Carry on Cocking Up

Bridport author Dave Mort’s latest book “Play it Again Uncle Sam” is a satire on post war US foreign policy, the blowback from which is still being felt today, not least the ongoing bloodbath that is Iraq, soon to be spread to Iran.
His novel particularly focuses on Cuba in 1959 when the US backed Dictator, Batista, was overthrown by Fidel Castro and his supporters. No political event in modern History (up until 9/11) has thrown the CIA top brass into such a state of apoplexy than the activities of Fidel and his merry band, especially after he began to nationalise estates owned by the United Fruit Company (CIA boss Allen Dulles was on the board), sugar plantations owned by the Pepsi Cola Company and redistribute them amongst landless Cubans. He then rubbed US landholders’ noses in it by offering them a compensation package based on the value of the land they had entered on their tax return, which, of course, was a deliberately deflated figure.
Emboldened by this early success he went onto confiscate oil refineries owned by the Standard Oil Company (A Rockefeller enterprise) and the Zapata Oil Company (owned by Dubya’s father George H W Bush). He was publicly humiliating the US Government so badly they became paranoid that the rest of their puppet regimes in Latin America would also fall, so the then Vice President, Richard Nixon, decided enough was enough and secret plans were drawn up to either assassinate Castro or invade Cuba and remove him.
The problem was the hand of the United States in these illegal activities was to be hidden at all costs and scapegoats were to be found. Nixon and the CIA drew up plans for an invasion of Cuba while the contract for the hit on Castro was sub contracted to the professional killers, the Mafia.
Then came the 1960 election which everyone thought Vice President Nixon would win with ease, especially as he was up against the less experienced Senator John Kennedy. But ironically the Nixon/Bush clan had underestimated the lust for power of the corrupt Kennedy family and JFK crept home with more than a little help from his father’s cronies. The CIA, which was busy organising the last stages of the Cuba invasion plan, was freaked out by Kennedy’s victory especially when they discovered he wasn’t as committed to the invasion as Nixon and had quickly ruled out the use of US Marine and Air Strike back up, should the invasion force, made up of anti-Castro Cuban exiles, get into trouble.
And get into trouble it did. Within a matter of hours most of the 1,300 men had either been killed or captured and Kennedy was advised not to try and save them using US Forces as this would bring the Russians in on the side of the Cubans. Castro was now
cock a hoop that his little country had defeated a superpower and Kennedy had succeeded in betraying the Miami Cubans and alienating the CIA, who had planned the doomed mission. From that moment on JFK’s fate was sealed.
Castro was now public enemy number one and all manner of crazy schemes were being concocted to kill him on a daily basis but always mindful of disguising the US Government’s involvement. What was needed was a suitable scapegoat that would point the finger away from the US and towards foreign shores.
Enter stage left a young US marine who had recently returned from Moscow after having defected there three years earlier. This naïve, confused, young self-proclaimed communist didn’t appear to be over bright with a malleable persona and a young Russian bride whose uncle just happened to be a high ranking KGB official. The perfect dupe? So they thought.
Within weeks he was being manipulated into forming and joining various groups that would raise his political profile and even appeared on TV arguing his Marxist view of the world. In the September/October of 1963 he, or someone posing as him, was sent to Mexico City in order to get a visa to enter Cuba, whilst there getting into arguments with staff in the Cuban and Russian embassies thereby ensuring everyone remembered the name Lee Harvey Oswald.
But according to the authorities, he then went off the radar screen turning up a few weeks later working at the Book Depository on Elm Street Dallas, which just happened to be on the motorcade route of JFK’s visit to that city. We all know what happened next.
So Oswald and/or his backers had turned the CIA’s original plan to kill Castro and Kennedy was assassinated instead. So cock up rather than conspiracy? I think so. But what a cock up! The CIA has now spent the last 45 years covering up this nonsense and hundreds of potential witnesses have had their “suicides involuntarily assisted” to stop the truth coming out. But at least the CIA now admits to having kept a pre-assassination on Oswald. At the Warren Committee hearings of 1964 they actually perjured themselves when they said they had no record of any Lee Harvey Oswald, an unbelievably stupid claim when you consider that this young marine had defected to Moscow offering to sell them radar secrets for the U2 Spy plane, which was a CIA run mission.
In my opinion this cock up ranks alongside some of their other “biggies” their support of Saddam Hussein during the Iran /Iraq war even though it was known he had gassed Kurds. Saddam obviously thought he still had “favoured status” when he invaded Kuwait. He thought wrong and the ensuing two wars to get rid of him have killed hundreds of thousands more. Then there was the arming of the likes of Osama Bin Laden and his cronies in Afghanistan in the 1980’s in order to get rid of the Russians. God alone knows what they promised these men in return but they’re obviously still very angry.
But what, I hear you ask, has any of this got to do with the present day? I believe history is about to repeat itself. In 1960 when Nixon and the Republicans lost the election they handed Kennedy and the Democrats a poisoned chalice with the “Bay of Pigs” invasion plan, probably knowing that Kennedy wouldn’t have the stomach for it. It is highly likely the Republicans will lose the next election to Barak Obama but they are unlikely to go quietly. It is very probable that Bush, his cronies and their friends in Israel will consider launching a pre-emptive strike against supposed nuclear installations in Iran citing the “Weapons of Mass Destruction” argument that they tried to use against Iraq. Troops already in Iraq would then be used to use the threat of invasion to quell any retaliation. This “fait accomplis” will then be handed to Barak and the incoming Democrats and they and the rest of us will reap the bitter harvest, namely terrorism on a mass scale for years to come.But in the meantime don’t panic, read “Play it Again Uncle at www.playitagainunclesam.com