If Kennedy had not been shot, would you in 1964 have voted for the guy who had invaded Cuba? (nt)

[Octafish]

2. Yes. He kept the world out of World War III over the Bay of Pigs.

I'd wonder why he had done something so undemocratic, overthrowing a sovereign country. Turns out CIA director Allen Dulles said it'd be a slam-dunk, without help from US armed forces. He lied, Big Time. In fact, his "mistake" in retrospect looks like treason.

Soviets Knew Date of Cuba Attack

By Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 29, 2000; A04

Shortly after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, a top CIA official told an investigative commission that the Soviet Union had
somehow learned the exact date of the amphibious landing in advance, according to a newly declassified version of the commission's final report.

Moreover, the CIA apparently had known of the leak to the Soviets--and went ahead with the invasion anyway.

In an effort to oust Fidel Castro, the CIA organized and trained a force of about 1,400 Cuban exiles and launched the invasion on April 17, 1961.

Castro's soldiers easily repelled the landing force in less than 72 hours, killing 200 rebels and capturing 1,197 others in what became one of the worst foreign policy blunders of the Cold War.

The investigative commission, chaired by Gen. Maxwell Taylor, was established almost immediately and held a series of secret hearings at the Pentagon before sending a sharply critical report to President Kennedy in June 1961.

CONTINUED…

http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/bay-of-pigs/soviets.htm

A year later, the Missile Crisis erupts, giving him another opportunity. Again, he said, "No." In neither situation did JFK order an all-out attack, which is what those at CIA and the Pentagon wanted.

CIA director Allen Dulles and Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer (before they got canned over the Bay of Pigs) had recommended to JFK that the best thing for him to do as President was to launch an all-out sneak attack on the Soviet Union. This pre-emptive war would not be over Cuba, but rather because the USSR posed an existential threat to the USA and, thus, should be attacked when our nuclear superiority was at a maximum, "some time in Fall 1963."

Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?

Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994

During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.

But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.

The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.

CONTINUED...

http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963

Glad JFK said, "No."