He writes:
In foreign policy, the story is even worse. He is planning an invasion of a hostile country, which is almost certain to fail disastrously.
I believe our blogger friend is referring to the Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 - which Kennedy himself admitted was the "biggest blunder" of his career. But it is important to grasp that the plan was NOT crafted or spawned by him or his administration - but by Ike, Dwight D. Eisenhower's.
Little known by Americans, “Operation Zapata” (aka 'The Cuba Project') was actually initiated and developed during the Eisenhower administration and pushed on Kennedy. (Telling him it was "in the national security interest” to do it). Awed by the conviction and national security patter of an elder president with 8 years in the Oval office, (while he himself was a new-be), JFK took Ike at his word and paid the price.
Most of this didn’t come to light until the discovery of an internal CIA Report on the “Cuba Project”, which had been kept hidden for over 35 years. The results were released under ‘The Bay of Pigs Declassified’. It was actually based on the agency’s own internal audit and assessment of its behavior in respect of the event.
According to the declassified report, the Agency committed at least four extremely serious mistakes:
i) Failure to subject the project, especially in its latter, frenzied stages to a cold and objective appraisal by the best talent available before submitting the final plan to Kennedy
ii) Failure to advise the President, at an appropriate time, that the mission’s success had become dubious- and to recommend the operation therefore be canceled.
iii) Failure to recognize the project had become overt and that the military effort had become too large to be handled by the Agency alone
iv) Failure to reduce successive project plans (dating back to 1959) to formal papers and to leave copies with the President and his advisors, to request specific written approval, confirmation thereof.
The section goes on to note (p. 53):
“The timely and objective scrutiny of the operation in the months before the invasion – including study of all available intelligence- would have demonstrated to Agency officials that the clandestine paramilitary preparations had almost totally failed and there was no responsive underground Cuban force ready to ally with the invaders.”
The commentary is even more critical of the CIA after noting (ibid.) that the United States
RE: Cancellation (p. 55):
“Cancellation would have been embarrassing. The Brigade could not have been held any longer in ready status, probably not held any longer at all. Further, its members would have spread their disappointment far and wide. Because of multiple security leaks in the huge operation, the world already knew about the preparations, and the Government’s and nation’s embarrassment would have been public”
Re: The Choice (ibid.)
“The choice was between retreat without honor and a gamble between ignominious defeat and dubious victory. The Agency chose to gamble, at rapidly decreasing odds.”
The consensus position of the National Archivists is that JFK was misled by the Agency’s hubris and incompetence. Depending on the CIA for guidance as to intelligence about this operation – in preparation for more than two years- the Agency blew it and big time. JFK took the blame, yes, but the CIA ultimately was responsible for not advising cancellation when they knew the near zero chances of success, had the opportunity to do so.
As per a Baltimore Sun piece on the above named Report findings ('Internal Probe Blamed Bay of Pigs Fiasco on CIA', p. 6A, Feb. 22, 1998), it was noted:
"The 150-page report, released after sitting in the CIA Director's safe for nearly three decades, blames the disastrous attempt to oust Fidel Castro not on President John F. Kennedy's failure to call airstrikes, but on the agency itself."
"The CIA's ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance toward the 1,400 exiles it trained and equipped to mount the invasion was responsible for the fiasco, said the report, obtained by the Associated Press yesterday."
"The document criticized almost every aspect of the CIA's handling of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation beyond 'agency responsibility as well as agency capability'."
"The 150-page report, released after sitting in the CIA Director's safe for nearly three decades, blames the disastrous attempt to oust Fidel Castro not on President John F. Kennedy's failure to call airstrikes, but on the agency itself."
"The CIA's ignorance, incompetence, and arrogance toward the 1,400 exiles it trained and equipped to mount the invasion was responsible for the fiasco, said the report, obtained by the Associated Press yesterday."
"The document criticized almost every aspect of the CIA's handling of the invasion: misinforming Kennedy administration officials, planning poorly, using faulty intelligence and conducting an overt military operation beyond 'agency responsibility as well as agency capability'."
In the wake of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and learning how badly he’d been played, JFK fired Allan Dulles – the then CIA Director - and asserted his willingness to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.” He also fired Charles Cabell, the deputy CIA director at the time and unwittingly laid the basis for the national security state to act against him.
Our friend adds:
He has established a secret back-channel which he intends to use in times of crisis to communicate secretly with the Kremlin. Yet he is willing to risk nuclear war. And he has no objection to the assassination of political enemies and coups against allied governments.
This again discloses historical ignorance. The "back channel" to which he refers was simply a means of extraordinary diplomatic contact in time of emergency. The emergency was an impending nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At issue was whether a communication received from the Soviet Embassy - rejecting a resolution to the crisis - was the "final word" or a missive sent before the Embassy had received JFK's initial message. Hence, the contact was one of crucial clarification, and enabled a peaceful resolution without nuclear war. There was no "risking of nuclear war" precisely because Kennedy (and Khrushchev) went the extra mile to avoid it.
Our Trump-backing blogger goes over the top in his claim of "no objection to assassination of political enemies." Indeed, the most Kennedy would do in the case of Nixon or others who harassed him was make fun, as in press conferences. If our friend is instead referring to the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro that was done as part of Operation ZR Rifle, initiated and sustained by the denizens of the CIA. This program was overseen by top spook William Harvey, who with his minions kept Kennedy out of the loop. Harvey, for his part, led the agency's assassination operations as far back as the Eisenhower administration and likely had even expanded the CIA's original basic assassinations handbook for foreign hits based on a 1954 operation ("PBSuccess") in Guatemala, e.g.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/
Harvey feuded constantly with JFK's brother Robert, over the administration's crisis with Cuba.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB4/
Harvey feuded constantly with JFK's brother Robert, over the administration's crisis with Cuba.
His other claim about "coups against allied governments" makes it sound as if JFK was overthrowing all kinds of allied nations, which is total codswallop. What he's probably referring to is the CIA overthrow of the Diem brothers and their killing in South Vietnam - which I've explained multiple times already. As I explained in one (Oct. 15, 2014) post, Kennedy had been in a test of wills and missions with the CIA since the Bay of Pigs and his firing of Allen Dulles One of his retaliatory measures was to create a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), responsible to him, and soon mandating all overflights of Cuba be done by the Strategic Air Command, not the CIA. He also defined a list of directives on what the CIA could and could not, do. By the end of 1961, JFK's 'Special Group' had no less than 17 recommendations for the "reorganization and redirection of the CIA".
The CIA, however, retaliated by withholding intelligence from Kennedy, including the plans to assassinate Castro via ZR Rifle. Kennedy got his final wake up call on who was controlling his government when, in an early September, 1963 meeting he was informed by a David Bell of AID (a CIA cover organization) that the funds from the Commodity Import Aid Program had “already been cut off”, essentially assuring a coup would ensue with the Diem government in South Vietnam. (Source 'JFK and the Unspeakable', p. 192).
Kennedy was evidently livid and directly asked Bell who had told him to do that, to which Bell replied, “No one” (ibid.). The will to power disclosed here indicates the CIA felt it more powerful than Kennedy’s government. If it felt that, it would also feel it could take him out if he crossed them any more - which threshold was likely transgressed when he commenced a secret rapprochement with Castro in late 1962. (The Diems themselves were killed in a black ops hit on Nov. 2 1963)
Yet this same president has the temerity to go to Europe and make speeches about the need to defend “western civilization.”
Yes, he did and he more than merited giving those fine speeches because he front and center cultivated important alliances, as with the German Chancellor (Konrad Adenauer) and others. Also vowing to protect Berlin and insure critical supplies were air lifted into that besieged city. Rather different than Trump not even having the courtesy to shake Chancellor Angela Merkel's hand when she visited the Oval Office, and accusing the Germans of all sorts of trivial nonsense.
Oh hell…my bad, the “guy” I just described is NOT President Trump – but none other than old JFK!
Yep, JFK is the one who had the requisite upbringing to display common courtesies to real allies, as opposed to one Donald Trump - ignoring Angela Merkel at the White House and even pushing aside the leader of Montenegro at a G7 confab six months ago. No, Donnie Dotard would rather grovel before autocratic, murdering dictators like Duterte in the Philippines and Erdogan of Turkey .
As is now well known, JFK had numerous extramarital affairs. One was with Judith Campbell, whose other lovers included the Chicago organized crime boss Sam Giancana and his sidekick Johnny Roselli.
Yes, he did have those affairs - though at the time he was unaware of the mob connections. And while he did have those affairs they were consensual. He did not go around bragging about "grabbing pussies" or going behind the doors at the Miss Universe contests and leering at the women as they dressed or undressed - not to mention trying to grab their breasts and crotches. ("They let you do it!")
His compulsive infidelity to his wife Jackie, was only one of JFK’s many deceptions. Throughout his political career, he concealed the severity of his medical problems (he suffered from acute back pain, hypothyroidism, and Addison’s disease).
Let's take the last charge first: Yes, JFK did conceal his Addison's disease and back pain. Why? Because he believed a man (and a president) ought to suck it up and not whine like a little bitch - like Trump did with his bone spurs to get out of Vietnam. And yes, JFK had been unfaithful - just as many other presidents were at different times (e.g. FDR, Bill Clinton, James A. Garfield, Warren G. Harding etc.) Also, Kennedy's dalliances were always behind closed doors and away from prying eyes. Discretion was the key. More to the point of difference, he never came out (like Trump) and bragged openly of sexually assaulting women - grabbing their genitals or breasts. JFK wouldn't reach for a woman's private parts unless she granted her consent.. So he didn't just run amuck as Trump did, grabbing at the Miss Universe contestants.
Nor would JFK ever have been so fucking dumb as to be caught in a Russian Kompromat - as Trump was. As the Steele Dossier notes,
"Trump's perverted conduct in Moscow (2013) included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel. where he knew President and Mrs. Obama (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB control with microphones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to."
Now, there is no reason at all to doubt this account - despite the fact the breathless media has declared it the most contentious (and "salacious") part of the dossier. The reason is that the reported behavior (from Steele's "Source E") is perfectly compatible with Trump's psychological profile of malignant narcissism and vengeful payback. It is indeed exactly what this POS would do to a bed that he knew the Obamas had slept in. And moreover, this behavior is totally consistent with that of a loathsome asshole who brags about grabbing pussies.
His campaign is said to have called on Mafia assistance to defeat Richard Nixon in 1960.
Not quite true. His father, Joe, had actually asked Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's assistance with Illinois. The unvarnished truth here: Kennedy didn't need Illinois's 27 electoral votes. He ended up with 303 total. Do the math as we hope our friend does: . 303 - 27 = 276. Kennedy still wins.
In foreign policy, Kennedy combined callousness with recklessness. His questionable interventions ranged from an abortive invasion of Cuba to a bloody coup d’état in South Vietnam.
These two canards were already dispelled earlier,
On his watch, the CIA sought to assassinate Fidel Castro using Mafia hit-men.
At the time this would have occurred "under any president's watch." After the CIA's Bay of Pigs debacle and JFK's vow to "break it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the four winds". the agency had morphed into a rogue organization. Then William Harvey's bunch - using mob assets- took it upon itself to kill Castro. The agency also sought vengeance -for JFK's firing of its boss Allen Dulles (later appointed by LBJ to the Warren Commission) by withholding key intelligence concerning its operations to do with Cuba. This was until Kennedy broke up the agency's plans by ordering an FBI raid on an Operation Mongoose supply camp at Lake Pontchartrain, Louisiana in 1963.
On his watch, the Berlin Wall was built, the ugliest symbol of the Cold War division of the world.
So wait! You're going to blame JFK for that!? Our friend appears to need to bone up on the post- WWII history of Europe and especially Germany - which was divided into East and West parts, as well as Berlin. For his information the wall was erected on Soviet territory and the only way to have stopped it would have been to launch a war against the Russians. Which, of course, would have triggered a nuclear war. Doubtless what his master Dotard would have done.
And on his watch, the world came closer than at any other time to nuclear Armageddon, during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. How was catastrophe averted? By using a back channel to the Kremlin to cut a secret deal.
This was dealt with earlier. And let us note he's right the world "never came closer to nuclear war" but that is exactly why it was good JFK was in office and not the unhinged "fire and fury" Donnie Dotard. The imp who fancies letting Russian whores piss all over him to defile the bed a previous president slept in - in a Moscow hotel. Again, also, it wasn't an actual "back channel" but a diplomatic emergency communications channel - which he ought to be down on his knees applauding right now - else we wouldn't even be having this exchange.
But this is the desperation the Trump acolytes and groupies must resort to now as their little idiot sinks further in the polls. And in national disgrace.
There are also resemblances between President Trump’s prior Warsaw speech and the speeches JFK made in Europe, which routinely extolled the benefits of Western civilization.
And, as I mentioned in my last post, if JFK had been a Repub, he would have been treated with the same ferocious animosity that Trump is treated today, for acts much less heinous than those of JFK.
Uh, there are actually NO resemblances unless one has a fantastic imagination. The Trump Warsaw speech was actually a paean to fascists and autocrats - i.e. latter day Nazis and Nazi wannabes. Given JFK had intelligence, grace, culture and wit - as opposed to egotistic megalomania - there is no way he'd be treated like Trump even if he was a GOOPr. But then he'd never be a GOOP because be always made fun of them and their hide bound, business first mentality. As when he once commented during a campaign speech:
" I run against a candidate who reminds me of the symbol of his party, the circus elephant, with his head full of ivory, a long memory and no vision..."
And… it’s a pretty safe bet that no Dem today would dream of running on JFK’s approach to government or embrace his political beliefs.
Probably true, but that is exactly WHY JFK was assassinated! Hence, no Dem to my knowledge would run on the same sort of bold program including (as JFK did) pulling out of Vietnam, and forging a nuclear test ban treaty with Khrushchev that also prevented deployment of anti- missile systems.
And…as I also mentioned, JFK was an ardent tax-cutter who championed across-the-board, top-to-bottom reductions in personal and corporate tax rates, slashed tariffs to promote free trade, and even spoke out against the “confiscatory” property taxes being levied in too many cities.
Uh, I already dispelled this tomfoolery in my previous post on Trump -JFK comparisons. Please read it again, my friend. And try to process how manifestly illogical it would be for an "ardent tax cutter" to be pilloried in the financial press as a "statist" and for "welfare spending". It's interesting this blogger has high praise for JFK when he imagines him doing something similar to what Trump did (even when his belief is totally erroneous) but smears Kennedy's actions as "heinous" when they're perceived to diverge. Namely, on all those dozens of occasions JFK shows he's 100 times the president Dotard will ever be, especially in enacting wide benefit tax cuts, bringing the country through a real nuclear crisis with high level diplomacy, and forging actual binding alliances with other genuine allies - as opposed to pandering to thugs or using a hostile foreign power to get elected
.
Let's also recall JFK - by his eloquent speeches and appeals to the best in human nature ("Ask not what your country can do for your but what you can do for your country") - elevated civil discourse and didn't degrade it, or sow divisions (unlike Dotard's incessant tweet attacks and rabble rousing).
Yep, it's no wonder Right bloggers like this - wallowing in their bubbles- would push the envelope of veracity and even destroy it to try and make believe their goon Dotard is even one hundredth the man and president John F. Kennedy was. When in fact, he isn't fit to lick the soles of JFK's wingtips.
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/76886/it-wasnt-the-elites-trump-merely-roused-the-rabble
Excerpt:
"I'd argue that elites and elitism themselves were far less of an electoral factor than the historical proclivity of many Americans to blindly and ignorantly rage — to put it in the vernacular — against their betters. That's what enabled Donald Trump's election. The difference between elites' (presumed) smugness and the rabble's resentment is perhaps a small, but nonetheless important, distinction."
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/76886/it-wasnt-the-elites-trump-merely-roused-the-rabble
Excerpt:
"I'd argue that elites and elitism themselves were far less of an electoral factor than the historical proclivity of many Americans to blindly and ignorantly rage — to put it in the vernacular — against their betters. That's what enabled Donald Trump's election. The difference between elites' (presumed) smugness and the rabble's resentment is perhaps a small, but nonetheless important, distinction."
