Charles Drago Wrote:

Anthony Marsh Wrote:The Pedro Charles letters were one such hoax that the Cuban exiles used to link Oswald to Castro and spark an invasion of Cuba. Unfortunately Hoover thought they were real and cited them as evidence of conspiracy stemming from Castro and LBJ believed Hoover.
That and other hoaxes related to it were the reason why LBJ ordered a cover-up and formed the Warren Commission.

This could not be more wrong.

Jack White Wrote:How does the CIA/JVB/LHO/Ferie/Ochsner plot to kill Castro
with the teenager's cancer virus which LHO was to deliver to
Cuba, only to be foiled by a hurricane, fit into the KILL CASTRO
scenario?

Jack

Paul Rigby Wrote:A quick plug for a thread started by Gerald Ven on JFK Lancer, "Adm. George W. Anderson, Jr., Joint Chiefs & JFK." In particular, this excellent post in response by Gary Craig:

http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=3&topic_id=87076&mesg_id=87079&page

Quote:Interesting. In a briefing for RFK on Operation Mongoose from the JCS files:

"... the military believe the continued existence of the Castro Communist regime is incompatable with the minimum security requirements of the United States and the entire Western Hemisphere."

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=78851&relPageId=3

Then on 12/3/63 a complete about face?

MEMORANDUM FOR GENERAL TAYLOR from LBJ

The more I look at it, the more it is clear to me that South Vietnam is our most critical military area right now. I hope you and your colleages in the Joint Chiefs of Staff will see to it that the very best available officers are assigned to General Harkins' command in all areas and for all purposes. We should put our blue ribbon men on this job at every level.

http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=78888&relPageId=3

Gary Craig

Charles Drago Wrote:In other words, the true criteria for engagement had NOTHING to do with those being advertised.

Paul Rigby Wrote:

Charles Drago Wrote:In other words, the true criteria for engagement had NOTHING to do with those being advertised.

Alas, no. But then, does it ever?

Quote:Fidel Castro says communism doesn't work

Former Cuban president says Marxist model 'doesn't even work for us' in offhand remark to US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg

Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 September 2010 17.31 BST

It was a casual remark over a lunch of salad, fish and red wine but future historians are likely to parse and ponder every word: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us any more."

Fidel Castro's nine-word confession, dropped into conversation with a visiting US journalist and policy analyst, undercuts half a century of thundering revolutionary certitude about Cuban socialism.

That the island's economy is a disaster is hardly news but that the micro-managing "maximum leader" would so breezily acknowledge it has astonished observers.

Towards the end of a long, relaxed lunch in Havana, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, asked Castro if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting. The reply left him dumbfounded. "Did the leader of the revolution just say, in essence, 'Never mind'?" Goldberg wrote on his blog.

The 84-year-old retired president did not elaborate but the implication, according to Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert from the Council on Foreign Relations who also attended the lunch, was that the state had too big a role in the economy.

Raúl Castro has been saying the same thing in public and private since succeeding his older brother two years ago. With infrastructure crumbling, food shortages acute and an average monthly salary of just $25 (£16), it has become apparent that near-total state control of the economy does not work.

But for Fidel to acknowledge the fact could be compared to Napoleon musing that the march on Moscow was not, on reflection, a great success.

"Frankly, I have been somewhat amazed by Fidel's new frankness," said Stephen Wilkinson, a Cuba expert at the London Metropolitan University. "This is the latest of a series of recent utterances that strike me as being indicative of a change in the old man's character."

The remark should not, however, be interpreted as a condemnation of socialism, added Wilkinson. "That is clearly not what he means, but it is an acknowledgement that the way in which the Cuban system is organised has to change. It is an implicit indication also that he has abdicated governing entirely to Raúl, who has argued this position for some time. We can now expect a lot more changes and perhaps more rapid changes as a consequence."

Raúl has said Cuba cannot blame the decades-old US embargo for all its economic ills and that serious reforms are needed. Fidel's statement could bolster the president's behind-the-scenes tussle with apparatchiks resisting change, said Sweig.

Agriculture has been a big disappointment. The lush Caribbean island of 11 million people could be a major food exporter but central planning and state-run co-operatives have produced chronic shortages, prompting an old, bitter joke that the revolution's three biggest failures are breakfast, lunch and dinner. Raúl's reforms are not going well: food production fell 7.5% in the first half of the year.

Once propped up by the Soviet Union, Cuba's lifeline is now cheap oil from Venezuela, where President Hugo Chávez considers Fidel a mentor.

Chávez swiftly followed another surprise statement of Castro's – accusing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of antisemitism – with an announcement that he would meet Venezuelan Jewish leaders. The move was "a direct result of Fidel's statement", according to Goldberg.

Marxist reforms?
The remarks about Cuban economic policy are not the only surprise statements made recently by the former Cuban leader. Others include:

• He feels responsible for the "great injustice" of the persecution of Cuban homosexuals in the 1970s.

• He laments Jewish suffering over the centuries, defends Israel's right to exist and accuses Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of antisemitism.

• He appears to regret urging the Soviet Union to nuke the US during the 1962 missile crisis. "After I've seen what I've seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn't worth it all."

Magda Hassan Wrote:I don't know that I'd believe anything that Goldberg says. He is a tool with an agenda. Latest assignment to get the US to bomb Iran or at least give Israel the green light.

Quote:Fidel Castro says remarks about Cuban model 'not working' misinterpreted

Former president had previously been reported to have admitted failure of economic system

* Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent
* guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 September 2010 23.06 BST
* Article history

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro Former president Fidel Castro is reported to have said: 'The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore.'

Fidel Castro said today that his comment to a US journalist about Cuba's system not working had been misinterpreted.

The former president told a meeting at the University of Havana that the remark, which caused a sensation when reported earlier this week, did not reflect his view. He meant "the exact opposite", he said.

Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic magazine, reported that at the end of a long lunch last month he asked the 84-year-old communist revolutionary if Cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries. He said Castro replied: "The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

Quote:This is really quite strange. Yesterday, my inbox began filling up with email telling me that Jeffrey Goldberg had gone on NPR and, when asked about my critiques of his Atlantic article on bombing Iran, claimed I had "retracted" part of what I had written. When I read the first couple emails, I assumed the emailers had heard it incorrectly or were mischaracterizing Goldberg's remarks, because not only had I never issued any retraction of those criticisms, but I never wrote anything remotely close to what could possibly be misconstrued that way: I never even hinted that anything I had written was inaccurate, because it wasn't. I was reasonably sure that even Jeffrey Goldberg wouldn't simply fabricate such an event of that significance and announce it as fact on NPR as a way of discrediting a critic. But sure enough, once the audio was posted by NPR and I listened to it, I found -- genuinely, perhaps na?vely, to my amazement -- that what the emailers described is exactly what happened. full: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/08/20/goldberg