eration. The fighters went after them. We also had a U.S. carrier marking time 70 kilometers away from the beachhead. My people had put Nicaraguan panels and synbols abroad that carrier in case of need; I had witnessed it. So I called up Washington and begged that your carrier air power be loosed to stop those three pursuit planes. The carrier was so far out that no one would have known the difference. But Washington said flatly no and that was what killed us before we fairly started -- the three pursuit planes."
Marshall states that there is "much more to the interview, but that is enough for the purpose at hand."
The moral he draws from it all is as follows: "Iuis Somoza had tried hard in effort to cooperate with the United States in an undertaking that so changed the course of our history that why we are in Vietnam cannot be explained without being honest with ourselves about why the Bay of Pigs is something we would rather forget."
In short, Marshall is repeating in this curious way the argument of the war hawks -- that the U.S. should "go in to win"; i.e., absolutely destroy Vietnam and "take on China" if that is necessary to bring "victory."
There is indeed a connection between the U.S. imperialist invasion of Cuba in 1961 and the current U.S. imperialist effort to conquer Vietnam; but it is not the connection claimed by this military affairs analyst.
First of all the same utterly cynical attitude that reeks in every word of Nicaragua's bloody dictator features the calculations of the Johnson administration with regard to Vietnam. To attack a small country in Hitlerite blitzkrieg fashion is quite all right, according to this attitude, so long as the operation succeeds.