Another WSJ Reich Hack Gets 'Bay of Pigs' Wrong As She Attacks Bernie's Socialism

Wall Street Journal op-ed columnist Mary Anastasia O'Grady I sometimes read on Mondays, if I've nothing else pressing.  I read her usually lurid, anti-socialist tirades to see how far off the beam she is on a given day. That is,  in covering Latin American and Caribbean politics, issues.  Yesterday, her piece 'Bernie Rewrites Cuban History' (p. A15) caught my attention because I wondered how another hack from the WSJ's stable of  neoliberal, capitalist defenders (including Holman Jenkins Jr., Dan Henninger, William McGurn et al) would respond to Bernie Sanders' rise.

All I will say here is that her screed is every bit the indoctrination twaddle and propaganda she accuses Fidel Castro and the Cuban government of.  (A gov't by the way, which was among the few to dispatch medical specialists to Barbados when it desperately needed help in the 70s and 80s owing to a dire shortage of health care workers and medical specialists.)

It was also interesting reading her agitprop how - while she indulged in all the Castro regime's transgressions -  she mentioned none of the atrocities of the U.S.   For example, the well-documented Operation Northwoods plot - conducted outside JFK's purview - to foment a full scale war and invasion of the island. We actually have the documents that confirm  the extent of it, e.g.                                                           


In Operation Northwoods the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. military planned a campaign of terror, to include the sinking of refugee boats (carrying Cuban refugees) on the high seas, as well as the killing of innocent citizens on American cities’ streets, plus random bombings carried out in Washington, DC, Miami and other places. What was the  motivation? Author James Bamford shows (Body Of Secrets, pp. 82-83) it was to incite an invasion and war against Cuba and enable the U.S. to invade and overthrow Fidel Castro.

But the documents to support suspicions of this (failed) conspiracy were only released years later – though many smelled a ‘rat’. When I first heard of Northwoods, I had trouble processing how any U.S. government agency or entity could remotely conceive of such foul deeds, far less carry them out. Then I quickly recalled the blowing up of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 over Barbados, on October 6. 1976 by Luis Posada, Freddie Lugo and other renegades sponsored in the extremist Alpha 66 enclave by the CIA.

 As former federal agents Warren Hinckle and William Turner noted in their excellent book, ‘Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War Against Castro and the Assassination of JFK’ (p. 384, Thunders Mouth Press, 1992):

“Two men who had deplaned in Barbados, Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lusano, were interrogated after joking about the bombing in a Barbados taxicab. The two were employed by Luis Posada…and confessed that Posada and (Orlando) Bosch had supplied them with two bombs, which they planted on the Cubana aircraft.”

Luis Posada  Carriles - state-sponsored  (by the U.S.) Venezuealan terrorist, who was allowed U.S. sanctuary by George Bush Jr. and never extradited for trial in Venezuela.

According to a secret CIA cable dated Oct. 14, 1976, intelligence sources in Venezuela relayed information about the Cubana Airlines Flt. 455 bombing that tied in  Alpha 66 terrorist Orlando Bosch, who had been visiting Venezuela, and Posada, who then served as a senior officer in Venezuela’s intelligence agency, DISIP. On his arrival, Bosch was met by a CIA operative and Posada, according to the report. Later, a fundraising dinner was held in Bosch’s honor. “A few days following the fund-raising dinner, Posada was overheard to say that, ‘we are going to hit a Cuban airplane,’ and that ‘Orlando has the details,’” the CIA report said.

Those of us living in Barbados at the time had no remote notion of the bloody act to come, nor of the U.S. complicity in it, or that the same right wing Cuban renegades - whose associates conspired in the JFK assassination -  were part of it.  The CIA Report went on to read:

“Following the 6 October [1976] Cubana Airline crash off the coast of Barbados, Bosch, Garcia and Posada agreed that it would be best for Bosch to leave Venezuela. Therefore, on 9 October, Posada and Garcia escorted Bosch to the Colombian border, where he crossed into Colombian territory.”

Meanwhile, Venezuelan police began rounding up suspects. Two right wing Cuban exiles, Hernan Ricardo Lusano and Freddy Lugo, who got off the Cubana plane (Flight 455) in Barbados, confessed that they had planted the bomb and they named Bosch and Posada as the architects of the attack. A search of Posada’s apartment in Venezuela turned up bomb-making instructions, some materials as well as Cubana Airlines timetables and other incriminating documents.

Posada and Bosch were charged in Venezuela for the Cubana Airlines bombing, but the case soon became a political tug-of-war, since the suspects were in possession of sensitive Venezuelan government secrets that could embarrass President Andres Perez. Posada escaped from a Venezuelan prison where he was awaiting trial in 1985. In his autobiography, Posada thanked Miami-based Cuban activist Jorge Mas Canosa for the $25,000 that was used to bribe guards who allowed Posada to walk out of prison. Another Cuban exile who aided Posada was former CIA officer Felix Rodriguez, who was close to then-Vice President Bush.  More details on the worst  terrorist act in the hemisphere to that date are provided below:

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba/2016-10-06/bombing-cuban-jetliner-40-years-later

http://www.loopnewsbarbados.com/content/watch-cubana-air-bombing-remembered

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1976/oct/08/cuba.fromthearchive


In the last link we learn that Right wing Cuban exiles, the lot Ms. O'Grady extols, were responsible.  Subsequent documents have confirmed the role of these terrorists and U.S. CIA complicity (via Luis Posada) as well. So in the midst all her outrage about Bernie Sanders and Fidel Castro ("a megalomaniac"), O'Grady mentions none of this.  Convenient memory lapse or selective attention to rewrite Cuban history?  I.e. rewriting the history of the Bay of Pigs, and JFK's involvement:

"Around 2,800 Cuban men trained for the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. They had been promised U.S. air cover but President Kennedy reneged at the last minute and the Communists easily defeated them."

Now the truth: 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 advisers, 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 Intelligence Board, the Office of National Estimates, and Office of Current Intelligence all provided clear warning that a careful reappraisal was needed.

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'."

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.  Indeed, many serious JFK assassination researchers (including me), are convinced that at least one team of mechanics for the Dallas hit were comprised of surviving Bay of Pigs Cubans - with axes to grind against JFK.

Maybe it's time Mary O'Grady take an early retirement and write some children's fantasy books instead.  Especially as she has so much more talent for bunkum and distortion of real world events.  (As well as ignoring many others).  

See also:

Peter Bloom

Capitalism

The Real Global Threat to 21st Century Freedom Is Authoritarian Capitalism Not Democratic Socialism

And:

Class: The Little Word the Elites Want You to Forget

And:
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/03/what-maddow-left-out-in-her-segment-on.htm

Skewering More Absurd Trump - JFK Comparisons

Let us admit that given Donnie J. Dotard's poll numbers are now historically low, it follows his many acolytes would be in full desperation mode  to try rehabilitate his rep. And what better way than by trying to make specious comparisons with John F. Kennedy. In this case, dredging up the most negative or appalling,  claimed JFK  actions (like stealing elections, "coup d'etat's" and "back channels"). As if Kennedy is now on a par with Dotard and his actual documented appalling behavior (grabbing pussies praising white supremacists as 'fine people', laundering dark money from Russian Mafia, and stealing elections with the help of Russkies etc.). I will leave out the incidental 'fluff' analogies or what I call "decorative clutter", i.e.:  which burger bars JFK frequented, what yachts - if any - he used,  or his Palm Beach getaways. None of these get to the core of governance or policies. With that in mind I now respond to the core comparisons made by our friendly Right wing blogger:

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 Intelligence Board, the Office of National Estimates, and Office of Current Intelligence all provided clear warning that a careful reappraisal was needed.

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'."

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.

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."

Newly Released Documents Don't Shed That Much New Light On JFK

• 

As is standard for the Neoliberal media, much hoopla is being made over the newly released documents dating from the Kennedy administration. We are informed - by history researcher Timothy Naftali- that these newly declassified files reveal a "cunning and cagey" President.  But sheesh Louise, why wouldn't he be,  realizing the national security state was tracking his every move - especially his post -1962 efforts at rapprochement with Fidel Castro?

The REAL question for those of us who are serious Kennedy researchers (meaning we have actually written at least one book on the topic of JFK - or his assassination) is: WHERE are the files that really need to be declassified? I am referring to the ones concerning CIA propaganda guy George Joannides. He was a key link to the framing of Lee Oswald in conjunction with David Atlee Phillips and his fake cables painting Oswald as the guy in the Cuban Consulate in Mexico City. This despite the fact he was nowhere around and besides the images taken by the CIA were not of Oswald at all, e.g.

But oh no! We're instead led by the sensationalist media to more jabberwocky, old news and gossip fodder, such as:

- JFK had a "girlfriend system"  (No shit, Sherlock!)

- JFK "had serious doubts about LBJ" (Yawn...we've known this since Evelyn Lincoln, JFK's secretary, wrote her revealing book: Kennedy and Johnson, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968,  on the Texas bastard's yen for power - even snooping around the Oval Office in the morning before JFK arrived and once asking JFK if he could partake of a "shared presidency".)

- JFK "was planning to drop LBJ from the 1964 ticket" (Again,old news. Anyone not comatose then knew Johnson was up to his rat -fucking eyeballs with the Bobby Baker scandal. JFK would have had to be a certified imbecile to keep him - which is why Johnson was compelled to help plan the assassination. It was either he was going to be new Commander- in -chief, or in the slammer. DOH!)

More scuttlebutt from Tim Naftali - breaker of all this "news"

- From 1961 through the Cuban missile crisis, for instance, Kennedy sent his brother Robert to hold secret talks with Soviet spy Georgi Bolshakov. Recordings also reveal that Kennedy decided to pursue negotiations against the advice of his cabinet, and with his brother’s help. (Again, most of us who are deep politics researchers already knew something along these lines was going on. After all, JFK knew several in his cabinet were really 'gunning' for him, and those included Curtis LeMay of the JCS. This side strategy served him well during the Cuban missile crisis when LeMay actually demanded Kennedy bomb and invade Cuba. When he refused, LeMay compared him to Neville Chamberlain.)

- Naftali said that Kennedy did not want to order the disastrous 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but felt “boxed in” by politics (Again, old news. People only need to get off their asses and read 'The Bay of Pigs Declassified'. They will also see JFK was "boxed in" by none other than his predecessor, Ike, who'd laid the original plans for the invasion in "Operation Zapata", in his last term and expected JFK to carry them out)

- Kennedy “was making re-election decisions”, Naftali said. “He thought Americans didn’t have the political courage” for diplomacy with communist countries.  (Again, not really that much a revelation.)

-A year after he called on Americans to land on the moon, for example, Kennedy asked the Soviets, in private and in public, to join with the US and conquer space together (Ho -hum. Old news! Already have this stated in several NASA documentaries I have on tape)

- That he spoke candidly only with his family, recorded hundreds of hours of conversations with unwitting people, and quickly resorted to intrigue – as with a CIA-backed coup in South Vietnam – “compounded the secrecy in the way he dealt with the world”, Naftali said.

This is the clearest evidence yet that Naftali is a dumbo and lacks clue one about Kennedy, as when he blabbers "resorting to intrigue". It wasn't Kennedy, but the CIA resorting to intrigue, as when JFK managed to get USAID (linked to the CIA) honcho David Bell in a meeting and Bell disclosed the USAID Commodity Import Aid Program  to S. Vietnam had been cut off, essentially telling JFK: "Yeah, we've instigated a coup, now what're you gonna do about it?"  Less than 24 hours later the Diems were dead and the CIA had telegraphed who was "really in charge" of JFK's administration.

The incident was confirmed by New York Times journalist Arthur Krock  in his piece  ‘The Inter-Administration War in Vietnam’, The New York Times, Oct. 3, 1963). wherein he wrote:

"If the United States ever experiences an attempt at a coup to overthrow the government, it will come from the CIA”
 
This followed his observation  that:  "the CIA had flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge.”

The Diems were killed on Nov. 2, 1963 and the CIA had planned for Kennedy to be taken out the same day in Chicago, except that trip was cancelled. The lone assassin set up for that hit was Thomas Arthur Vallee- as noted by author James Douglass in his JFK and the Unspeakable.

This monumental gaffe would also explain Naftali's dense statement when asked about the assassination:

"I’ve gone through each of the conspiracies one by one, trying to line them up, and could just never make that jump.“I believe it was Lee Harvey Oswald [who killed Kennedy].”

Of course, no 'jump' was needed had he really done his job. More than likely this loser went through all the easily dispatched conspiracies as opposed to the one most glaringly obvious (but demanding the most scut work, file dredging); that the CIA and national security state did Kennedy in.

But see, this probably would have required Naftali either getting hold of the Joannides' files or doing much more in -depth work, such as rigorously vetting Oswald's CIA files (the OS-351-164 (office of security), and the 201-289248 CI/SIG) as well as going through the cables sent from David Atlee Phillips' Mexico City station in October, 1963. As noted by Peter Dale Scott (‘Oswald, Mexico and Deep Politics’, 2013, p. 25) : “at least three show signs of CIA doctoring and the first, which does not, was nevertheless so misleading as to be possibly dishonest.” This was the cable from the Mexico City Station on Oct. 8 that claimed Oswald had appeared at the Soviet Embassy on Oct. 1

Alas, the Jonnnides' CIA files were not among the ones declassified for Naftali's benefit. However, I still maintain the diligent researcher could have come to the same conclusion of a CIA -sponsored hit without them, it just meant more laborious work - which Mr. Naftali was not prepared to do. This "lazy man's path"  is similar to that used by other pretenders, including Scott Aronson, see e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/10/why-some-quantum-physicists-need-to.html

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Addendum: MSNBC ought to be ashamed - or at least substitute host Alex Wagner (on Chris Hayes' All In') - for failing to correct her House Dem guest  3 nights ago. This House Dem Rep actually compared the Reeps' House Select Benghazi Committee to the Warren Commission. In fact, the appropriate comparison was to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978-79). The Warren Commission was a whole cloth creation of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and had nothing to do with a real congressional investigation.

Kudos to Obama For Normalizing Diplomatic Relations With Cuba

It's been over 50 years, but finally rationality and sanity have come to the fore in seeking to normalize relations with Cuba. This despite the hair on fire screeching by a lot of right wing Cubans such as Marco Rubio. Happily, Obama has the brains, courage and good sense not to pay attention to them.

First, let's get some history out of the way. Contrary to the myth that JFK began the Cuban isolation, it was in fact Kennedy who had begun a rapprochement with Fidel Castro through his aide-de-camp Rene Vallejo and Kennedy's emissary, William Attwood. This has been well documented by National Archives contributor Peter Kornbluh, and would have paved the way to normalization of relations, including trade. ('Kennedy and Castro: What Might Have Been', by Peter Kornbluh, in The Baltimore Sun, Aug. 22, 1999, p. 1C)

National Security Archivist Kornbluh showed (by reference to documents he had accessed), it was William Attwood a Washington lawyer (who had negotiated the original release of the Bay of Pigs prisoners), who was instrumental. Attwood was charged with becoming the first American emissary to secure Castro’s ear and trust in a year-long rapprochement. In particular, to show good will and good faith, Attwood arranged for $62 million in medicines and food aid as part of the prisoner deal. All this was approved by JFK and likely sealed his death warrant in the Agency. It certainly would have inflamed the passions of the Cuban right wing groups the Agency had been running since the Bay of Pigs debacle.

Recall CIA Director Richard Helms was already well aware of the bile held toward Kennedy by anti-Castro groups, especially the DRE ( Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil ) - trained by CIA operatives, David Atlee  Phillips and George Joannides with the DRE  described as: “one of the most bitter toward President Kennedy for his deal with the Russians." (HSCA, Vol. 10, 1979, ibid.). Helms, as well as William Harvey (coordinator for Staff D and the ZR/Rifle program) knew this hatred could be directed purposefully and what better way than an executive action. Since an assassination program (ZR/Rifle) had already been running since 1961, why not turn it from Castro to JFK and use some of the well motivated angry Cubans of the DRE to help carry it out?

Imagine, just imagine - how riled and furious that same Phillips-Joannides anti-Castro Cuban group would be when it learned (compliments of their CIA handlers, no doubt) that Kennedy was in the process of establishing normalized relations with Fidel via a rapprochement with his aide-de-camp. Hell, these DRE miscreants would have gone ballistic and begged Joannides and Phillips for anything they might do, any role, to exact payback.

Too extreme? They'd never do it? Hey ....this was the same basic bunch that blew a Cubana Airline plane (Flight 455) out of the skies off Barbados  SW coast on Oct. 6, 1976! If they could kill 73  innocents that day don't tell me they wouldn't volunteer to put one or more bullets into a prez that: a) they believed 'betrayed' them by not providing air cover for Operation Zapata (the Bay of Pigs invasion), and b) had begun rapprochement with Fidel - their most hated enemy.(Operation Zapata had actually been conceived in the Eisenhower administration, and Ike pushed it on Kennedy as a matter of "national security".  The CIA then lied about all aspects of it and when its final phase failed, JFK pulled all air support.).

The point is, had JFK lived we'd have had normalized relations with Cuba already. As it was, once LBJ took office he squelched the rapprochement one time, finito. Isolation and cold war opposition returned and reached its culmination with the Cubana Airliner bombing.

The nutty right wing Miami Cubans yap about Obama giving a pass to Cuban terrorism, but it was in fact American-sponsored terrorism that brought down that plane with all those people on board in 1976. 

Like an automated puppet, Marco Rubio has gone off on Obama - bawling he's "the worst negotiator ever" and gave Castro "all he wanted", also that further normalization will not be a gimme - but history will be the final arbiter. Also, it's well known that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - one of the Repukes' main cash cows- has been foursquare for normalizing economic relations.

In the meantime, we can look for an embassy to be set up in Havana, and relaxation of travel rules as well as banking regulations.

So it will be interesting to watch the Rs twist in the wind over this and get their panties all in a knot, along with the reactionary Cubans in Little Havana.

It's now time for these people to grow up, and for Marco Rubio to shut up!