Only One Presidential Candidate is Tested and Ready to Lead

Joe Biden recently said that Barack Obama would be tested by some type of serious crisis during his first six months as president. When Senator Obama was asked by CBS about Biden's comment, he said that his presidential campaign has provided him with plenty of tests.

In these difficult times, the American people need a president who has been tested and has shown steadiness in crisis; not a president whose greatest test was a political campaign. John McCain has been tested at every turn in his life and has shown tremendous resolve and leadership. He is the president we need.

From McCain Early Morning Memo

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Biden compares Obama to JFK. I was very young when JFK was elected, and wasn't interested in much more than playing Barbie with my friends. I had to do some research to find out just what events happened when.

The Bay of Pigs invasion happened within six months of JFK moving into the White House.

According to Wikipedia:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba during the Cold War. In Russia, it is termed the "Caribbean Crisis," (Russian: Карибский кризис, Karibskiy krizis) while in Cuba it is called the "October Crisis." The crisis ranks with the Berlin Blockade as one of the major confrontations of the Cold War, and is often regarded as the moment in which the Cold War came closest to a nuclear war.

In Havana, there was fear of military intervention by the United States in Cuba.[1] In April 1961, the threat of invasion became real when a force of CIA-trained Cuban exiles opposed to Castro landed at the Bay of Pigs. The invasion was quickly terminated by Cuba's military forces given that promised American air support never arrived. President John F Kennedy canceled air support as the invasion had already commenced due to last minute obtained knowledge which indicated the Soviets had stationed nuclear armament in Cuba.[citation needed] Castro was convinced the United States would invade Cuba.[2] Shortly after routing the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Castro felt more comfortable to finally declare Cuba a socialist republic and a Soviet Satellite state, and began to modernize Cuba's military with direct Soviet funding.

The United States feared the Soviet expansion of communism or socialism, but for a Latin American country to openly ally with the USSR was regarded as unacceptable, given the Russo-American enmity dating from the end of the Second World War in 1945.

In late 1961, Kennedy engaged Operation Mongoose, a series of covert operations against Castro's government which were to prove unsuccessful.[3]. More overtly, in February 1962, the United States launched an economic embargo against Cuba.[4]

The United States also considered direct military attack. Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay presented to Kennedy a pre-invasion bombing plan in September, while spy flights and minor military harassment from the United States Guantanamo Naval Base were the subject of continual Cuban diplomatic complaints to the U.S. government.

By September 1962, Cuban observers fearing an imminent invasion would have seen increasing signs of American preparations for a possible confrontation, including a joint Congressional resolution authorizing the use of military force in Cuba if American interests were threatened,[5] and the announcement of an American military exercise in the Caribbean planned for the following month (Operation Ortsac).

The climax period of the crisis began on October 8, 1962. Later on October 14th, United States reconnaissance photographs taken by an American U-2 spy plane revealed missile bases being built in Cuba. The crisis ended two weeks later on October 28, 1962, when President of the United States John F. Kennedy and United Nations Secretary-General U Thant reached an agreement with the Soviets to dismantle the missiles in Cuba in exchange for a no invasion agreement and a secret removal of the Jupiter and Thor missiles in Turkey.

Kennedy, in his first public speech on the crisis, given on October 22 1962, gave the key warning,

It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.[6]

This speech included other key policy statements, beginning with:

To halt this offensive buildup, a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation and port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

He ordered intensified surveillance, and cited cooperation from the foreign ministers of the Organization of American States (OAS). Kennedy "directed the Armed Forces to prepare for any eventualities; and I trust that in the interest of both the Cuban people and the Soviet technicians at the sites, the hazards to all concerned of continuing the threat will be recognized." He called for emergency meetings of the OAS and United Nations Security Council to deal with the matter.[6]

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Of course, there is much more about the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis and I urge you to go to Wikipedia to read more about this time in our past, you need to read about this time in our past. You need to follow the links provided to understand all the aspects of the events. You need to understand the past to understand the allegations that Biden makes. Where hard decisions will have to be made, but we, as citizens may not like or understand. I'm not suggesting that whatever Biden is trying not to say, has anything to do with Cuba. What I am saying is that unless we understand the past, our history, we stand to repeat it in the future.

As I said, I wasn't much interested in politics or even world events, but a child of seven does notice troop trains, loaded with hundreds of soldiers traveling down the railroad next to Highway One in Miami. A child of seven sees what resembles a huge bowling pin traveling down that same railroad and first hears the words "Polaris Missile". We lived for weeks and months with wave after wave of planes taking off from Homestead Air Force Base, home of the Strategic Air Command. Planes were taking off and landing twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

During the spring of 1962, my family went to Key West to watch my brother pitch in a high school game pitting Miami Palmetto HS against Key West High. On the way down, we saw warship after warship on the Atlantic horizon. Even the blimp base where the Miami Zoo now stands, was active, after several years of seeing only the occasional airborne blimp. We lived in the middle of things, in our subdivision. The blimp base was about two miles west and Homestead AFB about ten miles south east.

We had been to Key West several times since moving from Western Pennsylvania to Florida in 1959. When we visited, we always went to the Naval Base in Key West where we could actually go on some of the ships and submarines that were in port. We talked to the sailors who were so friendly and always anxious to talk to someone from their hometown. On this trip, the base was locked down from civilians, as I recall. Key West was swarming with Naval personnel. More than were normally stationed there. The Coast Guard had boats patrolling up and down the coast, from Key West probably up the entire Eastern Seaboard. I later learned the government was concerned about a Russian invasion.

I remember being that child of seven, and hearing the worry in my parents voices. They tried to keep me shielded from what was going on. They didn't know whether the world was going to end or maybe just end as we knew it. The considered sending me and my brother to an aunt and uncle in Pennsylvania until it was safer in Miami. Then, they realized that because of the range of missiles from Cuba, we were probably safer in Miami than our relatives in Pennsylvania. Of course, being that child of seven, I didn't understand much of what was going on in the world. I only understood that my parents were worried.

This was the age of the Cold War, bomb shelters, and the "drop and roll" exercises in schools in the event of an atomic bomb being dropped on the US. We now know that "drop and roll" wasn't going to save our lives in the event of a nuclear bomb, but it was something to give us hope that we could do something, even if it was only psychological.

I don't ever to live like that again. I don't want anyone in the United States to experience that life. It was a very frightening time. Then, we only worried about the Russians invading or "nuking" us. Now more nations have nuclear weapons, and some are nations that don't have any liking for the US, and a theology that causes them to think it was a good thing to kill themselves in the name of Allah.

It is almost treason to suggest that JFK was anything but nearly God-like, but he made some unfortunate decisions early in his presidency. I think he may have gone on to be a great president had he been able to have a second term, but he was cut down before his time.

I am not suggesting that Obama will be assassinated, I would never want that to happen to Obama or any other president. I am suggesting that Obama does not have the character or the background to make the decisions he may be faced with making. What hard, tough decisions has he made that give him the experience to undertake what Biden is suggesting?

Obama has no executive background. Obama's background is a community activist, a lawyer, a state senator and 143 days as the junior senator in the national Congress. I have to believe that he has only the best of intentions for the citizens of the United States. One thing he does have in his favor is that is is a Washington outsider. He hasn't spent enough time in Washington to become a Washington insider. Sure, he's the head of a large organization, but does he really run the organization, or does he have good people running it for him? He has the responsibility, but does he make the decision? I can't believe he does. There are just too many decisions, both hard and easy, that must be made. When would he have the time to campaign?

Are good intentions and not being a Washington insider enough to trust our lives and our country to such an unseasoned man? Only you can make that decision.

I already made mine.