Stanislav Petrov: The 2nd Man To Save The World

Most Americans who've had a proper introduction to recent American History are aware of how JFK pretty well saved the world (much of it) back in October, 1962 at the peak  of the Cuban Missile Crisis. As we know, Kennedy rejected the Joint Chiefs pressure to bomb and invade Cuba in favor of a naval blockade. Just as well, since as his former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara observed (in his documentary 'The Fog of War') Castro would have launched over 100 armed ballistic missiles had that happened.

McNamara learned of this while on a conference visit to Havana in 1992, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the crisis. McNamara had asked Fidel what he would have done had the U.S. invaded Cuba. Castro didn't hesitate, informing him that over 100 armed (with single megaton warhead) missiles would have been sent flying.

Flabbergasted, McNamara pressed him: "You really would have destroyed your country?" and Fidel replied, "Yes, and you would have too in a similar situation!"

Echoing the 'better dead than Red' meme entrenched in Americans at the time.

How close we came to nuclear war at the time was well documented in the excellent book of the tape transcripts: T'he Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, by Ernest R. May and Philip K. Zelikow (1997, President and Fellows of Harvard College).

Therein , on p. 347, for ’10:00 A.M. Oct. 24” one finds:

“At the time the quarantine became effective, the Strategic Air Command moved from the general Defense Condition 3 to Defense Condition 2, the level just below general war. In addition to ICBMs and submarine-based ballistic missiles, every available bomber – more than 1,400 aircraft- went on alert. Scores of bombers, each loaded with several nuclear weapons and carrying folders for pre-assigned targets in the Soviet Union, were kept continuously in the air around the clock with shifts- refueled by aerial tankers, taking turns hovering over Northern Canada and the Mediterranean Sea. The Soviet government was presumed to be aware of these developments.”

On p. 183 one beholds Gen. Curtis  LeMay saying that "We have got to do more than take out the missiles" and he demands a massive air strike as well.  Here's how that would have played out: At the first hint of U.S. attack planes picked up on Cuban radar most or all of the 100-odd Soviet IRBMs would have been launched. The targets would mainly have been U.S. east coast cities: Miami, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, but a number of the missiles would have struck interior cities including Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Chicago and possibly Milwaukee.

Even as those missiles were in flight, the Kennedy White House would have been forced to go to Defcon 1, or full war condition, even as the Soviets - also now acknowledging what was happening (realizing Cuba's missile launch would make them a target), launched their own missiles. In the space of about 30 minutes, as McNamara pointed out, some 7,500 missiles would have been in the air headed for targets in the USA and USSR.  Since most warheads at that time were in the 1-10 megaton range, the full nuclear exchange - lasting maybe an hour would have resulted in possibly 300 million dead and massive clouds of radiation polluting the rest of the planet via the trades and other winds.

The world escaped at least partial obliteration, thanks to Kennedy's use of reason over reaction.

Flash forward now to September 26, 1983.   A Soviet satellite detects five U.S. ICBMS heading toward the USSR.  This detection immediately causes alarms to sound at the Soviet Central Command in Oko with backlit screens flashing LAUNCH!    Standard operating procedure at the time dictated that the command be followed with a full scale missile launch - including all 3,000 or so Soviet ICBMs - all armed with multi-megaton warheads.

But something didn't seem right to Stanislav Petrov, lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces.  Why only five ICBMs? Surely if the Americans had really planned a pre-emptive nuclear attack they'd have thrown their whole arsenal at the USSR.  

Using his reason, like Kennedy did 20 years earlier, Petrov declared the system's indication a false alarm. Subsequent investigation showed that he was right: no missiles were approaching and the computer detection system was malfunctioning.  According to the Wikipedia account:

"It was subsequently determined that the false alarm had been created by a rare alignment of sunlight on high-altitude clouds and the satellites' Molniya orbits, an error later corrected by cross-referencing a geostationary satellite."

Alignment of a satellite with sunlight on high altitude clouds nearly led to a full retaliatory response from the Russians and likely nuclear war? Yes, indeed, and the near breakdown showed a nascent weakness in the Soviet early warning system and also raised concern about the U.S. system too - also based on hair trigger alarms.

While there remains debate on the role Petrov actually played in the events that day, just as there remains debate on Kennedy's role, all generally agree that his voice of doubt- and reasoning -  was enough to leverage restraint.  Analogous to how Kennedy's doubt that an invasion was the answer in 1962 leveraged a restraint on precipitous action that might have led to a major nuclear exchange.

We have had then two men saving the world at different times. The question is: Will a third person come to the rescue with the next geopolitical or  technical snafu? Or will our luck have run out?

HONORING JOHN FITZGERALD KENNEDY’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS (Part One)

In this 50^th year following John F. Kennedy’s assassination, it is incumbent on those of us who actually lived during the ‘Camelot” era to remind people living now – most of whom weren’t born until much later- of his mammoth accomplishments despite serving only 3 years. This is also needed to fend off the ever present Kennedy haters,  political detractors, mud slingers -including latter-day “journalist” opportunists,  and racist filth and sewer scum who even today attempt to blight his presidency – as they have Obama’s- by their disgusting misrepresentations and trash. Even among the more sane and rational (or “liberal”) authors, it is easy to give short shrift to Kennedy if one isn’t paying attention, or one if deficient in the historical substance of his presidency - or one is viewing it through the prism of a preconceived bias.

 

Among the latter (I refuse to  dignify the racist vermin’s trash) is “historian” Robert Dallek who in a piece several years ago dismissed nearly all JFK’s accomplishments as overblown and exaggerated.  One of the provocative questions he threw out was:

 'Why do we admire a president who did so little?’

 

Why indeed? But what of the definition of “did so little”? Does Dallek regard the federalization of a Southern state’s National Guard  to preserve civil rights as doing “so little”? (As I described two blogs ago). Is he not cognizant of the political risk Kennedy took at the time- including for the Democratic Party which lost the South as a result? Does he not care? Does he seriously believe any president in this modern era would do the same today- say if a Governor of Georgia again prevented African-American students from attending schools?  If so, he's into stuff that's not even legalized yet here in Colorado!

Dallek begins his article by writing:

"True, his brilliant handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis resolved the greatest Soviet-American confrontation threatening a nuclear disaster in the 45-year history of the Cold War".

Yet despite acknowledging JFK's brilliant handling,  Dallek can't or won't admit its import to us all! And that in so choosing a non-aggressive path (naval blockade as opposed to invasion, bombing) JFK ALREADY had effectively done more than any ten presidents combined by the singular choice of NON-aggression! Because, had Kennedy not used his brain and willpower,  resisting the Joint Chiefs (particularly Gen. Curtis LeMay) , none of those other presidents would have been around to even be elected! We’d all have ended up in piles of radioactive dust and debris.

One wonders if Dallek or his equally historically deficient (and dismissive) contemporary media cohort even knows any of the background and how close we came to actual obliteration. Do they know that 90-odd IRBMs (intermediate range ballistic missiles) were actually ARMED and ready to be fired at U.S. east coast cities had Kennedy tried to invade or bomb Cuba ? (This according to a 1993 NBC Today interview with Robert McNamara that I still have on tape.) 

 

As per the article, 'Bomb Cuba! Le May Urged JFK', The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1996, p. 2A) Kennedy's Joint Chiefs, especially Air Force General Curtis LeMay and Lyman Lemnitzer, insisted Kennedy invade Cuba and take out the Soviet nuclear missile batteries and installations with bombs.

Kennedy was suspicious, and at some deep level, understood a serious and monumental danger if he acted precipitously. He chose instead to initiate a naval blockade, even as LeMay then compared JFK to Neville Chamberlain, and referred to his actions as “appeasement”.  Any other president might not have been so merciful, and might have had LeMay taken out and shot for treason.

But had JFK carried out the Joint Chief plans, all our then civilization would have been reduced to ashes. The U.S. bombing would have triggered the firing of 90-odd intermediate nuclear missiles on U.S. east coast cities, whereupon the U.S. would have rendered a nuclear retaliation on the Soviets, and vice versa. Given some 27,000 nuclear delivery systems- it is plausible that everything on Earth would have been reduced to cinders within a few hours.  So how the living hell is this not the most momentous accomplishment in all of human history, if human history would have essentially ended had he not chosen to act as he did?

 

Indeed, in the tape transcripts:  The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, by Ernest R. May and Philip K. Zelikow (1997, President and Fellows of Harvard College), the authors document how the country reached DEFCON 2 status (p. 347) on ’10:00 A.M. Oct. 24”. This is the stage directly before all out nuclear war! How could anyone – other than an imbecile – minimize the import of avoiding DEFCON 1?  Well, perhaps the passage of time has addled too many brains, but it hasn’t addled mine. The memories of those parlous days are as fresh and clear as ever!

 

As the referenced tapes note (I also have the actual tapes – as well as the book)ibid. :

 

”In addition to ICBMs and submarine-based ballistic missiles, every available bomber – more than 1,400 aircraft- went on alert. Scores of bombers, each loaded with several nuclear weapons and carrying folders for pre-assigned targets in the Soviet Union, were kept continuously in the air around the clock with shifts- refueled by aerial tankers, taking turns hovering over Northern Canada and the Mediterranean Sea. The Soviet government was presumed to be aware of these developments.”

At the time, I was a junior at Monsignor Edward Pace High School in North Miami, and in the middle of a Math class.  The principal (Brother Leo), entered to notify us of suspension of all classes:

 
“Boys, we are dismissing school. Please go home and make whatever preparations you need to with your families. Let us hope and pray we have a world to come back to when this is all over.”

At that I had to leave with books in tow, hoping I’d get to read them again, and trudge back home  (10 blocks away)where I found  my youngest brother – then age  9-  in near hysterics, crying and nearly wetting his pants, screaming about “The Russians gonna bomb us!” I had to calm the little idiot down, saying: “Mike, cool it! Kennedy is in charge and won’t allow that to happen! Now, go get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and stop your yelping”.

 

Make no freakin’ mistake that it took uncommon courage for Kennedy to stand up to his military whacko Joint Chiefs who were all charged and ready to bomb Cuba  “into the Stone Age”.  The worst piece of vermin demanding aggressive action was Air Force General Curtis LeMay , who actually compared JFK to Neville Chamberlain, and referred to his actions as “appeasement”.  Interestingly, we learned about a year and a half ago, that Lemay's whereabouts on the day of the assassination has always been a mystery. In a released  public audio,


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505266_162-57368696/chilling-tape-from-air-force-one-on-day-jfk-shot/?tag=cbsContent;cbsCarousel

we learned that LeMay was airborne, even as JFK's body was being flown back to Washington. And an aide to LeMay tried urgently to reach his boss, to no avail.  Something rotten in Denmark? How about something rotten in Dallas and with the military jagoffs that wanted Kennedy dead after he punked them (6 months after the Missile crisis, removing all Jupiter missile from Turkey in a secret deal)

So, it is reasonable to conclude Kennedy actually paid with his life, for preserving our own - by opposing the military nuts.

 
For this alone, it is idiocy to claim "JFK did little".  Quite the contrary, it is self-evident except to morons that he literally saved our entire freaking civilization which – had tools like LeMay and Lemnitzer had their way, would have been reduced to nuclear ash.  

 

These things need to be known! Today, 50 years later, our news and journalism machinery is much worse, putrefied and weakened (by corporate ownership) and not up to the task of exposing truth, or even historical facts. Instead they distort history as they pervert its significance. Their noxious profit  mandate has created a faux objectivity which seeks to give two sides equal credence and space - never mind there is really only one side to the story.

 

Next: Kennedy’s other achievements

 

 

Thanks to JFK We Still Have a Civilization!

John Fitzgerald Kennedy: Faced down his  belligerent, bellicose Joint Chiefs of Staff 50 years ago over the Cuban Missile Crisis. Had he not done so, had less spine and intestinal fortitude, the world today would have been mostly smoke and ashes.

In October, 1962 the world came the closest ever to all out nuclear war, but few living today have any remote familiarity with the events.

But a blog on the topic, commemorating the Cuban Missile Crisis of 50 years ago, when the U.S. came within a hair’s breadth of a nuclear war and our whole civilization stood on a precipice - is well worth the investment of time. Especially for the benefit of all those tens of millions who didn't live through it.

Though dimwit Joe Scarborough this morning insisted to guest Caroline Kennedy that : “Those guys (generals) never would have started a war”, Caroline reminded him otherwise. And, btw, for those that want all the details of what went down day by day, get hold of: ‘The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis’, by Ernest R. May and Philip K. Zelikow (1997, President and Fellows of Harvard College).

Therein, on p. 347, for ’10:00 A.M. Oct. 24” the diligent reader (not necessarily Dumbo Scarborough) will read:

“At the same time the quarantine became effective, the Strategic Air Command moved from the general Defense Condition 3 to Defense Condition 2, the level just below general war. In addition to ICBMs and submarine-based ballistic missiles, every available bomber – more than 1,400 aircraft- went on alert. Scores of bombers, each loaded with several nuclear weapons and carrying folders for pre-assigned targets in the Soviet Union, were kept continuously in the air around the clock with shifts- refueled by aerial tankers, taking turns hovering over Northern Canada and the Mediterranean Sea. The Soviet government was presumed to be aware of these developments.”


Meanwhile, in North Miami, where I was a junior at Monsignor Edward Pace High School, the Principal, Brother Leo, arrived in our classroom at about the same time, notifying us of suspension of classes:

“Boys, we are dismissing school right now. Please go home and make whatever preparations you need to with your families. Let us hope and pray we have a world to come back to when this is all over.”


This was stunning because Bro. Leo was usually never at a loss for words. His terse dismissal and measured, grave tone emphasized the seriousness of the situation. We packed our books, not knowing when or if we’d return, and began to file quietly out of the classroom. At home, my mom was already there, arranging for us all to go to nearby St. Monica’s Church for the stations of the Rosary. At least, if we were all to be blown to smithereens, we’d all hopefully end up in the same place – in her mind.


None of this is hype or bull, but LIVED history, as opposed to read history. Living in Miami as the 13 days of the crisis unfolded my brothers and I saw the Nike missile carriers being drawn through the streets of Miami. Even the strip joints and peep flicks on NW 79th St had been shuttered.


Yet today, many – especially on the detached from reality Right – refuse to ‘give Jack his jacket’ and acknowledge an eternal debt to Jack Kennedy for basically saving us from a nuclear holocaust. But this is a basic defect and quirk of the human brain, which appears to easily process positive accomplishment but misses or fails to appreciate ‘negative accomplishment’ i.e. in doing something, making a CHOICE which averts a certain catastrophe.


Thus, Barack Obama gets no credit from the Right’s ditto heads for saving us from a second Great Depression by injecting hundreds of billions into a financial system that had suffered the equivalent of a cardiac arrest. Had he not acted to get that $800+ billion stimulus we’d likely see breadlines blocks long in every city and a 19% unemployment as opposed to 7.8%. Similarly, JFK gets no credit for saving us from a nuclear war.


WHY, you may ask, does JFK merit such credit? Even before the full book of the released tapes documenting JFK's War Room response to the Cuban Missile Crisis was published, at least a number of major newspapers provided a heads up.  We learned, for example, that Kennedy refused to bomb or invade Cuba as he was urged to do by his Joint Chiefs, especially Air Force General Curtis LeMay , who actually compared JFK to Neville Chamberlain, and referred to his actions as “appeasement”. According to one of the first major mainstream news releases after the tapes in the WH situation room were released (The Baltimore Sun, Oct. 26, 1996, 'Bomb Cuba!Le May Urged JFK', p. 2A):

"Tapes of secretly recorded White House conversations released this week show that President John F. Kennedy's military advisers strongly pressured him to bomb and invade Cuba during the missile crisis 34 years ago this month. Indeed, they forecast that war would occur whether he invaded Cuba or not.

Blasting Kennedy's cautious approach, the Air Force Chief, Gen. Curtis LeMay, told the President at a White House meeting on Oct. 19, 1962, "This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich......

Through those days Kennedy was fending off strong pressure for an attack on Cuba from congressional and military leaders such as LeMay, who told him, 'We don't have any choice but direct military action...I see no other solution...'"

On p. 183 of the 'Kennedy Tapes' book, one sees LeMay saying that "we have got to do more than take out the missiles" and he demands a massive air strike as well. By Oct. 1992, when Robert McNamara was interviewed on 'Today' he observes that only ex post facto did the Kennedy situation room and Pentagon learn that all 93 odd IRBMs in Cuba were already armed with single megaton warheads, and had JFK followed LeMay's directives all hell would have broken loose.

Here's how that would have played out: At the first hint of U.S. attack planes picked up on Cuban radar most or all of the 93 IRBMs would have been launched. The targets would mainly have been U.S. east coast cities: Miami, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, but a number of the missiles would have struck interior cities including Cleveland, Detroit, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Chicago and possibly Milwaukee.

Even as those missiles were in flight, the Kennedy White House would have been forced to go to Defcon 1, or full war condition, even as the Soviets - also now acknowledging what was happening (realizing Cuba's missile luanch would make them a target), launched their own missiles. In the space of about 30 minutes, as McNamara pointed out, some 7,500 missiles would have been in the air headed for targets in the USA and USSR.  Since most warheads at that time were in the 5-10 megaton range, the full nuclear exchange - lasting maybe an hour would have resulted in possibly 300 million dead and massive clouds of radiation polluting the rest of the planet via the trades and other winds. Within a year, plausibly most humans would be dead or dying - if not of radiation sickness then from lack of food crops due to nuclear winter - with billions of tons of dust in the atmosphere blotting out sunlight.

THIS is the alternative world that never occurred, but which would have, had Kennedy knuckled under to Le May and his fellow Joint Chiefs. That some blow dried moron pundits today still have the nerve to say Kennedy "never accomplished anything" boggles my mind, and makes me want to smack them all upside the head.

To put all this in even bolder context and perspective, let's bear in mind the character of the man JFK had to face down. A guy who already had a major boner for war with Cuba and Castro and had for at least three years.  Thus, LeMay and fellow Joint Chief Lyman Lemnitzer were also behind the odious plans for "Operation Northwoods", as revealed in James Bamford's 2001 book, Body of Secrets, Doubleday Books, p. 82. This was described by Bamford as (ibid):

“maybe the most corrupt plan ever created by the U.S. government"

This treacherous campaign of terror was 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. The objective? To deliberately incite a war with Castro's Cuba. One can easily see from both the October, 1962 exchanges and also the Northwoods information, that the JCS and especially LeMay - had a major 'Jones' for starting a war.

These things need to be known! Today, 50 years later, our news and journalism machinery is much worse, more putrefied and weakened (by corporate ownership) and not up to the task of exposing truth, facts. Its mandate instead is a faux objectivity which seeks to give two sides equal credence and space - never mind there is really only one side to the story.

What needs to stand out, above all the din of the blow dried bimbos and himbos, is that one man - one president- stood tall and faced down monumental pressure from his military chiefs 50 years ago. In doing so, he provided a courageous template for all true leaders to act and think! I wonder how many voters are processing all this as they actually consider Mitt Romney who's all but promised a new war with Iran, as well as Syria - which I suppose is one reason he insists on $2 trillion more for the Pentagon.

Another aspect that ought to give pro-Romney voters pause, is the fact he's hired on as an advisor Gen. Tommy Franks. Yes, the spitting image clone of Curtis LeMay who once loudly proclaimed: "My God can beat your God!" to the Muslim world.

What would Romney have done in a situation similar to the one JFK faced and similar pressure from military chiefs? I shudder to think!