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In reply to the discussion: Generals mocking JFK behind his back during Cuban Missile Crisis caught on tape... [View all]Octafish
(55,745 posts)43. Echoed by Lemnitzer and Dulles who counseled the best time for a sneak attack was 'Fall 1963.'
I kid you not.
Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?
Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.
James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994
During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.
The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.
But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.
The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.
CONTINUED...
http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963
Old news to you, patrice. However, this is not found in the history books, history programs, official history or general discourse of anything public. If it were, more people would connect the dots.
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Generals mocking JFK behind his back during Cuban Missile Crisis caught on tape... [View all]
Octafish
Sep 2012
OP
You are most welcome, Trailrider1951! Here's the guy who should be writing the book on Gen. LeMay...
Octafish
Sep 2012
#18
"JFK and the Unspeakable" by James Douglass should be required reading in classrooms
drokhole
Sep 2012
#3
Not exactly. LeMay ordered unauthorizedoverflights of Soviet airspace during Cuban Missile Crisis...
Octafish
Sep 2012
#21
My Mother told me a long time ago when I was a kid about a guy that lived in our neighborhood
ArnoldLayne
Sep 2012
#11
Thank you for sharing that, ArnoldLayne! We're just starting to learn the story...
Octafish
Oct 2012
#41
Thank you for the heads-up, MinM! Interesting Times, indeed: ''A U-2 has been lost off Alaska.''
Octafish
Sep 2012
#22
The generals were obviously trying to provoke the Soviets into a massive retaliation!
LongTomH
Sep 2012
#25
I wonder what this country would be like had we actually listened to Eisenhower's warning about the MIC taking over.
Initech
Sep 2012
#16
Shoup was pushing for full on nuclear war on Cuba and Le May was playing the angles either way. nt
patrice
Sep 2012
#26