How could the United States let these pissant assholes do that without raising a hand? That's when I realized, a President could be a craven pussy and not behave like a Commander-In-Chief.
The crew of the USS Pueblo certainly had balls even if LBJ didn't. Here, in a North Korea propaganda photo of captive crew members, they are demonstrating their regard for their captors with a time-honored hand gesture.
I guess Truman set the stage for Presidential pussification during the Korean War, letting the Chinese bitch slap him, then there was Kennedy letting Castro bitch slap him. But, I was too young during Truman and Kennedy to know or care what was going on outside my backyard; I was too busy having rock fights with the neighbor kids.
Anyhow, LBJ let the commies take the Pueblo and imprison her crew without raising a hand. I was thoroughly ashamed and very troubled to think something like this could happen to me and my Commander-In-Chief would do nothing.
Back then, I didn't understand or think about why the commie gooks took the Pueblo, just that they did it and pissed me off.
Recently, I was watching a TV program about a low-life scumbag named Chief Warrant Officer John Anthony Walker, a cryptographic specialist who sold classified Navy encrypting data to the Soviets and was arrested back in 1985. That's when I learned by the Pueblo was taken.
The problem the Soviets had was, they now had the encryption keys, but they didn't have the Navy KL-47 encryption machines which used the keys in order to decipher actual classified US Navy message traffic.
To solve that problem, they had the North Koreans high jack the USS Pueblo which carried the KL-47 encryption machines as well as a lot of other highly secret equipment on a calculated bet that LBJ wouldn't have the balls to do anything about it.
Remember the USS Liberty and the traitor Jon Pollard.
ReplyDeleteMy brother-in-law Neil was aboard USS Oriskany (CVA-34) on Yankee Station when the Pueblo was taken. In a matter of days they were off the North Korean coast ... in the dead of winter ... in tropical clothing. They still launch and recovered on schedule.
ReplyDeleteWinter clothes were eventually brought in from Japan.
They kept waiting for the word to attack but LBJ still had not chosen not to run. One war was more than he could handle.
I still remember that great day Dec. 24th '68. Astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders read from Genesis while orbiting the Moon and the crew of the Pueblo were released.
Today the astronauts would probably get kicked out of NASA.