re: #53 Shiplord Kirel: Fan of USPS, Goodyear, and Oreo

I’ve been reading a little more about the Bay of Pigs fiasco of 1961. I am beginning to think that the real reason for sending the well-trained but inadequately equipped and outrageously out-numbered exile force to Cuba was to blackmail President Kennedy into intervening with US forces rather than see the exiles overwhelmed and captured. The tactic is familiar from history, from Gordon at Khartoum toTownsend in Kut in 1916. The exiles were not only out-numbered 100-1, their CIA provided air force failed to include any fighters that could have provided cover for an evacuation. It would have been easy to provide these, almost any obsolete jet fighters could have kept Castro’s tiny air contingent at bay long enough to get the exiles off the beach.

JFK didn’t bite and he didn’t order an intervention by nearby US forces. The exiles were marched into captivity before being ransomed. This would have been a soul-searing decision, since Kennedy had every reason to believe the men would be shot as traitors. I think there may have been a secret deal between Kennedy and Castro that the prisoners would be treated as uniformed US soldiers (which they essentially were) rather than bandits and traitors, in return for the US not attempting a rescue.

Ok think you may be right about the latter part, but another take on the whole Bay of Pigs fiasco goes back to its origins in the Eisenhower Admin: the fundamental flaw was that the invasion was devised and planned by the CIA with “official” deniability the overriding concern: Ike and his people were (understandably) loath to be seen to be overthrowing Castro in the good old-fashioned Yanqui Imperialist manner, I.e. via outright military invasion: but OTOH, they always kept the “intervention” option in the back of the book: that, IMO was the main thing that Kennedy didn’t “bite” over. And supposedly, the reason why “Democrat” is a curse-word for Florida Cubans to this day…