http://www.realchangenews.org/2008/2008_05_28/whyJFK_v15n23.html
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1) JFK: Not how, but why? :
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"JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died & why it matters" by James W.
Douglass, Orbis, 2008. Hardcover, 544 pages, $30
Review by BERT SACKS, Guest Writer
James W. Douglass has distilled more than a decade of work into his
exceptional new book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why he died & why it
matters. Why should the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in
Dallas 45 years ago matter to us today?
The Unspeakable is not primarily about how Kennedy was killed. Polls
show three out of four Americans reject the Warren Commission=92s lone-
assassin theory and believe there was a conspiracy. This book offers
extensive evidence that the conspiracy was organized by the CIA in the
service of a political coup d=92etat. A number of the book=92s 2,041
endnotes (*) offer meticulous and compelling evidence to sup****t this
view.
But if that were the book=92s focus, it would not be the inspiring and
hopeful book that it is.
Instead, the book deals with deeper truths: why would Kennedy be
=93marked for assassination=94? That was the fear of Trappist monk Thomas
Merton, which he expressed almost two years before JFK=92s murder. Jim
Douglass guides us into Thomas Merton=92s wider perspective to
understand why Kennedy would be killed.
The book=92s preface outlines the answer: =93Once again, anything goes in
a fight against evil [in 1963, Communism; today, Terrorism]:
preemptive attacks, torture, undermining governments, assassinations,
whatever it takes to gain the end of victory over an enemy ****trayed
as irredeemably evil. Yet the redemptive means John Kennedy turned to=85
was dialogue with the enemy.
=93That reconciling method of dialogue=85 [is still] regarded as heretical
in our dominant political theology. As a result, seeking truth in our
opponents instead of victory over them can lead, as it did in the case
of Kennedy, to one=92s isolation and death as a traitor.=94
John Kennedy was killed because he was seen as a traitor by our
national security elites.
The Cuban missile crisis is the book=92s most striking example of John
Kennedy=92s refusal to acquiesce to their Cold War worldview. In 1962
the world stood at the brink of an all-out nuclear exchange over
Russian missiles in Cuba. And U.S. military leaders were pu****ng
Kennedy to initiate a first-strike nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.
A year before the crisis started, Nikita Khrushchev sent a
confidential letter to Kennedy, beginning the first of a private and
personal exchange of 21 secret letters between the two. (That first
letter was 26 pages!) It was Kennedy=92s =97 and Khrushchev=92s =97
willingness to stand up to their own militaries that saved us from
nuclear holocaust.
This personal correspondence surely helped each leader to see the
humanity of the other. And when the crisis reached its most dangerous
moment, they helped each other to save the world from the tens or
hundreds of millions of deaths nuclear war would have caused.
Why this matters now should be as plain as today=92s headlines. On May
15, President Bush labeled any American political leader who would
dialogue with our enemies an appeaser, as one who endangers our
national security. True to his word, in 2003, when Iran sent the U.S.
an extensive proposal for dialogue, he refused even to acknowledge it.
We still live in a spiritual and political climate in America where
such behavior is not seen for what it is: as the greatest danger to
our national security and to world peace.
The book argues that by entering into the Unspeakable, the profound
darkness of past and current U.S. government crimes, we can overcome
our own denial of that darkness and reach a more profound
understanding of the changes we must work for in today=92s world.
As Jim Douglass writes of the view JFK was turning toward and why he
was killed: =93When the enemy is seen as human, everything changes.=94
(*) Beware of endnotes :
THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY
by Historians DeLloyd J. Guth and David R. Wrone .
Published in 1980. BTW it is subtitled :
A COMPREHENSIVE AND LEGAL BIBLIORAPHY, 1963-1979
on p. xxii
" Lane's RUSH TO JUDGMENT provides a classic example of subjective
gimmickry , with it scholarly cosmetic of 4,500 footnotes , containing
hundreds of substantial errors and repetitions . Quotations within the
text have been quietly changed in over two hundred instances from
original do***ented versions , im****tant material has been excised
from the evidence in order to highlight the trivial or to mislead ."
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2) Al-Qaeda in retreat - CIA chief :
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WA****NGTON, 05/31 - The head of the US Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) has said al-Qaeda is essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi
Arabia, and on the defensive elsewhere.
Michael Hayden`s remarks, which correspondents describe as strikingly
upbeat, come less than a year after the CIA warned of a resurgent al-
Qaeda.
He told the Wa****ngton Post that US counter-terrorism successes
extended to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is thought to be hiding out in the
area.
"On balance, we are doing pretty well," said the CIA director. "Near
strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat of al-
Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qaeda globally."
Mr Hayden said capturing or killing Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-
Zawahiri, remained a top priority.
Mr Hayden said Bin Laden was losing his appeal in the Arab world "The
ability to kill and capture key members of al-Qaeda continues, and
keeps them off balance - even in their best safe haven along the
Afghanistan-Pakistan border," he said.
However, the CIA chief warned against complacency, which he said could
halt or reverse any progress against al-Qaeda.
Just two years ago, the CIA warned that the militant Islamic group was
using the US-led war in Iraq as a successful propaganda and marketing
tool.
But now, Mr Hayden said, al-Qaeda was losing the battle for hearts and
minds in the Islamic world. The US accuses Tehran of funding, arming
and training insurgents.
He said: "It is the policy of the Iranian government, approved at the
highest levels of that government, to facilitate the killing of
American and other coalition forces in Iraq. Period."
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