Kissinger Drew Up Plans to Attack Cuba, Records Show

[deminks]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/01/world/americas/kissinger-drew-up-plans-to-attack-cuba-records-show.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes

MIAMI — Nearly 40 years ago, Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger mapped out secret contingency plans to launch airstrikes against Havana and “smash Cuba,” newly disclosed government documents show.

Mr. Kissinger was so irked by Cuba’s military incursion into Angola that in 1976 he convened a top-secret group of senior officials to work out possible retaliatory measures in case Cuba deployed forces to other African nations, according to documents declassified by the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library at the request of the National Security Archive, a research group.

The officials outlined plans to strike ports and military installations in Cuba and to send Marine battalions to the United States Navy base at Guantánamo Bay to “clobber” the Cubans, as Mr. Kissinger put it, according to the records. Mr. Kissinger, the documents show, worried that the United States would look weak if it did not stand up to a country of just eight million people.

(snip)

Some Cuba historians said the revelations were startling, particularly because they took place just as the United States was coming out of the Vietnam War.

“The military piece dumbfounds me a little bit,” said Frank O. Mora, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense who now directs the Latin American and Caribbean Center at Florida International University. “For Kissinger to be talking the way they were talking, you would think Cuba had invaded the whole continent.”

(end snip)

[Purveyor]

2. Kissinger is one piece of shit that I will indeed do a 'grave dance' on when the

fucker finally goes straight to hell.

Just saying...

[MADem]

3. Hmmm.

In other words, he dusted off some tired old contingency plans and reviewed them (if we're going to be honest), and then he put some fantastical spin on the materials. When they say he "ordered up the contingency plans" what they really mean is he asked for a file that already existed, and may (or may not) have made notes and asked for specific aspects to be included or plussed up. He didn't do the warplanning himself, though.

There are people in our government (and in every government, pretty much) that make up these contingency plans--it's a full-time job. All they really do is keep a "country desk" updated on who/what/when/where/why. It doesn't mean that anyone is actually going to INVADE, say... Yap, or Portugal...but if the world goes crazy and that looks like it could have to happen, there's a blueprint to build on, filed away, updated regularly...just in case!

They'll sometimes use some aspects of this country or that one when they play war games, too.

Kissinger--what a crazy ass, mealy mouthed so-and-so. He used to be regarded as "quite the catch" in DC circles (I guess they weren't too terribly fussy in the DC dating pool).

[jwirr]

4. Anything to make some more money for the MIC.

[AtomicKitten]

5. and the president just renewed the embargo against Cuba

the stupid bullshit yet malicious embargo

In 2007, I heard a young smart soon to be Senator say we should stop the embargo. I voted for that guy 3 times. WTF happened to that guy.

My son says "He got sucked into the machine."

[JDPriestly]

8. It's a mighty gut-tearing machine. Even the President has a family.

Read the book, Endless Enemies by Kwitny, a former Wall Street Journal reporter. It was written in 1984 and talks about what happened in Angola as well as in many other places in the world in which our conservative leadership made a mess that our grandchildren will pay for. It's just horrifying the "mistakes" our government has made in our names.

[flamingdem]

9. He got stuck with Menendez as head of the Foreign Relations comm in the Senate

Kerry has put forward efforts to lighten up the blockade on Cuba even Hegel has taken that side but the Cuban American block is entrenched.

I don't blame him for not messing with this one but I could see an executive order before he leaves.

[Initech]

6. All the more reason to lift the embargo if there ever was one.

Because fuck the military industrial complex.

[JDPriestly]

7. This is just one example of our out-of-control military/industria, so-called foreign policy

since WWII.

Read Endless Enemies by Kwitny. I have a feeling that even that book does not begin to tell the story of the idiotic blunders of this mediocre, self-serving crew of which Kissinger is just one soulless, inhuman example.

[bemildred]

10. That sounds like Kissinger, all right.

Sixth grade thinking all the way. "We've got to hit back." The fear of not being feared.

[bigdarryl]

11. Well that's Hillary's BOY

[malaise]

12. They are all hawks

Still that should bit will not leave a mark.

[David Cupples]

13. Kissinger - Cuba - Angola - Jamaica connection

Kissinger's fury over Fidel Castro sending Cuban troops to support the revolution in Angola held great ramifications for Jamaica as well, as I detail in my novel Stir It Up and a recent essay in Pambazuka News: http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category/features/93317