What's this about Norm Retiring.

Hardly. He was mainly pissed off that Kennedy had let Kruschev get that far.

So? U-2s were taking off and landing on Okinawa regularly during much of the Vietnam war, SR-71s as well once Johnson admitted that they existed. Does that mean that Vietnam was about to launch a nuclear attack? Monitoring a developing situation does not mean that nuclear war is imminent.

Was Kruschev going to give the order? No. He says himself that he was just pushing to see how far he could get and that he was quite surprised at how much he got away with. He wasn't expecting to be allowed to keep missiles in Cuba, but what they hey, might get away with it so worth a shot. Was Kennedy going to give the order? I don't think he was that crazy. So how did we come close to a large nuclear exchange? Was Castro going to push the button? Kruschev didn't give him one. Was somebody else going to do it? Not in Russia--_they_ shoot people without trial for that sort of thing. And in the US if the President is alive then nobody else is authorized to give the order.

Think about it, what would it gain Kruschev to launch a nuclear attack on the US? He had no way to follow it up. All he'd do is reduce the Soviet Union to rubble that the Finns could then take over at their leisure, assuming they wanted it and the United States to the same that Canada or Mexico could take over at their leisure if they wanted it.

Reply to
J. Clarke
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Everybody here is making the assumption that the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists was/is an impartial and objective entity. They too had an agenda and bought into the idea that the Soviet Union was a given and that the best thing for the US was to roll over like a cowed puppy and urinate on ourselves rather than confront them and make them mad. Thus, when Reagan actually stood up to the Soviets, the BAS had a cow and thus set the clock forward. Remember also that the clock setting was pretty much an arbitrary setting based upon the feelings of a group of people who really did not have any insight into actual Soviet doctrine or inside Soviet political machinations. However, the BAS could use that clock setting to influence American and Western opinion.

Reply to
Mark & Juanita

snip

You seem to be under the assumption that there was literally only one "button" on each side and that only Kennedy and/or Kruschev could push it. In fact, every nuclear sub commander, every SAC B-52 pilot with nuclear bombs, every pair of guys in nuclear ICBMs silos had the ability to start the ball rolling - towards major devistation. Both sides had military officers who wanted to annihilate the other side once and for all and have their nation fulfill it's destiny as they saw it. Some felt that such decisions should not be in the hands of civilians, especially politicians. There were also very influential civilians who were what later were called Hawks who were itching to wipe out the other side and were convinced it could be done with "acceptable levels of casualties".

There is a balancing act for the military - train and arm your personnel to destroy the enemy any where at any time AND give them the discipline to stand down OR start WW III when ordered to. A warrior can not stay ready for imminent battle for very long - he'll either implode or explode. During the Cuban Missile Crisis both militaries where cranked up even higher than normal for battle - and an all out war at that.

Now add the weak link in the command and control equation - communication. We didn't always have cell phones and satelite communications and even today, we have no way to communicate with deeply submerged submarines - each with enough nuclead "devices" to devastate major portions of the planet's land masses. There was no CNN, no live coverage, no 24 hour news, no see and disseminate, no "inbeds". It took time to develop film, miles of it, analyze the pictures, not digital images, no digital image analysis software/hardware, and type up, not word process, a report, with carbon copies (the cc in a memo), and fly the report to the White House. It could be 8 to 10 hours from "incident" to "decision makers" and then it took time to get the orders out. In 10 -12 hours a lot could have happened.

So you've got a destroyer captain confronting a submarine escort of ships carrying ICBMS to Cuba and each captain knows that the best defense is offense and knows that his opponent has the same view. Neither would hesitate to give their lives and the lives of their men to protect their homeland yet niether would willingly allow their enemy to destroy them without a fight. They've trained most of their adult lives for this moment of engagement.

Thankfully they stood down. But it could easily have gone the other way.

Get the context - Hiroshima and Nagasaki gave the U.S. a moral dilema It ended The War but we'd let the genie out of the bottle. Then the Korean "Police Action" and the "truce" - seen by others as indicating our unwillingness to use nuclear weapons, even when faced with "losing face" in a part of the world where "losing face" was unthinkable..

Now add to that, Joe McCarthy and the devastation he did to the State Department. Men who knew "the other side" better than anyone on "our side" were suspect because of their connections with "the other side" - a necessity of their profession. Hell, by the time we got into Viet Nam, we didn't have anyone who knew much about the area or the country. Had experienced hands been available and listened to we surely would not have installed a Catholic to lead a Buddhist country -or more accurately, the southern portion of a country. For that matter, we might not have backed Chiang Kai Chek (sp?) either despite opposition from US military advisors who'd worked with Mao during WW II and knew Chiang was no "general" and certainly no warrior. How we could continually shoot ourselves in the foot and still be able to step in shit over and over again is a mystery to me.

So when the Cuban Missile Crisis came up the Soviet Union had reason to believe that if they could hit us first and hit us hard we'd fold. Unlike the Soviets, we'd not lived through repeated invasions over hundreds of years. Hell, the last major conflict on our shores was nearly a hundred years gone by. We'd never lost 20 MILLION of our citizens - just in the most recent war.

It amazes me that WW III didn't start off of Cuba.

Do you have any idea of the size of the nuclear arsenals on both sides at the time? Do you have any idea of the devastation - for hundreds and hundreds of years - world wide - that a full nuclear exchange would have caused? There wouldn't have been any Finns or Canadians or Mexicans to take over anything - for a long, long, long, long time. Forget the radiation - think BIG - nuclear winter - probable Ice Age.

You clearly do not understand the magnitude of what almost happened, the consequences or how close we came to the unthinkable.

Oppenheimer understood better than anyone what nuclear weapons meant. On the first successful detonation of a thermonuclear device his reaction was to quote the Bahgvaghita (s?) "I am Shiva, the Come Death, Destroyer of Worlds.".

Those who do not learn from history are condemed to relive it., perhaps with a much less desirable outcome. I personally have no desire to live through anything like the Cuban Missile Crisis again.

charlie b

Reply to
charlie b

In point of fact three officers have to agree to launch.

And there is in fact no "button". What there is is a briefcase full of codes.

One B-52 is unlikely to get very far into Soviet airspace. Especially when if he goes every other B-52 in his squadron is going to be doing their damndest to stop him or bring him down.

Are you _sure_ that the two guys can launch without an authorization? Seems to me that there's also a code involved.

Which is why a system was put in place so that such people could not launch an attack.

Now, what does any of this have to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis? If there is a risk that some nutcase in the military is going to go bugfuck and starting a nuclear war, the risk is not dependent on there being a "missile crisis" but on their being a nutcase. Such a person is liable to go off for any reason or for no reason at any time. And there are still Hawks who want to nuke everybody in sight. So what? "Influential civilians" do not have the authority to order a nuclear attack.

There is only one kind of nuclear war. "all out".

So what? The US had no trouble communicating with its forces during WWII. What changed between then and 1962 to remove that capability? You don't need satellites and cell phones to communicate. Shortwave worked fine for a long time. There were also moonbounce, tropo scatter, and all kinds of other methods.

You mean that somebody dug up the ELF antennas while I wasn't looking? Dang, take your eye off 'em for one minute . . .

So what? If you can't send the order then they don't fire. This is a problem how? Or are you concerned that without getting orders ever five minutes a submarine crew will just out of sheer boredom decide for the Hell of it to launch a nuclear strike?

So what?

So what?

If the destroyer is _confronting_ a submarine then I fail to see how CNN, live coverage, 24 hour news, "see and disseminate", "inbeds" (that's actually "embeddeds" by the way), digital images, ditgital image analysis, etc have any relevance. They guy on the destroyer can _see_ the effing thing or has sonar contact with it. None of that stuff that you mention is going to show a submerged submarine.

So what?

Thankfully? Just how incompetent do you think our military officers to be? The commander of that destroyer wasn't _about_ to fire on the Soviet Navy without an order to do so. The _danger_ there was not that he'd do something irresponsible but that some event would occur that led him to believe that the Russian had fired on him and that he had to shoot back to defend his ship.

The _real_ concern though was that if the Soviets didn't back down then he _would_ have to be ordered to fire on them and nobody knew where that would go.

Only if somebody had ordered it to.

Trinity let the genie out of the bottle.

So?

The State Department does not control nuclear weapons, so what do they have to do with anything except to the extent that they might screw up badly enough that military action was the only option?

Chiang Kai-Shek--my mother had a lovely cloth-of-gold coat that was a gift from Chiang. That was before my time though--I never met him myself.

Can't really comment on the China situation other than to say that that was more of the "anti-communism" crap--instead of worring about "isms" they should have been worrying about what the particular movements were really all about. With Vietnam the real blown opportunity was when Ho came to the US asking for aid and got none. That's another mess the bloody French got us into.

The major concern about the missiles in Cuba was that the flight time was short enough that they could take out the US chain of command before the launch order could be given. If it was just a matter of "hit us hard and we'd fold" they didn't need to put missiles in Cuba.

Regardless, the cost of guessing wrong in that kind of endeavor is such that nobody in his right mind would take the risk.

In any case, the belief they could hit us first and hit us hard we'd fold appears to have been a figment of the imaginations of advocates of the use of nuclear weapons in Korea. Do you know of any credible testimony from anybody in a position of authority in the Soviet military or governent that would support that viewpoint? Kruschev says over and over again that the Russians did not want war.

So what? You think that the Russians _wanted_ to lose another 20 million plus all their military forces plus all their industrial capacity plus have the whole place turned into a radioactive wasteland? Just how stupid do you believe the Russians are? If you're this afraid what makes you think that they aren't?

Then you're far too easily amazed.

Do you? Or do you just have worst-case guesses? This is something that nobody is going to _know_ until it actually happens. And perhaps it might occur to you that Kruschev and Kennedy both had a hell of a lot more information in that regard than you do, and were as much aware of the risks.

And why is that? Fallout? Fallout doesn't fall everywhere uniformly, it falls downwind of the explosion. Do the prevailing winds go from Finland to Russia or from Russia to Finland? Do they go from the US to Mexico or Mexico to the US?

Uh huh. You mean like the ice age that Saddam lighting the oil fields caused? Remember, the same model that predicted "nuclear winter" from a nuclear exchange also predicted that that would bring about "nuclear winter". It didn't. Maybe it would with a real nuclear exchange, maybe it wouldn't. Nobody knows for sure, however current thinking is that to end the current interglacial (we're _in_ an Ice Age--right now we're just experiencing a warm spell, and we're due for the next glaciation unless the whole thing is winding down and going back to the "endless summer" that is the normal state of the planet) would require a shift in ocean currents in the North Atlantic and "nuclear winter" doesn't have a mechanism to cause this.

I probably understand it better than you do. As to "how close we came to the unthinkable", if it was "unthinkable" then nobody would think to do it, so cut the hyperbole.

Nope, that was the first succesful detonation of a nuclear device. Thermonuclear came later and was Teller's baby. And what he actually said was "I am become Death, destroyer of worlds".

I have no desire to live through the entire Cold War again, but if there is a history lesson there is it not that no nation of superpower status is going to be stupid enough to start a nuclear war.

I'm going to leave you with this:

"Cuba was 11,000 kilometers from the Soviet Union. Our sea and air communications with Cuba were so precarious that an attack against the US was unthinkable." Not my words. Kruschev himself said that.

Reply to
J. Clarke

I take it your eyes are brown?

Where did you learn about positive control, in the movies?

Reply to
George

Do you think he might have had LOTS of advice /and/ /direction/ from many "advisors" and "backers" with certain agendas lurking in the shadows or did Reagan, the political/economic/philosophical GENIUS, deduce and engineer all of the factors culminating in the demise of "The Evil Empire" all by himself? Just asking.

Gerry

Reply to
G.E.R.R.Y.

He seems to get the same reverence down there as Trudeau gets up here. JFK was a man who could deliver scripted speeches fairly well but never seemed to actually accomplish anything completely successfully.

He always has struck me as a guy who used the opportunity that Americans gave him as en easy way to get laid. Maybe the voters should have given him a shiny convertible instead and he could've gotten laid much more cheaply. He seems to have had the sexual proclivities of a billy goat.

In fact, that whole family seems to personify the lowest collection of morality in politics almost anywhere. The entire clan from Joe on down seems to have had connections to some very bad people and seems to have p*ssed them off with catastrophic results.

I look at JFK and I see a man as slimy as Nixon but only marginally better at hiding it /for/ /a/ /while/.

Gerry

Reply to
G.E.R.R.Y.

Don't know how much _direction_ he had--he had a multibillion dollar budget with which to solicit advice, so one hopes he availed himself of that service.

Didn't take a genius to see that the Soviet Union could be forced into the position of ceasing to expand their military or going bankrupt. I figured that out when Nixon was in office and I'm no expert on that sort of thing.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Reagan did all of that single-handedly? Wow! What a genius of a man. But could he turn water into wine?

The man was a second-rate actor who could read a script, sort of - the embodiment of the-right-place-at-the-right-time, dumb luck.

Gerry

Reply to
G.E.R.R.Y.

I think you may be closer to the truth than anyone there wants to admit.

Gerry

Reply to
G.E.R.R.Y.

Isn't that redundant, sort of like the old line about committing suicide in Buffalo? ;-)

Gerry

Reply to
G.E.R.R.Y.

to: J. Clarke from: charlie b subject: We got a lot closer than you think - with references

I'm probably spiitting in the wind but here goes... Below are some references which you might find worth looking into further. Please note the first paragraph of the Svetlana Sarvanskaya's "second point" and the following paragraphs that support the statement.

The following excerpt from

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MISSILE CRISIS: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE James Blight, Philip Brenner, Julia Sweig, Svetlana Savranskaya, Graham Allison as moderator

John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation

October 6, 2003

SVETLANA SAVRANSKAYA My second point, how dangerous was the crisis? I think we will return to this question again and again and again. And more and more documents are being declassified, and coming out now. The public has access to, in the Soviet Union, in Cuba. And based on the reading of the newer declassified documents, I can say that it was even more dangerous than we thought. Even more dangerous than we thought a couple of years ago.

What about the tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba? The United States, at the time, did not realize that the Soviet Union actually deployed nuclear-capable bombers, cruise missiles, and short-range launchers that could carry nuclear warheads and nuclear warheads in Cuba.

The standard procedure was that the commanders on the island could use both the strategic and the tactical nuclear weapons, only with authorization from the Soviet Premier. However, it was not exactly like that on the ground. We know that the Defense Ministry in the Soviet Union prepared draft orders to the Commander of the Soviet forces in Cuba, pre-delegating authority to use tactical nuclear weapons in two cases: U.S. air strikes or U.S. invasion, landing on Cuba. The order was never signed by Khrushchev himself or by Defense Minister Myunorvsky (?). But ...(inaudible) was informed of that order, was ...(inaudible) so what? He did not get the final authorization.

But we also know that the U2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba without any authorization from Moscow. And Moscow was quite unhappy with that fact, but could do nothing about it. So based on the reading of the new documents and on my interviews with Russian military officials-- and I underline here, military officials, who were in Cuba at that time-- I would say that the probability of use of tactical nuclear weapons in case of either U.S. air strikes or land invasion of Cuba was very, very high.

And here's a list of URLs on the subject

From the JFK Library - with minutes of meetings during the crisis

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*********NOTE: General Taylor for immediate air strikes and possible use of nukes

****

A Russian persepective from Soviet's archives

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's series on the subject with interviews of two key participants
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George Washington University
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of congress sovieat archives
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Security Administration
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Harvard University?s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

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list of Links to info on the Cuban Missile Crisis
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ONE'S OF PARTICULAR INTEREST SINCE IT NOTES THAT THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS WAS NOT - REPEAT - NOT - A GAME OF CHICKEN
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theory and the CMC

TIM WEINER, "Word for Word: The Cuban Missile Crisis," New York Times, October 5, 1997

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Lehrer Report
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Naval History site
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THIS ONE - still looking into the source - all one line
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Sub commander nearly fired nuclear torpedo*********

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recollections\

From The Atlantic Monthly

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Reply to
charlie b

waste a lot of your time looking up references on the topic?

Reply to
J. Clarke

Several reasons

The "learn from history or relive it" thing requires that the history one is to learn from is factual There is a point after a significant historical event where the written history of the event can be updated to include new information that becomes available. The Cuban Missile Crisis WAS a significant historical event and enough time has gone by for most of the primary parties to have died or are at a point in their lives when getting out what really happened is important to them. The fact that some of the records of the event in the Soviet Union have become available provides a unique opportunity to see what the "other side" was thinking and why.

In time the facts can become distorted and the history of the event may be watered down to reduce the actual seriousness and significance of the event. Once that starts to happen the learning value of the history starts to drop off - or worse yet, can be rewritten and used erronesously to justify current decisions and actions. THAT concerns me.

When one lives through a significant historical event, especially if one was living in a Primary Target very close to the launch point of nuclear missiles (the Panama Canal), one has clear and distinct memories of the event.

I lived through, and was an eye witness to, another historical event a few years after the Cuban Missile Crisis - The 1964 Flag Pole Incident that took place in Panama/Canal Zone. Being awakened by the sound of a tank outside my bedroom window and looking through the blinds, seeing the end of the underside of a tank barrel sort of sticks with you. The reports of the incident, even by the Christian Science Monitor - possibly the most objective and accurate newspaper at the time, were almost a hundred and eighty degrees off of what I saw and heard during the critical hour before and after the triggering incident at the flagpole in front of my high school

You presented a view of the event which was significantly different from my recollections. To see if you perhaps had a more accurate view of the event I looked into what is out there now. Took maybe an hour and the time was well spent - learned a lot. I've subsequently read the "history" of this event that's in Panama's version of history. The description of the initial hours of the incident are significantly different from what I personally saw and heard. What thy learn from their version of history won't IMHO, serve them ery well.

Does that answer your question?

charlie b

Reply to
charlie b

Not really. The simple fact is that my recollections (and I was pretty damned close to a prime target too, about half as far from Cuba as any point in Panama) are different from yours. Just as Kruschev's were different from Kennedy's, and so on. As for repeating history, I doubt that I am ever going to be in a position that gives me any power with regard to the launching or withholding launch of nuclear weapons, so convincing me that your view is right, even is you are successful, would seem to me to be a total waste of your time.

Yes, it was a dangerous even in a dangerous time. Was it so much more dangerous than the rest of that dangerous time as to justify all the media attention and hand wringing and doomsaying? I don't think so, you do, that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.

Reply to
J. Clarke

Ford was never elected Vice President. When Spiro Agnew resigned as VP, Nixon nominated Ford to be VP and he was subsequently confirmed by the Senate.

BTW, Ford was no fool. You don't get to be House majority/minority (depending on which party is in charge) leader without some smarts and the ability to forge political deals.

Reply to
Tom Royer

Ditto that. I was also annoyed by the frequent media portrayals of Ford as clumsy, because he hit his head on a helicopter doorway once or twice, and he fell down while skiing a few times, etc. Well, IIRC, Gerald Ford is 6'2" tall, and a man that height is going to bang his head from time to time going in and out of a helicopter -- and as for falling down while skiing -- while I don't ski myself, I understand that falling on your can is not exactly an uncommon experience. Ford was one of the most active and athletic Presidents we've had recently. Active people have mishaps. Big deal.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.

Reply to
Doug Miller
[snip] | |Ford was never elected Vice President. When |Spiro Agnew resigned as VP, Nixon nominated |Ford to be VP and he was subsequently |confirmed by the Senate.

Sigh. Since you're trying to correct me, let me correct you:

The 25th amendment says among other things:

"Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress."

I know that and so stated "Let me clarify my too hastily composed missive. Of course I meant in Ford's case, "appointed" to the vice presidency, but he was an "elected" official who was put into that office via a constitutionally defined process that mandated that he be confirmed by both houses of Congress, the members of which are elected."

Let me now clarify my clarification. I used "appointed" in quotes because that is what others before me used, in contradistinction to "elected."

In this particular case, "nominated" by Nixon and "elected" to office by the Congress is more accurate.

Pretty much like it's always done. A person is first nominated and then voted upon. The Vice Presidency is *not* an appointed office, which was the original point I was trying to make.

Wes

Reply to
Wes

Wasn't he the one beanin' folks on the golf course? :)

Reply to
patrick conroy

I thought that was Agnew, but it's been many years.

-- Regards, Doug Miller (alphageek-at-milmac-dot-com)

Get a copy of my NEW AND IMPROVED TrollFilter for NewsProxy/Nfilter by sending email to autoresponder at filterinfo-at-milmac-dot-com You must use your REAL email address to get a response.

Reply to
Doug Miller

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