"Fidel Castro was not part of the diplomacy that ended the missile crisis. "

[Joe Chi Minh]

(snip) "The then US defence Secretary Robert McNamara* met President Castro in 1992. He said the Cuban leader told him there were 162 nuclear missiles in Cuba at the time of the crisis. He asked Castro if he had recommended they be used. The answer was:

"Yes, I did."

"And what would have happened to Cuba?" Mr McNamara asked him.

"It would have been destroyed."

Fidel Castro was not part of the diplomacy that ended the missile crisis."


Of course, had it come to a nuclear war, it would have been anything but funny, but safe in the knowledge that it didn't, that paragraph tickled me, especially that last line!

The headline's good, but the article isn't exactly overtly sympathetic to Fidel.

* Little was McNamara to know then that, some time in the future, he would be bundled, hollering frantically, over the railings of a passenger ferry during its crossing to Martha's Vineyard, by an wild artist enraged by the Vietnam War, who was found trying to prise McNamara's fingers, one by one, from another rail further down.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5243500.stm