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| Doctor says "the beard" will never again be seen in public |
Naples,
Florida – Recent revelations regarding the failing health of former Cuban
dictator Fidel Castro point up the high drama of events that occurred
50 years in the past this month.
A
Venezuelan doctor is on record citing “first hand sources and
information” that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is “very close to a
neuro-vegetative state.”
According
to José Marquina, who spoke with “El Nuevo Herald” of Miami by
phone, Mr. Castro “has trouble feeding, speaking, and recognizing
faces...He could last weeks like that, but what I can say is that
we'll never again see him in public.”
Dr.
Marquina attributed the former President of Cuba's difficulties to an
embolic stroke suffered during the week of the 50th
anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis of October, 1962.
According
to one of the former dictator's sons, “The Comandante is resting
comfortably” at his residence at El Laquito near Havana. A sister
who lives in Miami, Juanita Castro, told the newspaper, “These are
pure rumors.”
Mr.
Castro seized power in a 1959 revolution as Prime Minister and held
the position until 1976 when he was elected President and served in
that position until surgery for an undisclosed intestinal illness
forced his retirement in 2008. His brother Raul Castro succeeded him
as President.
The
most recent public statement attributed to the dictator congratulated
doctors who recently graduated from a Havana medical institute.
The
statement, which is being read at the top of all Cuban state media
shortwave broadcasts, recalled that Cuban military leaders hastily
turned the institute into an anti-aircraft installation during the 13
days of October, 1962, when the U.S. was “eyeball to eyeball with
the Soviets, and they blinked,” in the words of Secretary of State
Dean Rusk.
Mr.
Castro also recalled that most doctors fled the island nation
following the revolution, seeking more stable conditions in the U.S.
He
did not comment on the recent re-election triumph of his close
associate, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
Historians
at the National Archives recalled that an undelivered speech written
for President John F. Kennedy led with the statement, “This
morning, I ordered the Armed Forces to destroy the nuclear build-up
in Cuba.”
American
generals deferred the threatened military attack when informal back
channel negotiations and “hot line” conversations between the
President and Premier Nikita Kruschev arrived at a compromise in
which the U.S. agreed to remove similar long-range and intermediate
missiles deployed in Turkey, which were aimed at major military and
population centers in the Soviet Union.
Experts
in the strategy and logistics of nuclear warfare, including Dr.
(“Strangelove”) Henry Kissinger of Harvard University, who later
served as the National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to
President Richard M. Nixon, are on record saying that such an attack
would have, by design, led to the mutually assured destruction (MAD)
of both nations, had it been initiated.
An
outraged President Kennedy recalled for the nation in real time an
earlier Oval Office visit with Soviet Ambassador Andrei Gromyko, who
asserted that there were no such weapons installed on Cuban soil, 90
miles from the U.S. Mainland.
“That
was false,” he said in a dramatic weeknight radio and television
address - not once, but several times.
U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson confronted a Soviet
diplomat in a session of the Security Council and asked the question
regarding the missiles – point-blank - on a television simulcast
from the UN headquarters in New York.
When
he received no answer, he told the Soviet Ambassador he was prepared
to wait “until hell freezes over” for the reply to his question.
Diplomats
seated at the council table and members of the gallery responded to
the one-sided diplomatic interchange with ripples of sustained laughter.
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