I am no fan of JFK's and have said publicly before that had I been part of
JFK's
cabinet I probably would have  supported an intelligence operation designed to
remove him from office using all means including assassination.   I regard
him as
one of the most dangerous presidents we have ever had, third in line to
Reagan and
Bush. ( Being  a student of the assassination itself, I suspect that  that is
exactly the feelings of some in the administration.)

I agree that he and his brother helped create the  situation which  brought us
within minutes of destruction.  (What Kennedy and military intelligence did
not know
was that Soviet GROUND commanders had control over the nukes in Cuba; they
made the
assumption that the command & control structure was similar to European and
American
structures -- that was a milint failure, not Kennedy's)

My analysis of his process was based on the transcripts of meetings leading
up to
the Soviet back down.  For all the bravado, the transcripts themselves show a
gradual move toward rationality and a growing realization that war was
really going
to happen.  ( which BTW would have led to an unleashing of the far superior
American/European   ICBM force on the Soviet Union, totally devastating
that country
and poisoning most of the earth forever.)

To sum, my evaluation is based on the closed frame of  the official record
of the
decision making process itself, not on the milieu of the JFK political
history frame
( which I  believe to be one of the most perverse in American history.)

There was a radical change in JFK and Kruschev after the crisis as many
officials on
both sides noted in their memoirs and interviews. (BTW, McNamara, IMHO, is
one of
the most  unreliable of sources because of his self-serving selective
memory and the
spin he puts on events for the  both the JFK and LBJ periods.  He lies as much
a
Kissinger does --i.e. , they both live in separate universes than the rest of
us...:-))


However, the changes were  too late.  Both rightfully feared their own
governments
as to their personal fates and rightfully so.  The Soviets used a far more
human
method on Kruschev, however.

I think governments of almost any kind are the most perversely
"psychopathic" of any
groups. While I have a decidedly negative opinion of JFK, it is only  more
negative
than the opinion I hold of the men who have held the office in general.   I am
a
fanatical democrat.  I hold the Constitution  in almost holy regard.  But,
even it,
in the structure it proscribes, is, to a degree, pathogenic.

I have a question for our group: Does the term sociopathic have any relevance
to
these discussions and what relationship to the term psychopathic does it have?

--
Dave Dix
Minneapolis, Mn
dadix@uswest.net

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