J.F.K.+-+Beckley

J.F.K. John Fitzgerald Kennedy __** Vietnam **__ **__The Cuban Missile Crisis__**
 * Kennedy was born May 29, 1917.
 * He was the second son of Joseph Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald. Following Kennedy's elction to presidency, the Eisenhower Administration created a plan to overthrow the Fidel Castro regime in Cuba.
 * On April 17, 1961, Kennedy ordered planned invasion of Cuba to succeed.
 * With support from the CIA, in the Bay of Pigs Invasion, 1,500 Brigades, returned to the island in the hope of removing Castro from office.
 * Kennedy ordered the invasion to take place without U.S. air support.
 * Many military officials and cabinet members pressed for an air assault on the missile sites, but Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine in which the U.S. Navy inspected all ships arriving in Cuba.
 * He began negotiations with the Soviets and ordered the Soviets to remove all defensive material that was being built on Cuba.
 * Without doing so, the Soviet and Cuban peoples would face naval quarantine.
 * Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles subject to U.N. inspections if the U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and quietly removed US missiles stationed in Turkey.
 * Following this crisis, which brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point before or since, Kennedy was more cautious in confronting the Soviet Union.​
 * The Cuban Missile Crisis began on October 14, 1962, when CIA U-2 spy planes took photographs of a Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile site under construction in Cuba.
 * The photos were shown to Kennedy on October 16, 1962.
 * The United States would soon be posed with a serious nuclear threat.
 * Kennedy faced a dilemma: if the U.S. attacked the sites, it might lead to nuclear war with the USSR. but if the U.S. did nothing, it would endure the threat of nuclear weapons being launched from close range.
 * Because the weapons were in such proximity, the U.S. might have been unable to retaliate if they were launched pre-emptively.
 * Another consideration was that the U.S. would appear to the world as weak in its own hemisphear.
 * Many military officials and cabinet members pressed for an air assault on the missile sites, but Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine in which the U.S. Navy inspected all ships arriving in Cuba.
 * He began negotiations with the Soviets and ordered the Soviets to remove all defensive material that was being built on Cuba.
 * Without doing so, the Soviet and Cuban peoples would face naval quarantine.
 * A week later, he and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a basically cordial, lasting agreement.
 * Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles subject to U.N. inspections if the U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and quietly removed US missiles stationed in Turkey.
 * Following this crisis, which brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any point before or since, Kennedy was more cautious in confronting the Soviet Union.