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csi_sanders1129Bay of Pigs, Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Kennedy was setting up for us a New Frontier. And I always loved the Massachusetts accent cause on many words, they drop the R. You know, ca. You’re gonna ‘pak the ca in Boston ha’bor’. You know? And then they add it to other ones! Cubar, Bananar. It’s really cool, I mean, you think you’ve lost it, but oh no! It’s over here! Okay! [Not that people where I live can talk. Baltimore accent gets made fun of a lot, too, xD]. … Anyhow, Kennedy was one of those that started me on trying to do, at least in some crude way, other kind of accents. There used to be a – when he was inaugurated, there was a comedian, his name was Vaughn Meader. And I don’t know where this is coming from, but I’ll have to see if it’s youtubeable.”
“It is youtubeable? *types in start of address, starts laughing at browsing history* Youtube, myspace, facebook. You can tell we are very intellectually inclined here.”
“Cause, remember now. What have we had since, say, 1932. We had Roosevelt, right? There was big bucket of laughs there. Then you had Truman, who every once in a while would say things like, ugh, ‘manure’. And then you had Eisenhower. You know? I mean, Eisenhower kinda looked like Elmer Fudd. ‘I love bein’ Pwesident, hahahaha.’ And he kept having heart attacks and going off and playing golf. And then of course, who gave the press conferences when he was recuperating? ‘I am not a crook!’ with his five o’clock shadow. And it is, Kennedy comes in and it’s this breath of fresh air in many circles – not all, and we’ll see how that plays out.”
“In the Spring of 1961, Kennedy was handed off a secret plan. A secret plan that ties in with something we’ve been talking about. As far back as the summer of 1959, the CIA have been secretly training about 1400 folks who had left Cuba, kay? These were Cuban Nationals that the CIA kinda rounded up from Miami and several other places, took them to Central America, and trained them into a good little fighting crew that was supposed to re-invade Cuba. The plan was to send these 1400 or so guys in. The CIA, through all of their brilliant spywork, was absolutely convinced that all we had to do was send these guys ashore. The Cuban people would then just run, cheering and screaming and hollering, to these guys going ‘thank you! Thank you! Thank you for saving us from the evil communist dictator!’ The CIA also had it in the back of their minds that the minute these guys went ashore, that the President at the time - now remember, they started this in 59 and 60, cause we weren’t sure who was gonna be president with the election, right?– They figured that the President would then send in American Aircraft, possibly even American Naval ships to help this burgeoning democratically run freedom fighters to take over – ugh, re-take – their country. Kennedy is elected, much to the chagrin of the CIA. The CIA had put most of their eggs in Nixon’s basket, figuring that Nixon would just go ahead and continue the policies of Ike. Ike was all for this. Kennedy gets a briefing and basically they say ‘this is a no-brainer, this is what our intelligence says…’ Kennedy, being young and not in the office for too long, says ‘Ugh, okay, but I’m not sending US troops.’ The CIA says okay, thinking full-well that once these guys go in, if there’s any sort of problems, he’s gonna have to send troops or it’s gonna look like a failure. April 17th, 1961. A couple of leaky old freighters that the CIA picked up rather cheaply go into… probably one of the worst to launch an amphibious assault on the island of Cuba. … It’s a swamp. It’s a swamp that they went into at low-tide. So not only did the ships not get close enough, but when they let these guys off, they… sank into the swamp. Some of them made it to shore relatively easily and then were in contact with some of the farmers that were there. Now, instead of all these farmers going ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you!’ It was like ‘Uhm, somebody better call Castro…’ This idea of them running and saying thank you did not materialize. The CIA intelligence was faulty. // Guy: Were we in control of Guantanamo Bay at this time? // “Yup! We’ve been in control of Guantanamo Bay since 1898. // Guy: Well then why didn’t we just send them through there? // Cause, it’s not… ah, ah, ah. This wasn’t ours. This was freedom loving Cubans doing it on their own. Of course, we send ‘em through Gitmo, well then the rest of the world knows who did it. With what our plan was, all these guys would go ashore, all the Cuban’s come running and then we say, ‘Oh, well, we’ll help you, freedom fighters!’Right? And you couldn’t very well do that if you send them through Guantanamo. Kennedy is told that it’s a fiasco. The Cuban’s have come to the Bay of Pigs – to shoot them! What about this whole deal about them wanting to get rid of Castro. Apparently *gasp* we were wrong! ‘You must send in American planes, you must send in American ships, and American troops in order to save these guys’. Kennedy says ‘I’m not gonna do it.’ ‘You got to! You’ll look weak.’ He says ‘I’m not gonna do it!’ The only thing he did was he did send in some jet fighters to cover some of those guys so they could escape back out. Kennedy goes on television and he basically says ‘We screwed up. This was something that we had launched, I take full responsibility for it, and something like this will not happen again.’”
“Early 60’s, the Soviet Union is a superpower. It’s got a military that is one of those than can do just about whatever it wants. He [Nikita Khrushchev] can launch missiles that are gonna go places! Where ours… basically we launch ‘em and say ‘Will they go somewhere? I dunno! Let’s watch where it goes, but be ready to run!’”
“By summer of ’63, in order to show his support for the people behind the wall, Kennedy goes to Berlin and he gives a great speech talking about freedom and how we need to, you know, tear down barriers, etcetera, etcetera… Well, heck. Let’s let Jack tell us. *plays audio of speech*Talking about freedom. Talking about how we’re going to work at this together. This is all while stuff’s going on in Vietnam. This is all ’63. “I take pride in the words ‘Ich Bin Ein Beliner!’” Oh! Isn’t that just… I mean, just… ICH BIN EIN BERLINER! ... You know what he just said, though? In true Germanic, language? I AM A JELLY DONUT. Does not mean he’s a citizen of Berlin. What he wanted to say was ‘I am a Berliner, I am for Berlin, I take pride in your struggle.’ But, what he actually said was ‘I take prodes in the words ‘I am a jelly donut!’ Because a Berliner, cream filled, jelly filled donut. // Guy: Is that why they cheered? Or they knew what he meant? // I’m hoping they knew what his intention was. Other than ‘Oh! He’s got jelly donuts for all of us!’ Kind of like Oprah? Oh, we all gets cars – Oh! We all get jelly donuts! // Guy: See, that’s why they were digging tunnels. For the jelly donuts. // Yeah, that’s why we had to put the wall up! Cause there were too many jelly donuts in the West…”
“And the one place where it really got scary, we’ve gotta go back one more time to Cuba. Simply because October of 1962 scared the bejesus out of me. I was deciding in October of 62 that I didn’t wanna live in around here no more. I wanted to go to Frostburg. ‘Cause I knew no Russians knew where Frostburg was. And I knew I’d be safe. Because… what transpires is in October 15th of 1962, we’ve got spy planesf lying over Cuba, kay? - We’ve… we’ve got spy planes flying all over the world, shhh! Don’t tell anybody. – It was Bono, the Edge, and all those guys. U-2. No, not me. U2, right? These are the planes. Big planes, take ‘em up, fly waaaaay high up in the sky. No one can see ‘em. And they’re taking pictures. Click click click click click. And the interesting thing about it is we got these spy planes – every once in a while one gets shot down and our pilots end up in prisons in other parts of the world – but in October of 62, we got the U2 flying over Cuba. And what they wind up seeing is this. Pictures of what seem to be… Soviet Missiles in Cuba. Now, remember. Do they have good missiles? Yeaaaaah, pretty good ones. And what we start to see is that we’ve got some missile launchers, some that are ready… Now. We knew about this one the 15th of October. And so Kennedy gets his little group of folks together and says ‘Ugh, what are we gonna do here?’ And some of the guys say ‘BOMMMMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB THEM!’ Others say ‘Oooh, we do that, we might start WWIII!’ And other folks are going ‘Well, how many causalities would that be?’ Some folks – let’s ease into this, see what’s happening. Others: BOMB them right now! It was one of those things where they knew what the consequences were gonna be. If you go and you start blowin’ up stuff right now… Yeah, they’re gonna start blowin’ stuff up. I mean, if you want to, and I’ll go ahead and add it to your movie extra credit list…. Watch Dr. Strangelove or ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb’. It’s not that far away… I know it’s black and white, but… If you’ve always wanted to see someone riding on a nuclear warhead to the ground going ‘Yahoooo!’ get into this one. It will be good for you. It gets into this whole thing – Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD! Okay? And so, if we go and we start going with the sabers rattling…. This could be nasty. And there were some in Kennedy’s cabinet that said ‘Go get ‘em.’ And others would say ‘… We better do this diplomatically.’ Others ‘What’s the big deal? So, there are missiles in Cuba.’ Cause, WHY are there missiles in Cuba? // Guy: Well, let’s see here, they’d on’t actually even need missiles. They take a sling shot, they could probably hit Key West. // Could, could. But, why Cuba? I mean, what is the deal with Cuba? I mean, it’s close, but… Castro? Communists? You guys are thinking just like they would have loved for you to have thought in the 50’s. How ‘bout if we look at the other side of the coin. Why are there Russian missiles in Cuba? Well, where are there American missiles? In Germany. In Turkey. Let’s see. Where are there American missiles *points to map* In Germany and in Turkey. That’s not like… real close to the Soviet Union or anything, is it? I mean, talk about your slingshots. Part of the reason they are there is because the Soviets are saying ‘HEY! You guys got ‘em in our backyard! We like Castro. He liked us. We’re gonna give him missiles because you’ve already shown that you‘ve tried to kill him!’ Did we not? Did we invade? Yeah! Did we have at least 8 different plans to try and kill him? Yeaah! By poisoning, by exploding cigars, by a virus infested wetsuit, by a former lover who was to poison him, I mean, we had tried desperately! Operation: Mongoose? - We’re gonna go kill Castro! That was the CIA! Castro’s like… ‘Nikita! They’re tryin’ to kill me!’ ‘Not to worry, son. We’ll put missiles there.’ So, we of course, look at it as what? Now, I mean, let’s be honest now, if we’re sitting in 1962, we’re lookin’ at it as PROOF. Monolithic Communism bent on world destruction as we know it. They want to kill us cause, look! LOOK! Oh, Crap! Washington is RIGHT THERE! THIS IS NOT GOOD! And that’s it! Dastardly, evil, Soviets. Yeah, but, dude. You’ve already tried to kill this guy, you’ve already tried to invade. You got missiles in their backyard – but that’s okay! Ours are for peace! Theirs are to… DESTROY! Right, and so on October 22, Kennedy goes on television and says ‘Uh, there are Soviet Missiles in, ugh, Cubar’ Literally, I mean, you’re sitting there watching this going ‘Where? Cubar? Oh, crap. Don’t know that one.’ But, basically saying that they could destroy major population centers in the US. And – and this is what scared me – major manufacturing centers. The largest steel mill in the Western hemisphere… was laying ore dust all over our nice ’56 Chevy. How close are we to one of the largest steel centers [Bethlehem Steel]… Now, of course, all Kennedy and his guys are worried about is Washington. What’s made in Washington? Hot. Air. And if you’re gonna come back at somebody, are you gonna come back with hot air? No, you’re gonna wanna knock out their means… I mean…. What? Why did we hit all these places in WWII in Germany? Did we go right after Berlin first? No! Dresden, Hamburg, all these places. Why? That’s where they built stuff! // Guy: Also, if DC goes up in a mushroom cloud… all we need is a nice… Northern wind and… // North-Eastern wind, and yeah. We’re going *rubs and stares at arms* Ooh. Odd those fingers falling off… Um, yeah. And so folks are scared. Cause we mobilized. I mean, we mobilized BIG TIME for this one. We gotta watch. Something’s gonna happen. And so, what’s Kennedy’s plan? Anybody? What’d Kennedy decide to do? He’s not gonna go blow it up. He’s… And silence fell with a sickening thud… Okay. Cuba. Key West – Parrot-heads, Jimmy Buffet, Havana Day Dreamin’? Cuba. What are we gonna do? We reach back, honest to goodness, we reach back into the early 19th century. And we pull out something that most folks had forgotten about. We pull out the Monroe Doctrine! You all remember that… from History 111… maybe. Basically, the Monroe Doctrine comes in after the War of 1812 and says to Europe ‘you stay out of our hemisphere, we’ll stay out of yours.’ Kennedy says that well, with this Monroe Doctrine, the Soviets have no business being over here. So we are going to… quarantine Cuba. We are going to set up a perimeter. And if any Soviet ship that is carrying missiles or is belligerent crosses the line, we’re going after them. Them Soviet ships, they’re a’comin’. ‘Ugh, we are going to, ugh, blockade and, ugh, quarantine, Cubar, and if any ships…’ They’ve already passed the line… ‘If any, ugh, ships cross THIS line…’ Okay? And they did. They cross the first line? And Jack gets his brother, Bobby and is like ‘Hey, get in touch with the Sovietsssssssssssss…’ Thorugh some back room deals with some members of the media – Can you imagine that today? Can you imagine someone from a place that we don’t like – like, you know, half the other part of the world – going to Hiraldo and saying ‘Ugh, Hiraldo, let’s do a secret talk.’ – ‘LIVE from the Fox News. Hiraldo & the Secret Talk! – And, but, what happens is that John Scali was his name, from ABC news and a few other folks, they started some back room dealings, got it? To where, Kennedy send Khrushchev a note. Basically saying ‘we’re gonna put the quarantine in here, but… how ‘bout if we cut a deal?’ To which Khrushchev replies back ‘Okay, let’s cut a deal.’ Then a few hours later, a second note comes from Khrushchev that’s much more belligerent. So what do we do? Which one do we take? Well, Kennedy’s crew ignored the second. Sends back ‘Well, okay. We accept the first one.’ And so, what ends the Cuban Missile Crisis – now hang with me, cause this is soap opera, guys – is that some backroom dealings with folks from the Embassy, how this works out is… We Will: Take out missiles out of Germany and Turkey. We Will: Pledge not to invade Cuba. If the Soviets take their missiles out of Cuba. Now, what do we hear in the United States? Well, in the US, we see… this. We are eyeball to eyeball. And that’s how it was done. I mean, we’re waiting several days – it was 13 days in October where the world was literally on the brink of nuclear war. One false move on either side and someone’s gonna push a button and this whole thing could have gone to several mushroom clouds. We look at it now and go ‘Hushaw, it was simple.’ It WASN’T simple, In ‘62, it was pretty scary. We accept Khrushchev’s first one, the one that was non-belligerent, and just totally ignore the other one. Like, sayin’… // Me: Oh, sorry, you’re breaking up. Your country must be going through a tunnel. (Cookies to anyone who gets that reference). // Exactly.” [There’s more than that, but… pfft. I’m done.]
“Kennedy was setting up for us a New Frontier. And I always loved the Massachusetts accent cause on many words, they drop the R. You know, ca. You’re gonna ‘pak the ca in Boston ha’bor’. You know? And then they add it to other ones! Cubar, Bananar. It’s really cool, I mean, you think you’ve lost it, but oh no! It’s over here! Okay! [Not that people where I live can talk. Baltimore accent gets made fun of a lot, too, xD]. … Anyhow, Kennedy was one of those that started me on trying to do, at least in some crude way, other kind of accents. There used to be a – when he was inaugurated, there was a comedian, his name was Vaughn Meader. And I don’t know where this is coming from, but I’ll have to see if it’s youtubeable.”
“It is youtubeable? *types in start of address, starts laughing at browsing history* Youtube, myspace, facebook. You can tell we are very intellectually inclined here.”
“Cause, remember now. What have we had since, say, 1932. We had Roosevelt, right? There was big bucket of laughs there. Then you had Truman, who every once in a while would say things like, ugh, ‘manure’. And then you had Eisenhower. You know? I mean, Eisenhower kinda looked like Elmer Fudd. ‘I love bein’ Pwesident, hahahaha.’ And he kept having heart attacks and going off and playing golf. And then of course, who gave the press conferences when he was recuperating? ‘I am not a crook!’ with his five o’clock shadow. And it is, Kennedy comes in and it’s this breath of fresh air in many circles – not all, and we’ll see how that plays out.”
“In the Spring of 1961, Kennedy was handed off a secret plan. A secret plan that ties in with something we’ve been talking about. As far back as the summer of 1959, the CIA have been secretly training about 1400 folks who had left Cuba, kay? These were Cuban Nationals that the CIA kinda rounded up from Miami and several other places, took them to Central America, and trained them into a good little fighting crew that was supposed to re-invade Cuba. The plan was to send these 1400 or so guys in. The CIA, through all of their brilliant spywork, was absolutely convinced that all we had to do was send these guys ashore. The Cuban people would then just run, cheering and screaming and hollering, to these guys going ‘thank you! Thank you! Thank you for saving us from the evil communist dictator!’ The CIA also had it in the back of their minds that the minute these guys went ashore, that the President at the time - now remember, they started this in 59 and 60, cause we weren’t sure who was gonna be president with the election, right?– They figured that the President would then send in American Aircraft, possibly even American Naval ships to help this burgeoning democratically run freedom fighters to take over – ugh, re-take – their country. Kennedy is elected, much to the chagrin of the CIA. The CIA had put most of their eggs in Nixon’s basket, figuring that Nixon would just go ahead and continue the policies of Ike. Ike was all for this. Kennedy gets a briefing and basically they say ‘this is a no-brainer, this is what our intelligence says…’ Kennedy, being young and not in the office for too long, says ‘Ugh, okay, but I’m not sending US troops.’ The CIA says okay, thinking full-well that once these guys go in, if there’s any sort of problems, he’s gonna have to send troops or it’s gonna look like a failure. April 17th, 1961. A couple of leaky old freighters that the CIA picked up rather cheaply go into… probably one of the worst to launch an amphibious assault on the island of Cuba. … It’s a swamp. It’s a swamp that they went into at low-tide. So not only did the ships not get close enough, but when they let these guys off, they… sank into the swamp. Some of them made it to shore relatively easily and then were in contact with some of the farmers that were there. Now, instead of all these farmers going ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you!’ It was like ‘Uhm, somebody better call Castro…’ This idea of them running and saying thank you did not materialize. The CIA intelligence was faulty. // Guy: Were we in control of Guantanamo Bay at this time? // “Yup! We’ve been in control of Guantanamo Bay since 1898. // Guy: Well then why didn’t we just send them through there? // Cause, it’s not… ah, ah, ah. This wasn’t ours. This was freedom loving Cubans doing it on their own. Of course, we send ‘em through Gitmo, well then the rest of the world knows who did it. With what our plan was, all these guys would go ashore, all the Cuban’s come running and then we say, ‘Oh, well, we’ll help you, freedom fighters!’Right? And you couldn’t very well do that if you send them through Guantanamo. Kennedy is told that it’s a fiasco. The Cuban’s have come to the Bay of Pigs – to shoot them! What about this whole deal about them wanting to get rid of Castro. Apparently *gasp* we were wrong! ‘You must send in American planes, you must send in American ships, and American troops in order to save these guys’. Kennedy says ‘I’m not gonna do it.’ ‘You got to! You’ll look weak.’ He says ‘I’m not gonna do it!’ The only thing he did was he did send in some jet fighters to cover some of those guys so they could escape back out. Kennedy goes on television and he basically says ‘We screwed up. This was something that we had launched, I take full responsibility for it, and something like this will not happen again.’”
“Early 60’s, the Soviet Union is a superpower. It’s got a military that is one of those than can do just about whatever it wants. He [Nikita Khrushchev] can launch missiles that are gonna go places! Where ours… basically we launch ‘em and say ‘Will they go somewhere? I dunno! Let’s watch where it goes, but be ready to run!’”
“By summer of ’63, in order to show his support for the people behind the wall, Kennedy goes to Berlin and he gives a great speech talking about freedom and how we need to, you know, tear down barriers, etcetera, etcetera… Well, heck. Let’s let Jack tell us. *plays audio of speech*Talking about freedom. Talking about how we’re going to work at this together. This is all while stuff’s going on in Vietnam. This is all ’63. “I take pride in the words ‘Ich Bin Ein Beliner!’” Oh! Isn’t that just… I mean, just… ICH BIN EIN BERLINER! ... You know what he just said, though? In true Germanic, language? I AM A JELLY DONUT. Does not mean he’s a citizen of Berlin. What he wanted to say was ‘I am a Berliner, I am for Berlin, I take pride in your struggle.’ But, what he actually said was ‘I take prodes in the words ‘I am a jelly donut!’ Because a Berliner, cream filled, jelly filled donut. // Guy: Is that why they cheered? Or they knew what he meant? // I’m hoping they knew what his intention was. Other than ‘Oh! He’s got jelly donuts for all of us!’ Kind of like Oprah? Oh, we all gets cars – Oh! We all get jelly donuts! // Guy: See, that’s why they were digging tunnels. For the jelly donuts. // Yeah, that’s why we had to put the wall up! Cause there were too many jelly donuts in the West…”
“And the one place where it really got scary, we’ve gotta go back one more time to Cuba. Simply because October of 1962 scared the bejesus out of me. I was deciding in October of 62 that I didn’t wanna live in around here no more. I wanted to go to Frostburg. ‘Cause I knew no Russians knew where Frostburg was. And I knew I’d be safe. Because… what transpires is in October 15th of 1962, we’ve got spy planesf lying over Cuba, kay? - We’ve… we’ve got spy planes flying all over the world, shhh! Don’t tell anybody. – It was Bono, the Edge, and all those guys. U-2. No, not me. U2, right? These are the planes. Big planes, take ‘em up, fly waaaaay high up in the sky. No one can see ‘em. And they’re taking pictures. Click click click click click. And the interesting thing about it is we got these spy planes – every once in a while one gets shot down and our pilots end up in prisons in other parts of the world – but in October of 62, we got the U2 flying over Cuba. And what they wind up seeing is this. Pictures of what seem to be… Soviet Missiles in Cuba. Now, remember. Do they have good missiles? Yeaaaaah, pretty good ones. And what we start to see is that we’ve got some missile launchers, some that are ready… Now. We knew about this one the 15th of October. And so Kennedy gets his little group of folks together and says ‘Ugh, what are we gonna do here?’ And some of the guys say ‘BOMMMMBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB THEM!’ Others say ‘Oooh, we do that, we might start WWIII!’ And other folks are going ‘Well, how many causalities would that be?’ Some folks – let’s ease into this, see what’s happening. Others: BOMB them right now! It was one of those things where they knew what the consequences were gonna be. If you go and you start blowin’ up stuff right now… Yeah, they’re gonna start blowin’ stuff up. I mean, if you want to, and I’ll go ahead and add it to your movie extra credit list…. Watch Dr. Strangelove or ‘How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb’. It’s not that far away… I know it’s black and white, but… If you’ve always wanted to see someone riding on a nuclear warhead to the ground going ‘Yahoooo!’ get into this one. It will be good for you. It gets into this whole thing – Mutually Assured Destruction. MAD! Okay? And so, if we go and we start going with the sabers rattling…. This could be nasty. And there were some in Kennedy’s cabinet that said ‘Go get ‘em.’ And others would say ‘… We better do this diplomatically.’ Others ‘What’s the big deal? So, there are missiles in Cuba.’ Cause, WHY are there missiles in Cuba? // Guy: Well, let’s see here, they’d on’t actually even need missiles. They take a sling shot, they could probably hit Key West. // Could, could. But, why Cuba? I mean, what is the deal with Cuba? I mean, it’s close, but… Castro? Communists? You guys are thinking just like they would have loved for you to have thought in the 50’s. How ‘bout if we look at the other side of the coin. Why are there Russian missiles in Cuba? Well, where are there American missiles? In Germany. In Turkey. Let’s see. Where are there American missiles *points to map* In Germany and in Turkey. That’s not like… real close to the Soviet Union or anything, is it? I mean, talk about your slingshots. Part of the reason they are there is because the Soviets are saying ‘HEY! You guys got ‘em in our backyard! We like Castro. He liked us. We’re gonna give him missiles because you’ve already shown that you‘ve tried to kill him!’ Did we not? Did we invade? Yeah! Did we have at least 8 different plans to try and kill him? Yeaah! By poisoning, by exploding cigars, by a virus infested wetsuit, by a former lover who was to poison him, I mean, we had tried desperately! Operation: Mongoose? - We’re gonna go kill Castro! That was the CIA! Castro’s like… ‘Nikita! They’re tryin’ to kill me!’ ‘Not to worry, son. We’ll put missiles there.’ So, we of course, look at it as what? Now, I mean, let’s be honest now, if we’re sitting in 1962, we’re lookin’ at it as PROOF. Monolithic Communism bent on world destruction as we know it. They want to kill us cause, look! LOOK! Oh, Crap! Washington is RIGHT THERE! THIS IS NOT GOOD! And that’s it! Dastardly, evil, Soviets. Yeah, but, dude. You’ve already tried to kill this guy, you’ve already tried to invade. You got missiles in their backyard – but that’s okay! Ours are for peace! Theirs are to… DESTROY! Right, and so on October 22, Kennedy goes on television and says ‘Uh, there are Soviet Missiles in, ugh, Cubar’ Literally, I mean, you’re sitting there watching this going ‘Where? Cubar? Oh, crap. Don’t know that one.’ But, basically saying that they could destroy major population centers in the US. And – and this is what scared me – major manufacturing centers. The largest steel mill in the Western hemisphere… was laying ore dust all over our nice ’56 Chevy. How close are we to one of the largest steel centers [Bethlehem Steel]… Now, of course, all Kennedy and his guys are worried about is Washington. What’s made in Washington? Hot. Air. And if you’re gonna come back at somebody, are you gonna come back with hot air? No, you’re gonna wanna knock out their means… I mean…. What? Why did we hit all these places in WWII in Germany? Did we go right after Berlin first? No! Dresden, Hamburg, all these places. Why? That’s where they built stuff! // Guy: Also, if DC goes up in a mushroom cloud… all we need is a nice… Northern wind and… // North-Eastern wind, and yeah. We’re going *rubs and stares at arms* Ooh. Odd those fingers falling off… Um, yeah. And so folks are scared. Cause we mobilized. I mean, we mobilized BIG TIME for this one. We gotta watch. Something’s gonna happen. And so, what’s Kennedy’s plan? Anybody? What’d Kennedy decide to do? He’s not gonna go blow it up. He’s… And silence fell with a sickening thud… Okay. Cuba. Key West – Parrot-heads, Jimmy Buffet, Havana Day Dreamin’? Cuba. What are we gonna do? We reach back, honest to goodness, we reach back into the early 19th century. And we pull out something that most folks had forgotten about. We pull out the Monroe Doctrine! You all remember that… from History 111… maybe. Basically, the Monroe Doctrine comes in after the War of 1812 and says to Europe ‘you stay out of our hemisphere, we’ll stay out of yours.’ Kennedy says that well, with this Monroe Doctrine, the Soviets have no business being over here. So we are going to… quarantine Cuba. We are going to set up a perimeter. And if any Soviet ship that is carrying missiles or is belligerent crosses the line, we’re going after them. Them Soviet ships, they’re a’comin’. ‘Ugh, we are going to, ugh, blockade and, ugh, quarantine, Cubar, and if any ships…’ They’ve already passed the line… ‘If any, ugh, ships cross THIS line…’ Okay? And they did. They cross the first line? And Jack gets his brother, Bobby and is like ‘Hey, get in touch with the Sovietsssssssssssss…’ Thorugh some back room deals with some members of the media – Can you imagine that today? Can you imagine someone from a place that we don’t like – like, you know, half the other part of the world – going to Hiraldo and saying ‘Ugh, Hiraldo, let’s do a secret talk.’ – ‘LIVE from the Fox News. Hiraldo & the Secret Talk! – And, but, what happens is that John Scali was his name, from ABC news and a few other folks, they started some back room dealings, got it? To where, Kennedy send Khrushchev a note. Basically saying ‘we’re gonna put the quarantine in here, but… how ‘bout if we cut a deal?’ To which Khrushchev replies back ‘Okay, let’s cut a deal.’ Then a few hours later, a second note comes from Khrushchev that’s much more belligerent. So what do we do? Which one do we take? Well, Kennedy’s crew ignored the second. Sends back ‘Well, okay. We accept the first one.’ And so, what ends the Cuban Missile Crisis – now hang with me, cause this is soap opera, guys – is that some backroom dealings with folks from the Embassy, how this works out is… We Will: Take out missiles out of Germany and Turkey. We Will: Pledge not to invade Cuba. If the Soviets take their missiles out of Cuba. Now, what do we hear in the United States? Well, in the US, we see… this. We are eyeball to eyeball. And that’s how it was done. I mean, we’re waiting several days – it was 13 days in October where the world was literally on the brink of nuclear war. One false move on either side and someone’s gonna push a button and this whole thing could have gone to several mushroom clouds. We look at it now and go ‘Hushaw, it was simple.’ It WASN’T simple, In ‘62, it was pretty scary. We accept Khrushchev’s first one, the one that was non-belligerent, and just totally ignore the other one. Like, sayin’… // Me: Oh, sorry, you’re breaking up. Your country must be going through a tunnel. (Cookies to anyone who gets that reference). // Exactly.” [There’s more than that, but… pfft. I’m done.]
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Date: 2009-10-05 10:20 pm (UTC)xD
no subject
Date: 2009-10-05 11:10 pm (UTC)*cutting big parts*