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Question: What are your memories of the Cuban Missile crisis!?
Im doing an assignment and i need to know from people who were alive at the time how they felt!? Were you scared of nuclear holocaust, angry at the President or the Russians, what are your memories!? Www@QuestionHome@Com


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I was 8, and at that age, I wasn't supposed to cross busy streets without an older sibling or parent!. Our house didn't have a basement, but my grandmother's house did, only it was on the other side of a busy street and several blocks beyond that!.

Well, I remember that we were all watching TV that night when the President said that we had photographic proof that there were missiles on Cuba!. A lot of different things went on, but I wasn't really aware of much of it!. I remember we had a Civil Defense pamphlet with instructions on how to build a bomb shelter, and I thought it looked cool, but my Dad said we didn't need one!.

A few days into the whole thing, we had an air raid drill, these had been common during the war, but we had never had one that I knew of, though in our town at noon, the siren blew each day, as a test of the warning for either tornado or enemy attack!.

In this incidence, we were all to leave school at a predesignated time, to keep things orderly, and go home and stay in our basements until the all clear!. Well, we didn't have a basement, so we all talked it over, and since my older sister was going to be going from her school to our grandma's and couldn't come and get me at my school, and my Mom worked at a hospital, so she had to be there, and my Dad worked in the city, so I had to cross the busy street by myself and walk from school to my grandma's!. We went over the route several times to make sure I didn't get lost, and to be absolutely sure I remembered about looking both ways before crossing any street, but the busy one especially!.

On the day of the drill, the siren sounded, and we all filed out of school and headed for our destinations!. I arrived safely, I think I got to grandma's first, and we all went to the basement for a while, and then upstairs!.

The situation was finally resolved, but I remember my Dad never forgave the Kennedys (Bobby in particular, who was doing 90% of the negotiating) for what almost happened that October!. His reaction was the same as mine when KAL 007 was shot down and Reagan was talking so tough with the Russians, because it seemed very likely, actually through most of Reagan's presidency, that we were going to be dragged into a nuclear war!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

~At the time, I trusted and believed my government!. (Hey, I was just a kid and didn't know any better!.) Scared!? Oh, yeah!. I lived within 50 miles of a primary target and we knew that put us in the blast radius!. Of course, I laughed at my buddies whose parents were installing bomb shelters!. Who wanted to survive the blast and live in the desolation that we knew would follow!? I wanted to see the fireball and have it burn into my mind as my mind burned!.

Bert the Turtle was on TV everyday, telling us to duck and cover!. We had air raid drills in school!. We were told if the nukes were inbound, we should get under our desks and curl up in a ball with our arms over our heads!. We practiced it a few times a year!. Keep that in mind!. Assuming the fetal position under a piece of wood will help you somehow as your blood turns to superheated steam and your bones hit 1,800 degrees F!. Later, someone figured out that the school would be stuck with us if we survived the blast and the teachers, administration and staff would not be able to leave!. The drills were changed!. We were taught how to evacuate!. We were sent home early and told to go straight home and to stay inside until the end of the school day!. I suppose that was to acclimate us to curfews!. In any case, naturally we all followed the rules - yeah, right - and we got to ditch school a couple times a year legally!.

I was angry at the Soviets and at Castro because my government told me it was all their fault!. I remember Kennedy telling us about the missile gap in his campaign and how the evil Ruskies could kill all of us many more times than we could kill all of them!. He and Robert McNamara devised MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and led the world into the most dangerous and costly arms race in history, all to guarantee that no matter how many hits we took, we could still annihilate the planet!. Of course, the USSR had to respond!.

Then I learned to read and to research!. Kennedy lied!. About a lot of things!. There was a missile gap!. It was in favor of the US, before MAD, by a margin of more than 10 to 1!. We had tried several times to assassinate Castro!. We had already taken out at least a dozen democratically elected reform governments around the world and replaced them with ruthless dictators!. The Shah was one of our puppets!. We helped Saddam Hussein take over Iraq!. We put Diem in charge in South Vietnam (betraying Ho Chi Minh, who had been our ally in WWII) and Papa Doc Duvalier in Haiti!. The list goes on!. Ike started it, JFK kept it going!. Nixon devised the Bay of Pigs!. CIA briefed Kennedy in on it!. CIA forgot to mention that their own estimates predicted failure unless the rebels got extensive support from the US Navy and Air Force!. They also forgot to mention that they had irrefutable proof that the Soviets, and therefore Castro, had gotten the plans, including dates, times, troop levels and landing sites!. Kennedy authorized the invasion but with the express caveat that US naval and air power would not be authorized!. CIA went ahead and the fiasco followed - just as Dulles and his boys had predicted!. JFK got the blame, but that one was not his fault!. The Joint Chiefs and CIA never forgave him for keeping his word and not sending US firepower, which is one of the reasons little brother Bobby went to his grave believing the JCs and CIA had a hand in Dallas!.

We had nukes in Turkey, aimed at and within range of Moscow!. Khrushchev asked, then demanded, that those missiles be removed!. We refused!. We had already imposed the embargoes on Cuba, thus driving Castro into the eager arms of the Politburo!. The Cuban economy was a shambles, the nation was bankrupt, the citizens had been wiped out and the people were starving!. The embargoes, not Castro, did that - we were told it was Fidel that ruined Cuba of course!. Khrushchev and Castro found the obvious solution to their mutual problems!. The USSR put the missiles in Cuba!. Then Khrushchev suggested that he would remove them immediately on the condition that the US pull ours out of Turkey under cover of darkness within 6 months and the US stop trying to kill Castro and promise not to invade Cuba!. We kept two out of three of the promises!. More attempts were made on Castro but none worked!. He was luckier than Diem and Tujillo and several other heads of state CIA killed or helped kill!. Khrushchev did not want war and was opposed to using nukes!. He didn't need votes!. He let Kennedy take the credit for resolving the crisis and in return, he got everything he wanted - which wasn't all that much (the missiles out of Turkey and leave Castro alone - things which diplomacy should have achieved without throwing the entire globe into a panic about nuclear extinction)!.

It all started with Ike's farcical "Domino Theory" and "Brinksmanship"!. The declassified CIA and US government documents are on line if you have any interest in knowing how many millions of people died at US hands around the world to save the assets of folks like the Dulles boys and the United Fruit Company or the Rockefellers and their oil interests!. You won't get it from your text because your government wants to keep it from you and, in all likelihood, your teachers have never had the ambition to do the research or are afraid to teach it due to the threat of school board reprisals!. I know the problems I had in that regard!.

It continues today!. Our one-time ally Osama bin Laden, who we helped when we backed the insurgent invasion of Afghanistan, along with people we today call war lords, the Taliban and terrorists!. We know about the bases in Pakistan because we spent tens of billions of your tax dollars building them and training and arming people in them!. When Kabul asked Moscow to honor its treaty obligations and send military assistance, and the Soviets complied, we called it a Soviet invasion!. The analogy is apt and the paranoia about bin Laden and Saddam is a great comparison to the Missile Crisis, except bin Laden retaliated whereas Khrushchev didn't!. That was one of the reasons Nikita was deposed, in fact!.

Anyhow, during the campaign, Kennedy spent a long time building an image of youthful vigor and machismo!. He had to put up or shut up during October '62, and we loved it when he stood up to the Russian Bear, even if we were all going to die because of it!. Had I known then what I know now, I'd have sent Lee Oswald a box of bullets!.

Kennedy was a corrupt, incompetent, drug addicted fraud, but one can't speak ill of the martyred!. Chances are good he'd not have been reelected in '64!. If the truth (assuming the things his friends, family, and advisers have said about him are true - one needn't go to his detractors to peel off the veneer) came out in '64, he'd certainly have lost the election, and he may have been impeached!. If the truth had come out in '60, he'd never have been elected in the first place!.

What I remember most of the affair is that I bought the bull coming off the Potomac hook, line and sinker, without even thinking of questioning it!. I am still ashamed of how gullible and naive I was, even if I was just a kid!. Never again!.Www@QuestionHome@Com