NEWSWEEK Changes Format to Fiction - Rewriting the Bay of Pigs History

Where Obama's “Blame My Predecessor” Political Strategy Originated
I hadn’t realized Newsweek had switched formats from News to Fiction until I read “The Untold Story of the Bay of Pigs” in this week’s (22 & 29 Aug 11 Double Issue) edition. What's next? Is Oliver Stone going to replace Tina Brown as their new editor? Anyone wishing to know the truth rather than this whitewash intended to relieve JFK of his richly deserved ‘credit” for the Bay of Pigs fiasco should access the C-SPAN website at: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/PigsM to hear Professor Irwin Gillman’s excellent (and factual) presentation entitled “The Coming of the Bay of Pigs: Myth and Reality” which was most recently broadcast on C-Span just last week, 14 Aug 2011. Liberals would have you believe that Eisenhower had it all planned and left office leaving Kennedy “holding the bag.” In truth, Eisenhower wasn't even aware of the invasion plan and said so in an article published by the New York newspaper Newsday in 1965 titled "Ike Speaks Out: Bay of Pigs was all JFK's.''

The following is plagiarized almost verbatim from the C-SPAN Website:

Professor Gellman is the visiting scholar of history at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa., and has written four books on U.S. and Latin American history, including "Secret Affairs: Franklin Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and Sumner Welles,'' published in 1995 and nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

The Professor points out that historians in recent years have tended to shift the blame for one of the greatest U.S. foreign policy disasters in the 20th century on Kennedy's predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. They say Kennedy merely inherited Eisenhower's flawed plan to use Cuban exiles to invade Cuba and oust Fidel Castro. But they've got it all wrong, Gellman said, basing their scholarship on the writings of Kennedy administration officials Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Theodore Sorensen. Both men sought to defend their boss, who was assassinated in 1963, from criticism by fixing blame on Eisenhower.

"Sorensen wishes you to believe that Kennedy had no choice, that when Eisenhower leaves office, Kennedy was stuck. There was no option for the guy. And that's how history is written, and that's the story that's told,'' Gellman said.

Instead, Eisenhower wasn't even aware of the invasion plan and said so in an article published by the New York newspaper Newsday in 1965 titled "Ike Speaks Out: Bay of Pigs was all JFK's.''

According to Gellman, these are things many historians never take the time to read before thinking that Eisenhower was at fault for the plan.

"If you are a good liberal, do you go on the position that because Eisenhower initially started a movement to get rid of Castro, that makes him the player of the Bay of Pigs? Which by the way, anybody that reads the documents will tell you that there was no Eisenhower involvement. He wasn't even consulted,'' Gellman said.

The Bay of Pigs invasion was an unsuccessful attempt by the U.S. government to overthrow Castro. A group of about 1,400 Cuban exiles was assembled and trained by the CIA for several months to invade the Bahia de Cochinos, or Bay of Pigs, on April 17, 1961. But Castro was ready for the invasion and his 25,000 troops defeated, killed or captured many of the invaders, embarrassing the United States and causing Castro to form a closer alliance with the Soviet Union.

Gellman called the plan "crazy'' and marked by "stupidity,'' including lack of air support and leaving its execution in the hands of the CIA, an intelligence organization, not a military one.

But if there was going to be an invasion, Gellman argued, it would have fared better under Eisenhower, a decorated five-star general who was Supreme Allied Commander during World War II, whose maxim was “If you're going to use force, then you better win.” (End of C-SPAN Quote)

So if anyone is wondering where President Obama came up with his “Blame My Predecessor” strategy for his failure to fix the US economy, one need look no further than President Kennedy. Appears this has been in the Democrat’s political playbook for at least 50 years!