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Octafish

(55,745 posts)
37. So what? That was before LBJ used the Tonkin Gulf Incident as casus belli for sending in draftees.
Fri Nov 30, 2012, 05:30 PM
Nov 2012

And the resulting escalation to more than 500,000 ground forces that lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people, including almost 59,000 Americans -- mostly draftees, but did make a lot of money for Brown & Root and the rest of the military industrial complex.

What Bobby Kennedy said later:



Bobby Kennedy: America's first assassination conspiracy theorist

May 13, 2007
BY DAVID TALBOT

One of the most intriguing mysteries about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that darkest of American labyrinths, is why his brother Robert F. Kennedy apparently did nothing to investigate the crime. Bobby Kennedy was, after all, not just the attorney general of the United States at the time of the assassination -- he was his brother's devoted partner, the man who took on the administration's most grueling assignments, from civil rights to organized crime to Cuba, the hottest Cold War flash point of its day. But after the burst of gunfire in downtown Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, ended this unique partnership, Bobby Kennedy seemed lost in a fog of grief, refusing to discuss the assassination with the Warren Commission and telling friends he had no heart for an aggressive investigation. "What difference does it make?" he would say. "It won't bring him back."

But Bobby Kennedy was a complex man, and his years in Washington had taught him to keep his own counsel and proceed in a subterranean fashion. What he said in public about Dallas was not the full story. Privately, RFK -- who had made his name in the 1950s as a relentless investigator of the underside of American power -- was consumed by the need to know the real story about his brother's assassination. This fire seized him on the afternoon of Nov. 22, as soon as FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, a bitter political enemy, phoned to say -- almost with pleasure, thought Bobby -- that the president had been shot. And the question of who killed his brother continued to haunt Kennedy until the day he too was gunned down, on June 5, 1968.

Because of his proclivity for operating in secret, RFK did not leave behind a documentary record of his inquiries into his brother's assassination. But it is possible to retrace his investigative trail, beginning with the afternoon of Nov. 22, when he frantically worked the phones at Hickory Hill -- his Civil War-era mansion in McLean, Va. -- and summoned aides and government officials to his home. Lit up with the clarity of shock, the electricity of adrenaline, Bobby Kennedy constructed the outlines of the crime that day -- a crime, he immediately concluded, that went far beyond Lee Harvey Oswald, the 24-year-old ex-Marine arrested shortly after the assassination. Robert Kennedy was America's first assassination conspiracy theorist.

SNIP...

A stunning outburst

Meanwhile, as Lyndon Johnson -- a man with whom he had a storied antagonistic relationship -- flew east from Dallas to assume the powers of the presidency, Bobby Kennedy used his fleeting authority to ferret out the truth. After hearing his brother had died at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Kennedy phoned CIA headquarters, just down the road in Langley, where he often began his day, stopping there to work on Cuba-related business. Bobby's phone call to Langley on the afternoon of Nov. 22 was a stunning outburst. Getting a ranking official on the phone -- whose identity is still unknown -- Kennedy confronted him in a voice vibrating with fury and pain. "Did your outfit have anything to do with this horror?" Kennedy erupted.

SNIP...

Kennedy had another revealing phone conversation on the afternoon of Nov. 22. Speaking with Enrique "Harry" Ruiz-Williams, a Bay of Pigs veteran who was his most trusted ally among exiled political leaders, Bobby shocked his friend by telling him point-blank, "One of your guys did it." Who did Kennedy mean? By then Oswald had been arrested in Dallas. The CIA and its anti-Castro client groups were already trying to connect the alleged assassin to the Havana regime. But as Kennedy's blunt remark to Williams makes clear, the attorney general wasn't buying it. Recent evidence suggests that Bobby Kennedy had heard the name Lee Harvey Oswald long before it exploded in news bulletins around the world, and he connected it with the government's underground war on Castro. With Oswald's arrest in Dallas, Kennedy apparently realized that the government's clandestine campaign against Castro had boomeranged at his brother.

CONTINUED...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/42434



Thus, given the facts, RFK's perspective changed.

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

the thing that ruined "JFK" for me Enrique Nov 2012 #1
"Interesting?" Archae Nov 2012 #3
What is up with this Anti-Semitic meme running around in Hollywood? vaberella Nov 2012 #7
Not just liberals in Hollywood. Archae Nov 2012 #9
The part where he says Johonny Nov 2012 #31
The late Larry Hagman in Nixon (1995) MinM Nov 2012 #12
JFK was an incomprehensible confusing mess bluestateguy Nov 2012 #2
Well, O.K. (I read the whole link.)But it was priceless when STONE dropped his bomb on Morning Scab UTUSN Nov 2012 #4
I agree JFK was make believe. But it is great movie making. applegrove Nov 2012 #5
I also agree oswaldactedalone Nov 2012 #8
As a kid, my brother used to have a book on a jfk conspiracy. I used applegrove Nov 2012 #34
it's a ten-part TV series, not a 'documentary'. HiPointDem Nov 2012 #6
Ok, it's a "documentary" series then. Archae Nov 2012 #10
It's loathsome on a liberal website that anyone would DARE judge a move without seeing it first. KittyWampus Nov 2012 #39
Is there a post where the OP says they haven't seen it? zappaman Nov 2012 #45
i vowed around JFK never to watch a stone movie. pansypoo53219 Nov 2012 #11
last movie I saw from stone was platoon. Won't waste time with his vision of things anymore still_one Nov 2012 #27
Oliver Stone has been a RW whipping boy for a long, long time (since Platoon) JCMach1 Nov 2012 #13
"Sometimes?" Archae Nov 2012 #14
there are some of his movies that aren't JCMach1 Nov 2012 #53
Well, I would have to watch the piece in order to judge it fairly, MadHound Nov 2012 #15
Stone does the nation a service by bringing up the things the rightwing prefers we move on from. Octafish Nov 2012 #18
In other news: water is wet. Lizzie Poppet Nov 2012 #16
Absolutely no cred Berlum Nov 2012 #17
To me JFK was more about the fascination with the event and all the conspiracy theories CBGLuthier Nov 2012 #19
So you've seen it? joeybee12 Nov 2012 #20
Too many to count. Archae Nov 2012 #21
Is that the same Wikipedia famous for CIA revisions? Octafish Nov 2012 #22
Garrison was a fraud zappaman Nov 2012 #24
Garrison was a World War II hero and a guy who devoted his life to Justice. Octafish Nov 2012 #38
So war heroes can't be nuts? zappaman Nov 2012 #46
What? Like the time Eisenhower's CIA asked the Mafia to kill Castro? Octafish Nov 2012 #49
"What? Like the time Eisenhower's CIA asked the Mafia to kill Castro?" zappaman Nov 2012 #50
I think the other poster was asking if you'd seen the documentary you are testifying Bluenorthwest Nov 2012 #32
Yup. nt woo me with science Nov 2012 #43
What is sad is that way too many people view JFK as a documentary zappaman Nov 2012 #23
One Big Thing Oliver Stone got right: JFK was pulling US out of Vietnam. Octafish Nov 2012 #25
Not according to Bobby zappaman Nov 2012 #26
So what? That was before LBJ used the Tonkin Gulf Incident as casus belli for sending in draftees. Octafish Nov 2012 #37
This message was self-deleted by its author woo me with science Nov 2012 #41
I take it you object to the "USA as Empire" angle? Junkdrawer Nov 2012 #28
He did a hatchet job on Harry Truman JPZenger Nov 2012 #29
I don't care for most of his films, nor for him personally, but this is not valid criticism Bluenorthwest Nov 2012 #30
I watched 10 minutes of Stone's history show. Archae Nov 2012 #48
So, does this mean "Scarface" is fiction? LTR Nov 2012 #33
X - P = Richard Case Nagell MinM Nov 2012 #35
He's fantastic and I'll be watching this LittleBlue Nov 2012 #36
The worst part of that movie Capt. Obvious Nov 2012 #40
First time I heard that stupid thing talk I fell "back and to the left" on my ass. :-p nt Guy Whitey Corngood Nov 2012 #42
onto the grassy knoll? Capt. Obvious Nov 2012 #44
A grassy Knoll in the Dagobah System. nt Guy Whitey Corngood Nov 2012 #47
These are not the magic bullets you're looking for Capt. Obvious Nov 2012 #51
But his "W." had me laughing until I cried rock Nov 2012 #52
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