catastrophic war that could destroy us both. Kennedy's message to Moscow and his fellow Americans: "If (the United States and the Soviet Union) cannot end now our differences, at least we can make the world safe for diversity." As George Beebe writes in his essay, "It's a Big World: The Importance of Diversity in American Foreign Policy," in the July National Interest, Kennedy later elaborated: "We must recognize that we cannot...

The myth of Che Guevara - recycled yet again in Steven Soderberg’s new film ‘Che’ - is seductive and lush. It’s the story of an Argentinian rich-boy who was so shocked by poverty he became a Robin Hood fighting alongside the poor, until eventually he was murdered by the CIA. But the reality of Che Guevara is very different. The facts show that he was a totalitarian with a messiah streak, who openly wanted to impose Maoist tyranny on the world. He was so fanatical that at the hottest moment in the Cold War, he even begged the Soviet Union...

President Kennedy “employed a combination of toughness, nerve and wisdom, so brilliantly controlled, so matchlessly calibrated that it dazzled the world!” (Democrat court historian and Kennedy presidential aide Arthur Schlesinger, in his media-acclaimed and Pulitzer Prize winning, A Thousand Days.) "Follow Kennedy's Lead to Deter North Korea. It's Time For Real Deterrence," wrote the late Charles Krauthammer in 2006, contrasting President Bush’s wimpy response to North Korea’s missiles to Kennedy’s testicular cowing of the Russians during the Cuban Missile Crisis.  National Review’s Andrew McCarthy said "hear-hear" to Krauthammer. "It would be better for President Bush to emulate the Kennedy strategy"...

When Attorney General William Barr stated "spying did occur" against the 2016 Trump campaign, most attention was focused on the FBI's surveillance of former junior foreign policy aide Carter Page. But the spying Barr was thinking of, and which he said may or may not have been legally authorized, is more likely to be that carried out by Stefan Halper, a former Republican operative and White House aide who became a foreign policy academic with close ties to both American and British intelligence. One could be forgiven for believing Halper was a creation of the spy novelist John Le Carré....

President Trump gave a thoughtful and measured address that put Iran on notice, allowed them to save face, and turned the tables on his leftist critics. President Trump’s speech was reminiscent of the actions President John F. Kennedy took during the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1962, the Soviet Union placed nuclear missiles in Cuba and Kennedy drew a line in the sand in saying that Soviet nuclear missiles would not remain in Cuba. However, once announcing that course he gave the Soviet Union wiggle room to make this end happen. He put a blockade 800 miles off...

I recently read that we should re-read classics that have bearing on and in our lives.

Those who think “Fake News” started with Trump and the media’s “slobbering love affair” with a U.S. president started with Obama should have seen John F. Kennedy’s term. Imagine Obama's term with no Fox News, internet or talk radio. That’s about what JFK enjoyed. And tragically, the fairy tales Kennedy’s court scribes concocted about JFK’s Pattonesque handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis prevail in media/academic circles even today. In fact, you’d never guess this from the “think pieces” from today’s “Best and Brightest” in the Fake News media, but that Khrushchev swept the floor with Kennedy during the Cuban Missile...

While most of the US press was totally fixated on attaching the labels of racist, bigot, and white supremacist to the President, it totally missed one of the biggest stories in a generation—a nuclear war with North Korea was averted.The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during the 13 days from October 16th to the 28th of 1962. President Kennedy had recently gained solid evidence that the Soviet Union had placed both nuclear-armed bombers as well as nuclear-armed ballistic missiles in Cuba. And even though the US had deployed many more nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey, capable of annihilating Moscow and...

Triumph Forsaken The Vietnam War, 1954-1965 by Mark Moyar Cambridge, 542 pp., $32 In the late summer of 1963, President John Kennedy dispatched two observers to South Vietnam. Their mission was to provide the president an assessment of the regime of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of the Republic of Vietnam. The first, Major General Victor Krulak, USMC, the special assistant for counterinsurgency for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited some ten locations in all four Corps areas of Vietnam. Based on extensive interviews with U.S. advisers to the South Vietnamese army, Krulak concluded that the war was going well....

Temperament matters...The world owes an enormous debt to a quiet, steady Russian naval officer... It’s October 1962, the height of the Cuban missile crisis, and there’s a Soviet submarine in the Caribbean that’s been spotted by the American Navy.. The sub is hiding in the ocean, and the Americans are dropping depth charges left and right of the hull. Inside, the sub is rocking, shaking with each new explosion. What the Americans don’t know is that this sub has a tactical nuclear torpedo on board, available to launch,... The Russian in question, an exhausted, nervous submarine commander named Valentin Savitsky,...

"Fairy tales can come true, it can happen to you." (Frank Sinatra) Fairy tales certainly came true for Sinatra's chum John F. Kennedy. I refer to the Cuban Missile Crisis, 53 years ago this week. More specifically, I refer to the media/academia/Hollywood spin of the crisis, especially its outcome. Surely you know the tune: "JFK stood up to the Russians in Cuba! Khrushchevblinked, cowered, and took his missiles home with his tail between his legs! Ha-ha! Take THAT Russkies! That’s the kind of gumption we need today with Iran and Putin!" In fact, here was the consensus at the time...

You may have never heard of Vasili Arkhipov. And yet life as we know it on this planet could have ended if it were not for his crucial intervention during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Born in 1926, Arkhipov saw action as a minesweeper during the Soviet-Japanese war in August 1945. Two years later he graduated from the Caspian Higher Naval School, serving in the Black Sea and Baltic submarine fleets – just in time for the start of the Cold War, which would stay with him for the rest of his service. During the 1950s the Soviets became very...

While recently commemorating the World War I centenary at an Italian military cemetery, Pope Francis declared: "Even today, after the second failure of another world war, perhaps one can speak of a third war, one fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres, destruction." The pope's observation begs the question: If World War III has already started, would we even know it? Or would it only be evident in the rearview mirror? Ask 10 people you know to identify the thunderclap that started World War II. The answer would vary, depending on the perceptiveness of the person being asked and their geographic location....

The USS Saratoga — the legendary aircraft carrier that played a key role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam and Gulf wars and made Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi back down — is destined for dismantling after the Navy paid one penny to a Texas firm to recycle the 81,101-ton behemoth. The once-mighty vessel is the second of three conventionally-powered carriers to set to sail to the scrapyard, following another one-cent deal involving the USS Forrestal in October. ESCO Marine, of Brownsville, will pay to tow, dismantle and recycle the ship, which was decommissioned in 1994 after more than 38 years...

"Mr President the American people are asking with new urgency: what is going on in Cuba?” On August 31st 1962 Senator Kenneth Keating (Republican, New York) was on the Senate floor prompted by reports of a huge and rapid deployment of Soviet troops and sophisticated arms to Cuba. “The President has said he has no evidence of Soviet troops in Cuba. If he has no evidence, I am giving him evidence this afternoon. Mr President, time is short. The situation is growing worse. I urge upon my government that prompt action be taken.” Fast-forward to October 10, 1962. “Why has...