Reply #11: I think you need to read James Douglas' "JFK and the Unspeakable," just published

[Peace Patriot]

by the Maryknoll fathers. It might open your eyes about JFK and Castro, what JFK was dealing with, and what he wanted to do, against the opposition of the entire "military-industrial complex" and its attendant national political establishment.

The commonly known facts about JFK and Cuba are clear enough. He scuttled the CIA invasion of Cuba. But the rest of the story is not well known. He opened back-channels to Castro, and initiated steps to meet with Castro, for a detente. He managed to hold off the "hawks" on pre-emptive nuking of Cuba and Russia, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His entire Cabinet was against him in his pursuit of a peaceful solution. He removed U.S. missiles from Turkey--the initial U.S. provocation that prompted the Soviet Union to place missiles in Cuba--and had to do it behind the backs of his own Cabinet--and saved us all from nuclear war (end of the planet, end of the human race) in 1962, over this issue. (Khrushchev then backed down and removed the missiles from Cuba.) The blockade--also opposed by the Cabinet--was in lieu of a pre-emptive nuclear strike on Russia and Cuba!

Get your facts straight, please. And, for godssakes, more than forty years have gone by since then. It is a different world. Where is this weird suggestion about Caroline Kennedy coming from? It is non-sensical. She is much more likely to approve a detente with Cuba--that her own father wanted and was trying to arrange, way back then--then to be a Bushite on Cuba.

As for Bobby, he and JFK both changed their view of the "Cold War" after they stared Armageddon in the face, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Bobby (the A.G.) was really the only adviser that supported JFK in his change toward peaceful solutions. Bobby became very active on the issue of Latin American poverty, in his own campaign for president. Castro actually had positive things to say about their "Alliance for Progress."

JFK and RFK were both children of the "Cold War." Bobby was chief counsel to the red-baiting Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s! Not until they entered the White House did they begin to understand the CIA and the secret government that was trying to instigate wars all over the world. They underwent a learning curve, and became more and more peace and disarmament oriented, more and more into social justice, and more and more opposed to the increasing U.S. military presence in Vietnam. It is easy to criticize them with hindsight. But we owe them the respect of at least knowing the efforts they made toward peace. And we should never forget that both died violently under highly suspicious circumstances, on our own soil, with the U.S. then descending into a spiral of genocide--in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, in Guatemala and throughout Latin America, and in other places--that they never would have supported, or would have stopped before it reached the levels that it did. Hindsight and FOIA also tell us this. They were trying to see the light at the end of the "Cold War" tunnel. Trying VERY HARD to see it. Aiming at it. And this may well be why they were both assassinated.

So please get better informed. And you might also ponder this: Caroline was, what?, five years old when all of that happened. Jeez. Give the woman some air.