General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy believed President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. [View all]stopbush
(24,396 posts)There's nothing new in it. It's a rehash of the same old crap about JFK being killed off so the USA would get into Vietnam with both feet. Of course, JFK already had us in Vietnam with both feet, minus one little toe. Ike sent 700 military advisors into Vietnam. By the time of his death, JFK had increased that number to 16,000.
Douglass' book avers that JFK started out as a Cold War warrior who somehow evolved into a peacenik. Such ideas are pure fantasy that are not supported by the evidence. What evidence do you say? Well, how about JFK's anti-Communist tirade in the speech he gave the morning of his death?
In Douglass' book, JFK comes of as a coward: the leader of the free world who is so weak and so afraid of the establishment that he feels the need to lie with almost every public statement he makes. Privately, he wants us out of 'Nam, yet every public utterance he makes has us doubling down. Since JFK's public statements and his policy decisions (like increasing American troops by a factor of 23) don't align with Douglass' maniacal ideology, he imagines that there a private, peacenik JFK who is just hankering to get us out of 'Nam ASAP...yet everything he does puts us further down the Nam rabbit hole.
Amazing that people like you hail this book as some great book about JFK, when its very premise utterly destroys the image of JFK as the principled and strong leader some of us believe he was.
As I said, I read most of this book before the repetitions, gross stupidities and contradictory theories sent me screaming for the exits. That's what happens when you read Bugliosi first.
For a decent, fact v fantasy pan of Douglass' inconsequential opus, see here: http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2009/12/unspeakably-awful.html#fn9