JFK Speech (This was during the night before the assassination)

0907oliv (3 months ago) Show Hide
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JFK & his brother were in Vietnam in the early 1950s & they saw what happened to the French. JFK never wanted to Americanize the war like LBJ did. He never americanized any thing while he was President. He wouldn't use U.S. troops to support the Bay of Pigs. There were at least 2 secret diplomatic efforts he made re Vietnam. One seeking peace, the other was to try to save the Diem government. They were secret because he couldn't trust his own diplomatic corps, and others. Long story.
0907oliv (3 months ago) Show Hide
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JFK was President during an extraodrinarily difficult time. You don't know what the climate was like. There was a lot of right wing acitivty and about the worse thing a politician could be accused of is soft on communism. The fact that he made speeches like his American Univ. Peace Speech and said some of the things he said to Big Business ("Mankind is our business") was extraordinary. LBJ got us into Vietnam. I don't blame Presidents for their mistakes as long as they try to rectify them.
0907oliv (3 months ago) Show Hide
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For the latest revelations on JFK and his Vietnam Policy, check out the latest release of tape recordings from the JFK Library. Go to the Library website and search. You can actually hear Kennedy's ambivalence about a coup in Vietnam. You can actually hear him say that he doesn't want anything to happen to Diem. More tapes are coming too. The library says that there are still some tapes not declassified yet.
0907oliv (3 months ago) Show Hide
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In response to some of the below, JFK was a very popular President throughout his presidency. The only drop in popularity happened when he proposed Civil Rights legislation to Congress. Nixon was so moderate that he advsied JFK to drop the bomb on Cuba during the Cuban Missle Crisis and during the Vietnam War he and Henry Kissinger were planning to drop the Bomb on Cambodia (a major source of arms to the Viet Cong.) They decided not to because of massive anti-demonstrationsn in D.C.