Reply #58: Um, maybe you're unaware of US missile placements in Turkey?

[NNadir]

Soviet archives are pretty clear that the Soviets were encouraged to be aggressive in response to aggressive American moves with respect to the placement of missiles in Turkey, and to the perception -obtained at the Vienna summit that Kennedy was such an intellectual lightweight that he must be a front for American military leadership.

You may choose to believe that my criticism is wholly dependent on Kennedy's location during the march on Washington, but like most Kennedy worshipers, your are hearing only what you want to hear. My opinion of Kennedy is based on the facts. I didn't make these things up, of course. Thomas Reeves covers the facts - and he is more balanced than I am inclined to be - in his biography "A Question of Character." Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner who hardly constitutes a Neocon, also wrote about Kennedy's character, or lack of character, in "The Dark Side of Camelot," and Kessler explored the ethics and character of the Kennedy family in "Sins of the Father." (I note that there are still plenty of Kennedy scandals still to suggest that this family had some major issues in dysfunction.)

However, the fact is that Kennedy watched the March on Washington on television. The onus is upon anyone who wishes to claim his nonexistent leadership on Civil Rights to explain that. Tough, but true. Or are you saying that he stayed home and watched TV because he thought that Martin Luther King wasn't doing the job right and he was planning to do better, but was prevented from doing so by assassination? Give me a break. If he were such a staunch supporter of Civil Rights, why not appear at a major event in the history of the Civil Rights movement? (The actual case was that the Kennedy's tried to prevent the march, since it would put them in a difficult spot with southern segregationists like James Eastland.) Was his back out again? These Freedom Riders are hardly sympathetic to the Kennedy performance during the Civil Rights protests: http://www.crmvet.org/faq/faqpres.htm This link by the way is direct history from people directly involved.

Kennedy did NOT withdraw troops from Vietnam, and Diem WAS assassinated in September of 1963 with CIA covert support. He also worked to assassinate Castro, all that exploding cigar shit and the like. In fact CIA excesses, at least until the Bush administration, reached their apotheosis in the Kennedy era. All of this is well established to anyone who looks into the matter - most having come to light after the Freedom of Information Act became law.

Kennedy DID run for election as President on the basis of a claim of a nonexistent missile gap.

Kennedy DID have sexual relationships with a number of women who placed him a position to compromise both domestic and international security.

And Kennedy was largely a creation of his father. On his own, he was distractable, amoral, and lacking in both seriousness and gravitas, ambitious for power, but not for the power to change to world for the better, but power for power's own sake.

The Kennedys are the generally the subject of hagiography, not biography. People seem to forget that the assistant council (under Roy Cohn, early neo-Nazi) to Joseph McCarthy's blacklisting Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations was none other but the young hack lawyer Robert F. Kennedy. This is easily verifiable, and most people ignore it because it doesn't conform to the god-like status as liberals conferred upon the Kennedy clan by rote acceptance of this martyrdom tripe.

In fact Kennedy was one of the more prominent Democratic Supporters of the so called "Communist Control Act" outlawing the communist party. He also prominently worked with Republicans to criticize the Truman administration for "losing China," said loss being just so much more right wing bullshit. His pre-1960 career is very much attached to the right wing of the Democratic Party of his day - and is entirely consistent with the cold warrior mentality that characterized his father and, indeed, his entire family up to the day Kennedy was installed in the White House in one of the most dubious elections (exceeded only by 2000 and 1876) in US history.

I leave you with this gem, which is readily available on the internet, relayed by Kennedy's friend and family operative, Charles Spalding, quoting Kennedy when he avoided the McCarthy censure vote:

"You know, when I get downstairs I know exactly what's going to happen. Those reporters are going to lean over my stretcher. There's going to be about ninety-five faces bent over me with great concern, and everyone of those guys is going to say, 'Now Senator, what about McCarthy?' Do you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to reach back for my back and I'm just going to yell 'Oow' and then I'm going to pull the sheet over my head and hope we can get out of there."

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk2.htm

So much for the "great liberal" President. John F. Kennedy should not be anyone's liberal hero. He was pretty much a right winger.