Fontova smacks the NYT, etal.

Via NewsMax, here’s a great article on the NYT and the Bay of Pigs by Humberto Fontova:

‘Bay of Pigs, 40 years After’ Conference
Humberto Fontova
Friday, April 22, 2005
Humberto Fontova is the author of “Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant.”

I had to laugh ? out LOUD ? while reading the New York Times story “Bay of Pigs, 40 years After” about a “conference” held in Havana, Cuba, on March 23, 2001.

The chummy event was attended by participants from both sides of the Florida straits. The Best and Brightest were represented by Richard Goodwin and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Other disinterested and impartial parties from the U.S. included former Fair Play for Cuba Committee member Saul Landau, also famous as an Emmy-award-winning “filmmaker” for his Castro Infomercials.

Landau once referred to his Cuban host as “a new force of nature! Here is a man so filled with energy he is almost a different species! Power radiates from him!”

“Bay of Pigs Enemies [italics mine] Finally Sit Down Together,” crowed the New York Times article headlining this historic Oprah moment. Castro’s commanders were all on hand ?the few who hadn’t jumped on chunks of Styrofoam and hit the Gulf Stream by then, that is. Of the ten Castroite pilots who fought at the Bay of Pigs, gallantly flying their T-33 jets and Sea-Furys against unarmed and lumbering B-26s, valiantly strafing and rocketing unarmed supply ships and men without a single AA battery to defend themselves ? of these ten Galahads, NINE had disappeared from the ranks by the time of the 40-year anniversary of their glorious victory.

They’d either paddled off on rafts or scurried out of sight on restroom breaks during diplomatic missions abroad. Most then pleaded for political asylum from the same “Yankee Imperialists” they’d combated so gallantly in April ’61.

“Patria o Muerte!” (Fatherland or Death!) they’d all thundered during the battle. “Patria o Muerte!” They yelled again while Castro pinned their medals afterward.

“POR FAVOR,Yankee Imperialists! ? POR FAVOR! Please let us in!” They wailed a few years later.

Anyway, the precious few officers still available to “President” (as Dan Rather calls him) or “Premier” (as Barbara Walters, Peter Jennings and Ted Turner seem to prefer) Castro on April 2001 strutted around slapping backs with their medals clicking and clanging on their breasts. For photos they jutted their chins and affected frowns to shame George Patton himself ? all this to commemorate a battle where they received one of the most humiliating, inglorious and grotesque stompings in the annals of military history.

Here’s a summary of the Battle of the Bay of Pigs: 41,000 Castro troops with limitless Soviet arms, including tanks and planes and batteries of heavy artillery meet 1,400 mostly civilian exile freedom- fighters carrying only light arms and one day’s ammo. The Castroites hit them, immediately halt, then flee hysterically.

They probe again, get mauled and retreat in headlong flight again. A few almost reach the sea on the OPPOSITE side of Cuba. They march back, often at gunpoint, and roll in battery after battery of Soviet 122 mm Howitzers. They rain 2,000 (that’s TWO THOUSAND!) rounds of heavy artillery into lightly armed men they outnumber 40 to 1. They strafe them repeatedly with unopposed air support. They probe again ? and retreat again in hysterical headlong flight.

They eventually stop, look around sheepishly, and bring in reinforcements. (40-to-1 odds aren’t enough, you see) They rain another Soviet artillery storm on abandoned men outnumbered about 50 to 1 by now, without any air cover and only light arms.

Finally they move in and overwhelm the freedom fighters ? after THREE DAYS of effort, and only when the freedom fighters, who hadn’t eaten, drunk or slept in three days, were completely out of ammo. Castro’s forces took 2,200 casualties in the process. The freedom fighters took 114 casualties.

These Castroite Caesars and Bonapartes went on to pen several books and articles showcasing their military prowess. Even more exciting, at the 40-year anniversary conference these crackerjack Castroite Comandantes promised to spread out maps and ? the Ivy Leaguers could scarcely believe their fortune! ? reveal the tactical secrets of their stunning victory!!

The gaping Best and Brightest quivered like tuning forks in anticipation of this unanticipated TREAT! Not West Point, not even Sandhurst offered anything like THIS!!

Cuban college and high school kids, laborers, lawyers and insurance salesmen, most with barely a month’s military training by U.S. World War II veterans, gave these Russian-trained Castroite imbeciles a thrashing that rivals the Redcoats’ thrashing at the Battle of New Orleans by Andy Jackson’s raggedy bunch.

Castro’s generals at the Bay of Pigs made Nasser’s generals in the Six-Day War look positively Rommelesque. They made Sadat’s army in the Yom Kippur war look like Patton’s 4th armored blasting its way into Bastogne on Christmas of ’44.

I can’t resist quoting from a book written by Castro’s Patton/Rommel/Hannibal himself, Jose Fernandez, especially as most history professors in the U.S. regard his book as gospel and the mainstream media rely on it almost exclusively for their authoritative articles on “Imperialism’s Defeat!”

Indeed, for articles on the 40th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs Time, Newsweek, CNN, Yahoo!, MSNBC, AP, UPI and even The Wall Street Journal all used Castro’s own figures for his crackerjack army’s losses. He told them, and with his usual straight face, that they’d suffered 151 casualties.

Half of Miami roared over that one, especially the members of the Bay of Pigs Veterans Association. They’re easy to contact, by the way. And, as you might imagine, quite knowledgeable on these matters. Here are hundreds of men who were also on the spot and now live in a free society with no compulsion to lie.

So, might one of those “passionate crusaders for the truth” (as the Columbia School of Journalism hails its graduates) endeavor to contact them? Might one of these diligent Woodward and Bernsteins venture to obtain a second opinion on a claim made by one of the most outrageous proven liars in modern history?

You know better. Hey, why go through the trouble? Instead let’s all rely on the solemn word of the man who claimed: “I’m am NOT a Communist! I am a democrat! A humanist! I’ll hold elections in four months!” (He said this on January 9, 1959.)

“I am not interested in power nor do I envisage assuming it at any time.” (Same speech.)

“My revolution will shed no blood! (Same speech. 110,000 deaths by 1990, according to Scholar Armando Lago.)

“I had nothing to do with the JFK Assassination.” (“Kennedy tried to get Castro but Castro got him first,” Lyndon Johnson said after viewing classified info in 1965.)

“Don’t worry, Mariano. In the hills I learned to love your brother, Humberto. He is now in our custody, but completely safe from harm. Absolutely nothing will happen to him. Please give your mom and dad a big hug and big kiss from me and tell them to please calm down.” (The next day Mariano collapsed in shock at the sight of his brother’s mangled corpse in a mass grave. Castro’s firing squad had pumped over 40 shots into his brother’s body that very dawn. Humberto Sori Marin’s head was obliterated, his face unrecognizable. Fidel Castro always went the extra mile for his former comrades.)

But as I said, why bother fact-checking this guy? To quote Castro’s hero, Hitler: “The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”

Now watch the same MSNBC, Time, Newsweek, CNN bunch treat the claims of a Swiftvet! Stand back for the cynical snorts! Flinch at the snappy rebuttals! All before the poor guy can even finish his sentence.

But just let a communist psychopath, serial liar and mass assassin claim something! Then it’s all reverential “ooohs!,” deferential “aaahs!”? “Yes, of course, Mr. President! How true, Mr. President! How insightful, Mr. President! How brilliant, Mr. President!”

Had any of these journalistic Torquemadas and Sherlock Holmeses slipped up and fact-checked, they’d have learned that the figure published in America’s most prestigious journals about one of the hemisphere’s most pivotal battles was off by a multiple of almost TWENTY. As I said, the abandoned Brigadistas inflicted 2,200 casualties on Castro’s forces.

So let’s go ahead and quote from the authoritative (published by the Castro government’s own press. What more do you want!) “Playa Giron; Derrota Del Imperialismo!” (Bay of Pigs, Imperialism’s Defeat!) so beloved of the mainstream media and “respectable” scholars.

“We were like Hernan Cortez! We were being attacked. But there was no retreat! ? NO retreat! And no return!” (Here the breathless Castroite officer referred to his troops, not the exiles, who were literally like Cortez’s men, utterly abandoned on a foreign beach with no way out.)

It gets better.

“What brave men I lead! We ran into a wall of explosions! The Yankee mercenaries had opened up on us with all their artillery! It seemed like the world itself was blowing up in front of us ? like a beast with one hundred mouths was spouting death!”

(In this engagement on the western end of the beachhead, 450 Castroites backed by ten Stalin Tanks and air support from jets, faced two mortars, two 50-caliber machine guns and a grand total of 12 (that’s 12, 10+2) totally abandoned exiled freedom fighters with almost empty M-1 carbines.)

“Get up, Comrade!’ continues the Castro commander’s soliloquy, “It’s hand-to-hand now!” He was right on the last point. After three days of relentless combat and after relying on the solemn word of the Best and Brightest for support, their hands were the only weapons the betrayed Brigadistas had left. And they used them.

Naturally, at this historic conference “to finally compare notes and get at the truth” of this historic military engagement, none of the diligent scholars, investigative reporters and fervent truth seekers ? none of these representatives of the Best and Brightest, from academia to the Fourth Estate to the diplomatic corps ? mentioned these touchy matters.

None of the American group even laughed, except when Fidel would crack one of his howlers and indicate unmistakably to all that it was such. Then “Ha-ha-ha! Tee-hee-hee!” these cheeky intellectuals and courageous iconoclasts would all chime in on perfect cue.

Standard operating procedure for U.S. “scholars” and “diplomats” at a Castro “conference” and especially at any “educational exchange,” I’m afraid. They open wide, Castro shovels in his bovine excrement, they gulp, rub their tummies deliriously and open their mouths for more.

4 thoughts on “Fontova smacks the NYT, etal.”

  1. Every time I read about the Bay of Pigs I can’t help but think that it was the beginning of the decline of America. It was the moment when we totally, utterly, and completely failed in trust and promise. Kennedy was possibly the most incompetent Commander in Chief we’ve ever had, as he was possibly the most incompetent ship’s commander the Navy ever had. He couldn’t keep his hands off women long enough to do his job, (a family tradition it seems), and he was a gutless coward on top of it all. He wasn’t our first liberal President, but he was the worst by far.
    Of course he did have the courage to send the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, which was illegal, since using US troops on US soil against US citizens for any purpose other than an armed rebellion is strictly unconstitutional, but then, liberals have never let the Constitution stand in their way. It’s a miracle that we aren’t all speaking Russian right now, since it was so easy to Kreuschev to buffalo him with some missiles, but then, he asked for that during his election campaign by lying about the non-existent “missile gap” the Russians had over us. He had them afraid we were going to attack, and they made the first move, and proved their point.
    Maybe one day there can be true justice in this world, but only after all socialists, communists, fascists, and their supporters are dead.

  2. Kennedy’s saving grace was that Krushev was a BIGGER coward than he was.
    Whoever killed Kennedy ( and I DOUBT seriously it was the communists) knew damn well he was unfit as president ( well known fact that presidential election was BOUGHT) , he lucked out with the OCTOBER crisis and he was about to bring shame to the white house to a scale theretofore unkown. This happening in the early 60s would’ve been catastrophic to the USA.
    If any of you ever make it to Dallas and stand where he was shot you can CLEARLY see it was an ambush and not one anyone gave much thought about hidding. An ex NAVY SEAL friend of mine called it “a textbook perfect Kill Zone”

  3. Kennedy?s leadership left much to be desired; letting the Bay of Pigs invasion, be undercut,
    scheduling it during a UN General Assembly meeting; not allowing the sizable US Naval &
    Air presence; to assist the insurgents, letting the Berlin Wall go up; later that
    year; ignoring the reports of Soviet men,
    machinery & materiel; which included the
    missiles, because they only came from Cuban
    exiles; this was going on in the Summer of
    1962; remember this involved up to 100,000
    Soviet troops; read some of these documents from the National Security Archive on that period,
    this was in keeping with Khruschev?s promise
    to base missiles in Cuba, back in the summer
    of 1960, (I guess Kennedy figured since he
    didn?t keep his promise, Khruschev wouldn?t
    keep his) This led to the game of nuclear
    chicken; when the U-2 finally went up, in
    October; If the blockade hadn?t held, the
    intervention force; the 101st Division component led by then Lt. Col Hackworth,
    would have faced the Soviet troops, the
    missiles, and delegated tactical nukes;
    read Brendan Dubois?s Resurrection Day,
    to see how that would have turned out.
    But Kennedy is George Washington or Lincoln
    compared to the Johnsons, (who refused to
    committ full resources, including the reserves
    in vietnam; Carter; to whom we owe the original Saudi/ jihadist pipeline,the undermining of the Shah,which opened the
    turn toward Iraq, Clinton the less said
    the better; Logan seems to be a composite
    of the cluelessness of Howard Dean, and
    John Kerry; (except neither would probably
    learn from his mistakes, as Logan is learning.) Keeler, is closer to the Kennedy
    prototype; that?s why he went down in Air
    Force Once; (can?t we switch back to vice
    president ?Caleb Nichol?

    Comment by narciso ? 4/26/2005 @ 8:16 am

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