One reason why JFK had to be assassinated.

Below are excerpts from Richard Hoagland’s recent white paper (see link below) that documents JFK‘s attempts to end the Cold War, which started in 1961 by his proposing to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev at their first meeting held in Vienna of a joint mission to send humans to the Moon.

These efforts continued right up to the time of his death in November 1963. In August 1963 JFK met with Soviet Ambassador Dobrinyin about the matter just before the President addressed the UN and in the same month he sent a conciliatory message to Khrushchev. According to Sergei Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier’s son, his father had decided by mid-November to accept JFK’s proposal of a joint mission.

This idea terminated with Kennedy’s killing. One of the first acts President Lyndon Johnson, who had been in charge of NASA during the Kennedy Administration, was to have Congress pass legislation forbidding just such a joint mission.

As Sergei Khrushchev later wrote, the Cold War might have ended in 1969 with the first human landing on the Moon when "an American astronaut and a Soviet cosmonaut might have stepped onto the moon’s surface together."

Instead, he observed, “The Cold War was prolonged by twenty years.”

One can only imagine the conspiratorial fury of LBJ, who was a product of the Brown and Root military-industrial war machine, and his close next-door neighbor and ally, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who was obsessed with the Communist menace, at the knowledge that JFK was attempting to end the Cold War by a U.S.-Soviet joint mission to the Moon.

Kennedy had to be stopped.

http://www.enterprisemission.com/newfrontier.htm

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At our recent Enterprise Mission Washington DC National Press Club briefing on “the hidden discoveries and benefits of the space program,” we revealed White House, State Department and NASA memos that now prove that my efforts at CBS to explain Kennedy’s ringing call to send humans to the Moon, as something “far MORE than merely Cold War competition” were, in fact, correct! These documents now clearly demonstrate that -- despite all that has been drummed into us for the last 40 or so years in terms of the glib “Cold War explanation” -- Kennedy’s decision on and surprisingly firm political commitment to Apollo was NOT driven “primarily by Cold War competition with the Russians” … but by motivations demonstrably now far, far larger—

The foundation for this new analysis can be found, not surprisingly, in Kennedy’s own historic address to that Joint Session of Congress, May 25, 1961 … if you just seriously look—

“ … finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take …

“Now it is time to take longer strides -- time for a great new American enterprise – time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth [emphasis added]….”

“… the key to our future on Earth ….”

As we further detail in our New York Times Bestseller, “Dark Mission: the Secret History of NASA,” these newly-published documents reveal that, within days of his ringing challenge to the American people, the Congress and the Soviets in Washington, Kennedy was actually, urgently, trying to sell Nikita Khrushchev (then head of the Soviet Union), at their first Summit in Vienna, on the daring idea of joint US/USSR space exploration programs!

Including—

Going to the Moon, not in competition … but together!

To add further substance to this major historical revision, we have the first-person testimony of none other than Sergei Khrushchev, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s son, in the October, 1999 issue of American Heritage Magazine:

“…that same August [1963], Kennedy sent Father a proposal about joining Soviet and American forces for a flight to the moon. He had first mentioned the idea in Vienna, in June 1961, but at the time Father hadn’t replied [emphasis added]….”

This, of course, not only tosses into the ashcan of history all the “real-politic reasons” we’ve been given for Kennedy engaging in an expensive space race with the Russians -- it raises profound political, diplomatic and economic questions regarding the President’s real, underlying motivations for going to the Moon at all!

What was John Fitzgerald Kennedy really thinking?

Obviously, from this documentation, and despite his repeated public rhetoric regarding American’s “winning the race to the Moon,” the President privately thought a joint lunar effort with the USSR was the only real way to proceed! Consistent with this analysis, the documents now reveal that Kennedy tried repeatedly to get Premier Khrushchev to go along with this radical idea; on the record, we have at least five attempts by Kennedy, across the three full years of his Presidency -- in secret NSC memos and discussions in the White House, and in equally clandestine diplomatic efforts with both Khrushchev, and even meetings with the Washington Ambassador from the Soviet Union, Anatoly Dobrynin -- to quietly convince the Premier to undertake a joint manned mission to the Moon!

It is clear from these remarkably persistent initiatives, long before his going public at the United Nations in September 1963, that the President in fact saw “a combined journey to the Moon” as vastly more significant and far-reaching than “achieving an American propaganda coup over the Soviet Union, by going there alone ….”

And, in mid-November 1963, according to Sergei Khrushchev’s personal recollections -- after literally years of determined efforts by the President to convince him to accept this 180-degree reversal of the then public perception of “an all out race” … Nikita Khrushchev finally did agree!

Again, according to his son … this time on PBS:

“… in the August of 1963, President Kennedy met with the Soviet Ambassador Dobrinyin, and then he spoke to the United Nations. He offered once more to join the efforts, and at that time my father was very serious. I walked with him, sometime in late October or November, and he told me about all these things. He told me that we have to think about this and maybe accept this idea …

“He thought also of the political achievement of all these things, that then they would begin to trust each other much more ....”
However, just days later … John Kennedy was killed.

In 1999, Sergei Khrushchev looked back:

“… the Cold War might have ended in 1969 … an American astronaut and a Soviet cosmonaut might have stepped onto the moon’s surface together.

“But life turned out differently. In November 1963 John F. Kennedy died, and a year later, in October 1964, my father was removed from power. The leaders who replaced Father hurried to “correct his mistakes” by giving a new impetus to the arms race and producing tens of thousands of tactical nuclear weapons. By 1989 the Soviet army had seven thousand nuclear cannon.

“The Cold War was prolonged by twenty years [emphasis added] ….”

This indisputable chronology now makes clear what Kennedy’s “secret agenda” -- via a vis Apollo – really was from the beginning: not only the first, historic manned mission to the Moon … but a radical “end run” on the decades-long, hopelessly stalemated international situation vis a vis the Soviet Union. An imaginative attempt to diffuse -- if not completely end -- the long “Cold War,” decades sooner than it eventually ended; to usher in a new era of unprecedented cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union, beginning in space … literally on the surface of another world … but ultimately, designed to spread around this world.

A radical, imaginative effort that ultimately, we now know succeeded … only to be killed by John Kennedy’s own, untimely death.

For those who have not lived long enough to remember the frightening nightmares of those years for all us kids -- the pointless “duck and cover” exercises in the middle of the day; the recurring wail of air raid sirens in “mock Russian bomber drills” in the middle of the night; the recurring images on TV of “atom bombs blowing entire cities into smithereens …” – there is no imagining the almost physical lifting of the burden with the real ending of the Cold War, in 1991.

Or the haunting thought I had, when I first found these extraordinary documents confirming my deepest-held suspicions of Kennedy’s real thinking on Apollo, echoing exactly those of Premier Khrushchev’s son:

That -- were it not for the sudden murder of this young President on that Dallas afternoon -- the long nuclear nightmare of the Cold War could realistically have ended a full generation earlier … replaced by “who knows what” -- if Kennedy had also lived to be the architect of that new, unwritten future!

It is testimony to the lack of imaginative thinking in Washington, on how to end (not merely “win”) our current “war on terror” – the so-called “clash of civilizations” -- which presents us now with the same dismal prospects that once confronted Kennedy, for “more unending nightmares for countless generations of Americans to come ….”

http://www.enterprisemission.com/newfrontier.htm

Yeah, those 'external enemies' are great for the 'bottom line' of the corporations and financiers behind all this 'mess' from time immomorial. JFK had the gaul to also say 'the Russians love their children too'. Blasphemy....the evil other must be painted with the broadest brush as pure evil and inhuman. Sadly, most Americans know nothing of history, other cultures and languages and have travelled outside the country little. I live in Europe and not long ago was talking to my dog [in American accented English] when a woman who was, it turned out, for the first time in her life outside of the US [she lived in a small desert town in S. CA] - and had become lost from her group - grabbed my arm as a safe-haven of 'another American'. She wispered in my ear, "Isn't it amazing, they wear the same type of clothes as we do!?!" I quickly walked away.....

JFK was no flaming radical, but to those who killed him and covered it up [and killed lots of others - inside and out of the country and do still] he was a dangerous person to have in such an important post. W is much more compliant and of their worldview.....

We got the world they wanted. The one WE wanted was lost in the murders and mayham of history. We can reclaim it...but it will take more than voting....much more. A first move would be to understand what really happened and by whom - and what their motives were and are.....a rather large order for the average American who still buys the myths and closed-mindedness that have been purpetrated on them.

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[try imagining - without benefit of drugs - W giving a speech like this or even 1% of this!]...a dare! [this is exactly the kind of thinking 'they' killed him for...and we have been stuck with the opposite since......it was War and We the People lost.

John F. Kennedy

American University Commencement Address

delivered 10 June 1963

[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from audio. (2)]

President Anderson, members of the faculty, board of trustees, distinguished guests, my old colleague, Senator Bob Byrd, who has earned his degree through many years of attending night law school, while I am earning mine in the next 30 minutes, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen:

It is with great pride that I participate in this ceremony of the American University, sponsored by the Methodist Church, founded by Bishop John Fletcher Hurst, and first opened by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914. This is a young and growing university, but it has already fulfilled Bishop Hurst's enlightened hope for the study of history and public affairs in a city devoted to the making of history and to the conduct of the public's business. By sponsoring this institution of higher learning for all who wish to learn, whatever their color or their creed, the Methodists of this area and the Nation deserve the Nation's thanks, and I commend all those who are today graduating.

Professor Woodrow Wilson once said that every man sent out from a university should be a man of his nation as well as a man of his time, and I am confident that the men and women who carry the honor of graduating from this institution will continue to give from their lives, from their talents, a high measure of public service and public support. "There are few earthly things more beautiful than a university," wrote John Masefield in his tribute to English universities -- and his words are equally true today. He did not refer to towers or to campuses. He admired the splendid beauty of a university, because it was, he said, "a place where those who hate ignorance may strive to know, where those who perceive truth may strive to make others see."

I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age where great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age where a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn.

Today the expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need them is essential to the keeping of peace. But surely the acquisition of such idle stockpiles -- which can only destroy and never create -- is not the only, much less the most efficient, means of assuring peace. I speak of peace, therefore, as the necessary, rational end of rational men. I realize the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war, and frequently the words of the pursuers fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task.

Some say that it is useless to speak of peace or world law or world disarmament, and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitudes, as individuals and as a Nation, for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward, by examining his own attitude towards the possibilities of peace, towards the Soviet Union, towards the course of the cold war and towards freedom and peace here at home.

First examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many think it is unreal. But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade; therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and good will of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.

Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions -- on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single, simple key to this peace; no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation. For peace is a process -- a way of solving problems.

With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations. World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor, it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors. So let us persevere. Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable. By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly towards it.

And second, let us reexamine our attitude towards the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent, authoritative Soviet text on military strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims, such as the allegation that American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of war, that there is a very real threat of a preventive war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union, and that the political aims -- and I quote -- "of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries and to achieve world domination by means of aggressive war."

Truly, as it was written long ago: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth."

Yet it is sad to read these Soviet statements, to realize the extent of the gulf between us. But it is also a warning, a warning to the American people not to fall into the same trap as the Soviets, not to see only a distorted and desperate view of the other side, not to see conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as nothing more than an exchange of threats.

No government or social system is so evil that its people must be considered as lacking in virtue. As Americans, we find communism profoundly repugnant as a negation of personal freedom and dignity. But we can still hail the Russian people for their many achievements in science and space, in economic and industrial growth, in culture, in acts of courage.

Among the many traits the peoples of our two countries have in common, none is stronger than our mutual abhorrence of war. Almost unique among the major world powers, we have never been at war with each other. And no nation in the history of battle ever suffered more than the Soviet Union in the Second World War. At least 20 million lost their lives. Countless millions of homes and families were burned or sacked. A third of the nation's territory, including two thirds of its industrial base, was turned into a wasteland -- a loss equivalent to the destruction of this country east of Chicago.

Today, should total war ever break out again -- no matter how -- our two countries will be the primary target. It is an ironic but accurate fact that the two strongest powers are the two in the most danger of devastation. All we have built, all we have worked for, would be destroyed in the first 24 hours. And even in the cold war, which brings burdens and dangers to so many countries, including this Nation's closest allies, our two countries bear the heaviest burdens. For we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty, and disease. We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle, with suspicion on one side breeding suspicion on the other, and new weapons begetting counter-weapons. In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours. And even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest.

So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal.

Third, let us reexamine our attitude towards the cold war, remembering we're not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been had the history of the last 18 years been different. We must, therefore, persevere in the search for peace in the hope that constructive changes within the Communist bloc might bring within reach solutions which now seem beyond us. We must conduct our affairs in such a way that it becomes in the Communists' interest to agree on a genuine peace. And above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy -- or of a collective death-wish for the world.

To secure these ends, America's weapons are nonprovocative, carefully controlled, designed to deter, and capable of selective use. Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint. Our diplomats are instructed to avoid unnecessary irritants and purely rhetorical hostility. For we can seek a relaxation of tensions without relaxing our guard. And, for our part, we do not need to use threats to prove we are resolute. We do not need to jam foreign broadcasts out of fear our faith will be eroded. We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people, but we are willing and able to engage in peaceful competition with any people on earth.

Meanwhile, we seek to strengthen the United Nations, to help solve its financial problems, to make it a more effective instrument for peace, to develop it into a genuine world security system -- a system capable of resolving disputes on the basis of law, of insuring the security of the large and the small, and of creating conditions under which arms can finally be abolished. At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends, are divided over issues which weaken Western unity, which invite Communist intervention, or which threaten to erupt into war. Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides. We have also tried to set an example for others, by seeking to adjust small but significant differences with our own closest neighbors in Mexico and Canada.

Speaking of other nations, I wish to make one point clear. We are bound to many nations by alliances. Those alliances exist because our concern and theirs substantially overlap. Our commitment to defend Western Europe and West Berlin, for example, stands undiminished because of the identity of our vital interests. The United States will make no deal with the Soviet Union at the expense of other nations and other peoples, not merely because they are our partners, but also because their interests and ours converge. Our interests converge, however, not only in defending the frontiers of freedom, but in pursuing the paths of peace. It is our hope, and the purpose of allied policy, to convince the Soviet Union that she, too, should let each nation choose its own future, so long as that choice does not interfere with the choices of others. The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.

This will require a new effort to achieve world law, a new context for world discussions. It will require increased understanding between the Soviets and ourselves. And increased understanding will require increased contact and communication. One step in this direction is the proposed arrangement for a direct line between Moscow and Washington, to avoid on each side the dangerous delays, misunderstandings, and misreadings of others' actions which might occur at a time of crisis.

We have also been talking in Geneva about our first-step measures of arm[s] controls designed to limit the intensity of the arms race and reduce the risk of accidental war. Our primary long range interest in Geneva, however, is general and complete disarmament, designed to take place by stages, permitting parallel political developments to build the new institutions of peace which would take the place of arms. The pursuit of disarmament has been an effort of this Government since the 1920's. It has been urgently sought by the past three administrations. And however dim the prospects are today, we intend to continue this effort -- to continue it in order that all countries, including our own, can better grasp what the problems and possibilities of disarmament are.

The only major area of these negotiations where the end is in sight, yet where a fresh start is badly needed, is in a treaty to outlaw nuclear tests. The conclusion of such a treaty, so near and yet so far, would check the spiraling arms race in one of its most dangerous areas. It would place the nuclear powers in a position to deal more effectively with one of the greatest hazards which man faces in 1963, the further spread of nuclear arms. It would increase our security; it would decrease the prospects of war. Surely this goal is sufficiently important to require our steady pursuit, yielding neither to the temptation to give up the whole effort nor the temptation to give up our insistence on vital and responsible safeguards.

I'm taking this opportunity, therefore, to announce two important decisions in this regard. First, Chairman Khrushchev, Prime Minister Macmillan, and I have agreed that high-level discussions will shortly begin in Moscow looking towards early agreement on a comprehensive test ban treaty. Our hope must be tempered -- Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history; but with our hopes go the hopes of all mankind. Second, to make clear our good faith and solemn convictions on this matter, I now declare that the United States does not propose to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so. We will not -- We will not be the first to resume. Such a declaration is no substitute for a formal binding treaty, but I hope it will help us achieve one. Nor would such a treaty be a substitute for disarmament, but I hope it will help us achieve it.

Finally, my fellow Americans, let us examine our attitude towards peace and freedom here at home. The quality and spirit of our own society must justify and support our efforts abroad. We must show it in the dedication of our own lives -- as many of you who are graduating today will have an opportunity to do, by serving without pay in the Peace Corps abroad or in the proposed National Service Corps here at home. But wherever we are, we must all, in our daily lives, live up to the age-old faith that peace and freedom walk together. In too many of our cities today, the peace is not secure because freedom is incomplete. It is the responsibility of the executive branch at all levels of government -- local, State, and National -- to provide and protect that freedom for all of our citizens by all means within our authority. It is the responsibility of the legislative branch at all levels, wherever the authority is not now adequate, to make it adequate. And it is the responsibility of all citizens in all sections of this country to respect the rights of others and respect the law of the land.

All this -- All this is not unrelated to world peace. "When a man's way[s] please the Lord," the Scriptures tell us, "he maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him." And is not peace, in the last analysis, basically a matter of human rights: the right to live out our lives without fear of devastation; the right to breathe air as nature provided it; the right of future generations to a healthy existence?

While we proceed to safeguard our national interests, let us also safeguard human interests. And the elimination of war and arms is clearly in the interest of both. No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion. But it can, if it is sufficiently effective in its enforcement, and it is sufficiently in the interests of its signers, offer far more security and far fewer risks than an unabated, uncontrolled, unpredictable arms race.

The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough -- more than enough -- of war and hate and oppression.

We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success. Confident and unafraid, we must labor on--not towards a strategy of annihilation but towards a strategy of peace.

I would concede Mr Caddy has touched on some very salient points regarding this issue. I would add, the book The Heavens and The Earth - A Political History of the Space Age - by Walter A. McDougall is an essential read, for someone who is serious about a scholarly treatment of America's Space Program in general, and extensive coverage of the Kennedy years. Page 394, mentions that at the behest of Sen Hubert Humphrey D-MN, two days before the Kennedy speech at the U.N. on September 20, 1963 Arthur Schlesinger inserted a paragraph into the speech which read, "Why therefore, should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the U.S and Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure? Surely we should explore whether the scientists and astronauts of the two countries-- indeed of all the world-- cannot work together in the conquest of space, sending some day in this decade to the moon not the representatives of a single nation, but the representative of all our countries."

McDougall references the words "Let Us Do the Big Things Together," in reference to the U.N. Speech as an "astounding proposal." Unfortunately, McDougall does not exactly corroborate the assertion, but that obviously doesent refute Mr Caddy's information at all. But McDougall touches seems to present the idea of a joint lunar project with the Soviet's as more of a sounding board, to determine how much effort and expenditure the Soviet's were placing into their space program, as much as anything.

However, I am very intrigued by this thread, and hope more information can be ascertained on the subject. One thing is for certain, I would completely agree with the premise, that if any actual moves were taken by the Kennedy Administration in this area, it would have been seen by hawks in the military, and Kennedy's enemies in a manner that would have made the fiasco of the Bay of Pig's seem miniscule in comparison.