[deleted - put off topic comments in Reader Tips, please. ED]

"For three days his force of mostly volunteer civilians had battled savagely against a Soviet-trained and led force 10 times their size, inflicting casualties of 20 to 1"

um ... wait ... WHAT?

Some basic math skills are always an asset ....

The fascination for the Kennedys is something that I'll never understand. Simply the most overrated political dynasty in American politics, and let's hope the last.

Kennedy lied... That is pretty much a family trait. Look at Robert, he is pretty much full of it.

Alex, there were reports from later cuban defectors that indicated casualties to the cuban side of +3500 ... and that although the number of Fidel's cuban fighters was initially small, the casualties include the number of "enemies" fought against. That would include the locals that first saw the invasion, reported it, and those locals that joined the fight with Fidel's army. That's what good communists do.
I don't doubt Humberto Fontova's numbers, if you read the story, it's how the number of belligerents are counted.

"In military usage, casualties usually refer to combatants who have been rendered combat-ineffective, or all persons lost to active military service, which comprises those killed in action, killed by disease, disabled by physical injuries, disabled by psychological trauma, captured, deserted, and missing, but does not include injuries which do not prevent a person from fighting."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualty_(person)

As you know, the civil rights movement was going on at the same time as the Cuban Missle crisis.
The Kennedys were touted to be supporters of the negroes and their protests. Bobby mused one day to JFK that the only good that would come out of missles in Cuba is if one could be dispatched to Mississippi.
Bunch of first-class phonies.

For the first time in my 37 years I was ashamed of my country.

Good time to juxtapose with Michelle Obama.

The cuban-americans in the south still carry a grudge against the Dems much like the long standing grudge by France about Suez.....

Thanks for the informative post, did not know that.

Alex prisoners aren't casualties. Basic knowledge. It's a ratio, basic math.

Good thing the Kennedys were not Republican or their every sin, real or imagined, would have been broadcast in living colour around the world. However the Kennedys were smarter than that. They were Democrats which means if they had committed murder and high treason in the Oval Office while gang raping Mother Teresa it would never have been mentioned.

"Alex prisoners aren't casualties."

I think you need to discuss that with Marc in Calgary. Let me go get some popcorn before you start.

We were fed more BS about the Great Kennedys than any other politicians in my lifetime,until Obama.

Nothing the Kennedys did could be criticized,and of course, we had this "Camelot" comparison running through the minds of their many fans in the MSM.

Cracks started to appear in the facade in the 1990's,as more of the truth about JFK's campaign came out. Kennedy's victory was the result of outright bribery by Old Joe Kennedy,the NAZI sympathizer.

There's a documentary done by A&E about how Joe enlisted the help of the Italian mob in Chicago to win that important city,and how Kennedy bagmen drove down the East Coast to Florida,stopping to bribe County sheriffs along the way.

It's not surprising Kennedy was responsible for the f***up at the Bay of Pigs,he was another Democrat dilletante,playing at politics.

kenedys pi$$ed a lot of people off, the list is huge, and I see some of the same sort of betrayals and back stabbing going on today, causing discontent and anger...interesting times

the film the kennedy's playing on history channel sunday's is imo one of the better ones i have seen with a great cast.

Too true dmorris.
Although the Chicage machine swung the election, they couldn't have done it if West Virginia had not gone Democrat. It has been determined that the Kennedy family spent over 1 million dollars to buy off that state. Local sheriffs had the clout and they were paid handsomly for their efforts.

The big question of WHO killed JFK is a moot point when one stacks it up against WHY.

For Kennedy, it was the Bay of Pigs.

For Johnson, it was Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

For the post-Nixon Democrat Congress, it was Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

For Carter, it was Iran, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

For Clinton, it was Rwanda (which he implored the UN to ignore).

For Obama, it is Egypt and the Gulf of Sidra and, soon, Israel.

Never, never elect Democrats into power.

It's interesting to watch the response as liberal heroes are unmasked by accurate historical analysis, albeit long overdue. For example, left with no response, pissants like alex stamp their feet and throw bitchy fits over insignificant details without disproving the basic premise.

And it didn't do JFK much good to "not get involved" in the Bay of Pigs did it? The Ruskies and Fidelistas interpreted it as a sign of weakness and followed it up with the very bold attempt to install nukes in Cuba the following year, bringing the West to the brink of nuclear holocaust (I was a kid at the time and remember the "duck and cover" drills in school, the sirens and emergency air-raid shelter preparations). This time Kennnedy had no choice but to "get involved".

And the year following that, Kennedy was assassinated by -- surprise, surprise -- a member of the Communist Front organization "Fair Play for Cuba" who had previously defected to the Soviet Union was indoctrinated there.

Will the Democrats (and Libs) never learn from history? SDA's motto applies: "Pleasing your enemies does not turn them into friends".

Another part of the story almost never told involves Richard Nixon.

During the very middle of the fiasco, JFK called RMN and asked for a meeting. RMN came to the White House where he found a very shaken JFK. JFK asked him what he should do. RMN unhesitatingly responded - make up an incident/excuse and send in the marines.

RMN was a person with vast experience under Eisenhower in seeing the covert activities the CIA undertook in central and south america and elsewhere.

HAd JFK taken RMNs advice Castro and Che would be the subjects of obscure trivia questions.

Alex >

Don't know how I'm supposed to feel about this one Alex, why don't you help me out as usual.

I see you've commented a couple of times already, but nothing there as far as a stance or opinion.

Personally I can't stand the bloody Cubans although I've never met one. It's all that Scarface stuff. Liked Kennedy, but he was a philandering hob nobber who associated himself with the Ku_Klux_Klan party of America. He did lay down a mean speech though, and that’s what counts I guess.

A far better man than Obamba polls would suggest, and without a Nobel Peace Prize thought twice about bombing little countries that kept their affairs in-house.

I was 12 when Kennedy was assainated. I could not undertstand why. Given the betrayal surrounding the Bay of Pigs disclosed here, I now understand.

I couldn't understand why we were sent home from school when Kennedy was shot. I asked my teacher what it had to do with Canada? The answer wasn't memorable.
I wasn't surprised when Bobby got offed. He was a bigger p---k than his brother. Ted wasn't worth shooting.
Kennedy got the US into Vietnam, something Johnson wore after. It seems being friendly with JFK was hazardous to your health.

ricardo

"And the year following that, Kennedy was assassinated by -- surprise, surprise -- a member of the Communist Front organization "Fair Play for Cuba" who had previously defected to the Soviet Union was indoctrinated there"

no he wasn't, Oswald was CIA, J Files mafia, Nicoletti, mafia.....those are three identified shooters....though the anti Castro cubans certainly played a part in it

GYM -
The only conclusion that is supported by evidence is that Oswald acted alone. There is no coherent argument that implicates the FBI, or for that matter, Cubans. The fact that some people buy such assertions says a lot about there lack of analytical skills and/or their gullibility.

Kennedy was a punk ( Murray Kempton's term for him) and the typical Democrat catastrophe in foreign policy. He turned a blind eye to the murder of Diem, botched the Cuban missile crisis, and sat on his hands when the Soviets built the Berlin wall .

Ricardo, there's a bit more to the story. Kennedy and Khrushchev met two months later in June at the Vienna Summit. That personal meeting reinforced for Khrushchev that Kennedy was weak.

It should also be noted that the Cuban Missile Crisis ended in a stalemate, not a US victory. Kennedy agreed to pull all US bases and weapons out of Turkey in return for the USSR pullback on Cuba.

Small C: there's more than a little suspicion that the US organized the murder of Diem.

Gord: Indeed. And then the opportunity was permanently lost when the Cuban missile crisis resulted in a de facto guarantee that USSR pulls out its missiles and the US leaves Cuba alone.

Israel was faced with a similar situation in the 1960s when Nasser was building a missile program in Egypt. No grandstanding by Israel to force Nasser to back down. Instead Mossad simply assassinated all the East German engineers working on the program.

There's a time to talk, and there's a time to shoot. Israel usually has pretty good instincts about that, but it seems that the US does not.

Posted by: small c conservative at April 16, 2011 9:07 PM

You're wasting your breath. The crazy is strong in this place ...

Army A has 100 soldiers. Army B has 1000 soldiers, ten times as large.

In a battle, Army A had 10 casualties. Army B had 200 casualties, 20 times as much.

What's your math problem, Alex?

Kennedy was killed by a pissed off wife

The Bay of Pigs was remarkable in its CIA administrative competence. Later it was to be
discovered that there was not one memo in existence containing the signature of the person
who presided over the complete screw up.
The operation was supposed to have been completed during President Eisenhower's term
as a usual run of the mill Latin American paper thin hokey D Day style sideshow while reality
consisted of bribing everyone in sight to the cause. The Cuban marxists and the soviets were
on top of it from the start.
Keeping Cuba financially afloat as a communist client state was a major contributor to the
bankrupting of the USSR so in the end the defeat was a contributor to later cold war victory.
Not that it brought much comfort to the anti-Castro Cubans who died and suffered thanks to
the fear of Krushchev at the Kennedy White House.

What, exactly, were the Soviets going to do had we invaded Cuba?

Berlin was their only riposte short of WWIII. Maybe that was foremost on Kennedy's mind.

But unlike Cuba for the Russians, we actually had the means to defend or at least retalite for Berlin. We would have been attacking Cubans. They would have been attacking Americans, French, British, and Germans.

Damn FDR and Truman for letting Stalin conquer have the world. Damn Kennedy and LBJ for not having the balls to stand up to Russia.

For those wanting to learn more about the JFK assassination bugliosi' book is an absolute must. The first half of the book is a moment by moment account of the incident from well before to through aftermath - literally second by second at some points. The most gripping reading I have ever encountered. The description of the very first thing that LBJ did upon entering the oval office for the first time as POTUS shakes me up every time I read it.

There is merit to American intervention in 1960s Cuba, but not without approval from Congress and a full Declaration of War. Otherwise it's just unconstitutional.

I wasn't surprised when Bobby got offed.
~Speedy

Yeah, it's really surprising how incurious people are about that particular coincidence or the details surrounding it.
Jack and Bobby had a motto, "Don't get mad, get even."
Of course with the lone nut assassin of Jack Kennedy dead himself within 24 hours of Jack's killing there wouldn't have been anything for 'President' Robert Kennedy to get even about in that particular case...

Apparently the fight for democracy only exists on the 'left'. Refer to the illegal balloting on the Guelph campass.

It brings to mind the accusation that ballot boxes were 'stuffed' for Kennedy to defeat Nixon. Explains Nixon's fabled paranoia, say what!

Can anyone wonder why the Kennedy boys turned out the way they did when raised by Joe? He was a mobster.

"For those wanting to learn more about the JFK assassination bugliosi' book is an absolute must. "

GordT,so what's the title of the book" Is the author the same "Bugliosi" who prosecuted Charles Manson, Vincent Bugliosi?

Here's the blog post from the folks at Babalu, regarding the 17th of April. One of many very good Cuban blogs advocating for freedom, and liberty, from the tyranny of communism.

http://babalublog.com/2011/04/april-17-1961-2011/#more-43585

GYM at April 16, 2011 8:22 PM,

Oh no, another guy who believes Kennedy was assassinated by "Men from Mars"; no wait it was secret agents from Lechenstein!

Haven't we learned already from the "9/11 truthers" about these bogus Left conspiracies?