book review: "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters."

By David Swanson

One of the most unusual books and far-and-away the saddest I have ever read is James Douglass's "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters." This is the best documented account ever produced of why and how the CIA assassinated John F. Kennedy. That the CIA did this is beyond dispute, and that the first President Bush was involved is well established by Russ Baker's book "Family of Secrets." What separates Douglass's book from the pack is his account of how Kennedy lived his final months, the actions he took that turned the CIA against him but saved the world from a nuclear holocaust and -- had he lived -- would probably have avoided the Vietnam War and brought the Cold War to a swift and peaceful conclusion.

Kennedy was a cold warrior who turned away from orthodoxy and became a heretic to those within the military industrial spook complex. He defied the demands of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA on the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, on Laos and Congo, on Berlin and Indonesia and -- above all -- on Vietnam, in opening up a dialogue with Khrushchev and with Castro, by creating a nuclear test ban treaty with the Soviet Union, by taking on the steel corporations, by firing the director of the CIA and other top officials, by planting a false story that his military advisors opposed escalation in Vietnam, by ordering a withdrawal from Vietnam, by selling wheat to the Soviet Union, by publicly and privately setting an agenda for peace and complete disarmament and world law, and by making plans to visit the Kremlin and declare the Cold War over.

This is not the Kennedy we think we know. It is certainly not the Kennedy the History Channel claims to document. But this is a Kennedy thoroughly researched and documented by the author. And if the History Channel's portrait of a sex-obsessed president has any relevance to how Kennedy acted on the large issues of war and peace, then we have an absolute moral duty to get President Obama some girlfriends fast!

rest at http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/50424