Posted on 10/31/2009 10:03:52 AM PDT by rellimpank
WARREN KOZAK "All war is based on deception." —Sun Tzu
In the summer of 1962, the leader of the great Soviet empire, Nikita Khrushchev, faced a serious problem. His huge intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) didn't work. Their launchers were unreliable, their aim was off and the fuel used to rocket them skyward was so volatile that they had to be stored empty. In case of an attack, they would first have to be tanked up before being fired. The Soviet premier understood that since his ICBMs were a crucial part of his nuclear balance with the U.S., this put him at a major disadvantage.
However, Khrushchev did have a smaller, intermediate-range missile that was dependable, accurate and quite deadly. But it was too small to hit the U.S. all the way from Russia. So Khrushchev, the chess enthusiast, thought up a bold countermove. He decided to secretly place his smaller but more reliable missiles within range of the United States and, thus, in one stroke, completely level the playing field.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Kennedy gave away far too much.
13 tense days without firing a shot.
Too bad, a sunken freighter and recovered missles
would have made a damning condemnation of the
Soviet claims.
A sunken freighter and the Soviet submarines on station with orders to retaliate with their nukes against our Navy, and we may indeed have had a holocaust. No thanks.
Not much of the truth has survived...JFK was addicted to speed, he could not keep his hands off of other men’s wives...and he could have taken Castro out in ‘62 and there’s was almost nothing the Soviets could have done about it.
He screwed up so bad...that it led to Dallas. In the words of the late Indira Gandhi...the American ruling class lost faith in him.
Anybody else remember the TFX scandal? Many today believe that jet fighter contract was issued because Kennedy was being blackmailed about his sex life.
This article has problems. To start with, all US missiles through the 5 story tall Titan II were also liquid fueled. And the reason both sides had seemingly far more missiles than were needed was because of the real equation known as “overkill”.
Overkill does *not* mean that targets will be hit repeatedly. It means redundancy, because missiles are so prone to failure at all times during their use. You have to have a LOT of extras, just to make the bare minimum target list. Even today.
A lot of the fault for the problem begins with the Cuban revolution, and why Eisenhower did not militarily intervene to stabilize the situation in a pro-democracy manner. While the Korean War was over, and the public was ambivalent, the years of Cuban conflict leading up to the overthrow of Batista on Jan 1, 1959, was an excellent opportunity for US intervention.
While not part of the Monroe Doctrine, since no foreign power was grandly involved, Eisenhower’s unwillingness to commit to hemispheric stability must be regarded as a tremendous lapse in judgment. When Batista was obviously near collapse, there should have been “peacekeeping” forces ready and able to engage to prevent further disruption.
Eisenhower was engaged in any number of important foreign policy exercises, far flung around the world. So it is puzzling why he should be so oblivious so close to home.
I was in Guantanamo Bay when this stuff hit. I was a fifth-grader.
The Navy brought in a ship loaded with coffins in preparation for the battle. I guess they didn’t use body-bags back then.
The dependents were evacuated on a convoy of Naval vessels that headed to Norfolk. The ship my mother and brother were on was already loaded with old ammunition that was being hauled out to sea to be dumped. When the evacuation orders came there was no time to dump the munitions. So our ship was too weighted down to keep up with the convoy.
We were bird-dogged by a Soviet submarine the entire trip. We found out after the fall of the Soviet Union that the sub had orders to sink our ship immediately if the feces struck the fan.
The boys slept on deck with the crew. The females took shifts sleeping in the crew bunks. There were 4 sleep shifts a day, each person getting 6 hours apiece. The galley was busy 24 hours a day feeding the crowds.
The naval crew was incredible. They were greatly inconvenienced and endangered, yet they went the extra light-year accommodating the evacuees on board.
The day before the evacuation orders came down, a contingency of Marines hit the beach. Somehow they invaded a day early. There were dependents on the beach as the Marines stormed ashore. They had been told that the base had already fallen to the Cubans, and they were going to fight all the way to Havana. They were to expect 90% casualties. I don’t know how they avoided shooting some Americans as they hit the shore.
When the evacuation orders were delivered, we were given less than 5 minutes to grab some clothes and get on the bus taking us to the ship. My mom tied our beloved dog in the back yard with a pan of water (like that would last any time in the hot Cuban sun). Dad wasn’t able to go to the house for several weeks. Someone came by and took care of the families’ pets.
We went about 6 months before my mom was able to talk to our dad. Some ham radio operator in NC arranged a short talk with dad via a ham sailor in Gitmo.
--What can we learn from this chapter of history that will help up us deal with future nuclear threats from, say, Iran? Perhaps it's that the most catastrophic consequences come when we talk ourselves into believing what we want to believe. Today, the client state may be slightly further to the south in Venezuela. The missiles could be deadlier. And the man on the other end of the phone won't be Nikita Khrushchev. Next time a U.S. president could be dealing with the mullahs in Iran.
A crazy mullah who thinks that nuclear war with bring back the 12th Imam and usher in an Age of Islamic Paradise, is a bit harder to negotiate with.
But, hey, Obama says he's up to the task, and who am I to disagree with our Dear Leader?
The go order to invade Cuba was just hours away. I was on the USS Renville (APA227) and we were being issued ammo and flack vests. The invasion was to be at night where from our beachead we were to link up with the Marines from Guantanimo and march into Havana. I remember Major Petska the Marine commander of the on board Marines told me, “doc we will be drinking a toast tomorrow at the Havana Hilton”. When we did not go there was a lot of disappointed Marines so we headed into Port Au Prince Haiti for R&R. We were pretty rambunctious and wonder if Port Au Prince has recovered yet.
The go order to invade Cuba was just hours away. I was on the USS Renville (APA227) and we were being issued ammo and flack vests. The invasion was to be at night where from our beachead we were to link up with the Marines from Guantanimo and march into Havana. I remember Major Petska the Marine commander of the on board Marines told me, “doc we will be drinking a toast tomorrow at the Havana Hilton”. When we did not go there was a lot of disappointed Marines so we headed into Port Au Prince Haiti for R&R. We were pretty rambunctious and wonder if Port Au Prince has recovered yet.
The first is my memory of seeing JFK on TV announcing the blockade. I was nine years old and on an errand for my mom, at the local pharmacy, Rinaldi's. When I walked in with my list, I wanted to hand it to the pharmacist, but he was staring at the TV, along with the other adults in the store. After the speech, I remember the general look of shock and fear on everyone's face, and one so two people saying that we were going to war.
A few years ago, I worked with a fellow who was a former Naval Intelligence officer. he was stationed in Turkey at the time of the Missile Crisis, and told me that he was the first to report the movement of missiles on Russian ships through Constantinople.
The argument has been made that Khrushchev felt emboldened enough to plant the missles in Cuba after JFK bungled the Bay of Pigs and then assumed JFK was weak after their Vienna meeting of 1961.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/149gqohu.asp?pg=1
The Kennedy-Khrushchev Conference for Dummies
Thank God we had Jack Kennedy in the White House during the missile crisis. At least Jack knew something about the measured use of military force.
But no more.
I live in never-ending, gibbering terror over what will happen when Obambi faces his first serious military crisis. And there certainly will be one, because the rest of the world knows we have a rookie in the White House and they’ll never have a better chance to pull off a military adventure.
Obambi can’t make a decision about Afghanistan and he’s had years to think about it. What will happen when he has minutes to decide? Or seconds to act?
Very scary things to think about on Halloween night, eh?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.