General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPlease Share Your Favorite JFK-Related Movies, Images, Texts, Etc.
I have limited time and there's a ton of stuff out there, a lot of it not so great.
My focus specifically includes the aura and mythology that grew up around him, and especially on our reactions to him and to the assassination, the effects of the assassination on our collective psyche.
Also, do you know a good site with sourced quotations? (I.e., with attributions re- which text or speech each quotation is from.)
Many thanks for any suggestions!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)"miscommunication could rain down more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of human history."
Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?
Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.
James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994
During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.
The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.
But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.
The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.
CONTINUED...
http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963
It's been 50 years of round-the-clock wars for profit ever since -- interrupted here and there by Jimmy Carter and. Well. Jimmy Carter.
snot
(10,524 posts)I know anything you rec will be good!
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Thank you for your OP and this thread, snot. Every day, fewer people understand just what we lost 50 years ago. It's up to you and all who know to bring to light what JFK and his line of Democrats stood for: Peace and Prosperity for ALL.
rurallib
(62,411 posts)if that is OK - I was @12 when he was inaugurated. I used to love to come home on I think Thursday afternoons and watch his WEEKLY press conferences. They were fun and lively.
I remember one where he was being lit up by some woman reporter for not keeping his promises to women. "Did he (kennedy) feel he was doing enough?" "Apparently not" he answered and the press roared.
"I am the man who accompanied Jackie Kennedy" he said at his first presser in Paris on a foreign trip where Jackie was getting all the attention.
Got to go, but I have lots of memories of his quips and subtle jokes. Aster Eisenhower it felt like we could finally breathe.