Happy 45th Anniversary Bay of Pigs!

With the usual suspects -- Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and George W. Bush -- massaging public opinion to prepare for their planned assault on Iran, it is useful to reflect on a few details of the Bay of Pigs invasion, which took place forty-five years ago.

In April 1961, in preparing for the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA had painted several of its own planes with Cuban Air Force insignia, and the pilots pretended to be "defectors" from Castro's own military when they provided air support for the invading operatives on Cuba's south coast. On April 15, 1961, two of the freshly-painted B-26 bombers were forced to emergency land in Miami after Fidel Castro's air defenses riddled them with bullets. The Immigration and Naturalization Service announced that the crews had "defected" to the United States, and their identities had to be kept secret lest Castro's goons kill their families.

Fast forward to 2002, according to a leaked memo from the British government, President George W. Bush suggested to Tony Blair prior to attacking Iraq that the United States should paint aircraft with "United Nations" colors, and then provoke Saddam Hussein to fire on them, thereby creating the pretext for an invasion.

On April 17, 1961, 1,400 anti-Communist Cuban exiles hit the swampy beach of the Bay of Pigs. The CIA had promised President John F. Kennedy that an "uprising" of anti-Castro Cubans would support the U.S.-backed exiles to overthrow regime. Instead, the Cuban people greeted the CIA forces not as "liberators," but as agents of a hostile foreign government.

In 2003, the Bush Administration's spokespersons assured us that the Iraqis would greet the American troops as "liberators." Today, there are people within the Administration who are predicting a warm welcome from the Iranian people if the U.S. attacks.

In 1961, the United Nations Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, told the world that the CIA planes were from "Castro's own air force" that "took off from Castro's own air force fields." (They had taken off from Nicaragua.)

Just wait and see what the current U.N. Ambassador, John Bolton, says about Iran in the months leading up to the U.S. attack.

In 1961, the CIA hired a New York public relations firm to put out optimistic communiqués about the heroic liberators on the island in the name of something called the "Cuban Revolutionary Council."

How many "P.R" firms does the CIA have working under contract today spreading propaganda about Iran?

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy appointed his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to form a committee to analyze the causes of the failure. His final report identified two lessons that are relevant today: 1). All of the leading figures in the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CIA had "war gamed" the expedition, but its weaknesses had not been challenged or debated beforehand; and 2). The entire plan depended upon indigenous support from inside Cuba the CIA was certain would materialize but never did.

We should be suspicious if "defectors" from the Iranian Air Force begin bombing in support of a U.S. invasion. We should be equally suspicious if the Iranians fire upon some "neutral" planes (or ships) giving Bush a pretext to launch the war. We should dismiss out of hand the mouthpieces of the Bush Administration in the government and media when they claim that the Iranian people look to the United States as a hope for their "liberation." The possible consequences if we allow the warmongers in the Bush regime to launch another misguided war in the Middle East are too horrific to let it take place under whatever crafty scenario they cook up.