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<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>From The
Nation magazine:<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>In
October 1962, unprovoked and out of the blue, the Soviet Union (the bad guys,
the aggressors) precipitated a crisis with the United States (the good guys,
the victims) by attempting to install nuclear missiles in Cuba, (a
“parking lot” for the missiles), 90 miles from the shores of the
United States. Luckily, US intelligence discovered this provocative plan before
its completion—in fact, before any nuclear warheads had arrived in Cuba,
rendering their delivery vehicles (missiles, planes, and boats) useless. And
so, with fearless, finely calibrated coercion, President John F. Kennedy
compelled Nikita Khrushchev to back down and remove the missiles. Kennedy stood
strong; he stood tall; he did not compromise; and in just 13 days, he secured
an unequivocal victory for the United States over the Soviet Union. Since
Kennedy’s forces had overwhelming local military superiority in the
Western hemisphere, and global superiority in deliverable nuclear warheads all
over the world, the crisis was not as dangerous as some made it out to be.
Khrushchev had no choice. He had to capitulate or risk being destroyed and he
knew it, which is why he “blinked” and Kennedy didn’t.
Kennedy and Khrushchev rightly ignored the ranting of Cuban leader Fidel
Castro, since his views were irrelevant to both the deployment and removal of
the missiles. October 1962 was Kennedy’s finest hour, Khrushchev’s
worst humiliation, and Castro’s introduction into the high-stakes game
that was the Cold War, as played by the Big Boys from Washington and
Moscow—a game in which a small country like Cuba was merely a bit player.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Now
you’ve met the enemy. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Our
research on the crisis over the past 30 years proves beyond a doubt that <em><i><font
face="Times New Roman">everything in that paragraph is dead wrong</font></i></em>!
It never happened. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=dropc><span class=wpsdc-drop-cap><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt'>W</span></font></span>hat <em><i><font
face="Times New Roman">did</font></i></em> happen? Here, also in one paragraph,
is the truth about what made the Cuban missile crisis the most dangerous crisis
in recorded history: <o:p></o:p></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>The
crisis did not come out of the blue and last 13 days; US blindness toward Cuba
only made it seem that way. The crisis began 18 months earlier, after the
failed April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Cuba, fearing an imminent full-scale US
invasion, asked Russia for defensive weapons. Russia began providing nuclear
weapons, and the superpower-sleepwalk toward Armageddon began. The United
States was not a victim of the deployment; its threats to Cuba were an
important cause of it. US intelligence assessments were atrocious: They did not
predict the deployment; they did not even confirm it until the missiles in Cuba
were almost ready to fire; and their conclusion that warheads for the weapons
probably never reached Cuba was dead wrong. In all, 162 nuclear warheads were
shipped, delivered, stored, and made ready to fire by Soviet technicians in
Cuba. While Kennedy courageously and ingeniously resisted the many hawks in his
administration urging him toward war, he had no plan when the missiles were
discovered and was shocked at the deployment. Nobody won. Nobody lost. Nobody
“blinked.” Once Kennedy and Khrushchev realized they were losing
control of the crisis, they worked feverishly, collaboratively, and effectively
to terminate it. But Moscow’s and Washington’s dismissal of the
Cuban perspective, leading to Cuban outrage and provocative behavior, sent the
crisis to within a hair’s breadth of nuclear war. Far from being a bit
player, Cuba became the hinge of the world. Believing they were irrevocably
doomed by an imminent US nuclear attack on the island, Fidel Castro wrote to
Khrushchev urging him to launch an all-out nuclear attack on the United States
ASAP, once the Americans began invading the island. The Cubans, and their
Russian comrades in Cuba, prepared to nuke the US Guantánamo Bay naval base,
and to use their short-range nuclear weapons against the invading US forces.
Had these actions been carried out, a US nuclear response would likely have
followed, and Armageddon would have commenced then and there.<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>Every
claim in this summary statement is backed by voluminous and authoritative
declassified documentation, oral testimony from top-ranking leaders during the
crisis, and by the careful analyses of scholars from many disciplines! What it
says happened, <em><i><font face="Times New Roman">happened</font></i></em>! <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color="#1d1b11" face=Euphemia><span
style='font-size:11.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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