government in exile, backed up to the fullest by the United States and the Organization of
American States."
In the middle of April a Republican policy forum held in Miami heard a report from a
Cuban exile leader that the Soviets had position missles on the ocean floor off Cuba, with
the missles pointed at the United States, and that this had been confirmed by diplomatic
sources in Havana. This would appear in retrospect to have been a planted story. For
Bush it was obvious grist for his campaign mill. Bush, speaking in Amarillo, called the
report "the most alarming news in this hemisphere in two years." He called for efforts to
"drive the Communists out of Cuba."
But, in keeping with the times, Bush's most genocidal campaign statements were made in
regard to Vietnam. Here Bush managed to identify himself with the war, with its
escalation, and with the use of nuclear weapons.
Senator Goldwater had recently raised the possibility of using tactical nuclear weapons as
the most effective defoliants to strip away the triple canopy jungle of Vietnam. In a
response to this, an Associated Press story quoted Bush as saying that he was in favor of
anything that could be done safely toward finishing the fighting in Southeast Asia. "Bush
said he favors a limited extension of the war in Viet Nam, including restricted use of
nuclear weapons if 'militarily prudent,'" according to the AP release. [fn 19] A Bush
campaign release of June 1 has him saying he favors a "cautious, judicious, and militarily
sound extension of the war in Vietnam." This was all before the Gulf of Tonkin incident
and well before US ground troops were committed to Vietnam.
Bush had several other notes to sound concerning the looming war in Southeast Asia. In
May he attacked the State Deparment for "dawdling" in Vietnam, a policy which he said
had "cost the lives of so many young Americans." He further charged that the US troops
in Vietnam were being issued "shoddy war material." Responding to a prediction from
Defense Secretary McNamara that the war might last 10 years, Bush retorted: "This
would not be the case if we had developed a winning policy from the start of this
dangerous brush fire." Also in May, Bush responded to a Pathet Lao offensive in Laos as
follows: "This should be a warning to us in Vietnam. Whenever the Communist world--
either Russian or Chinese-- sign a treaty, or any other agreement, with a nation of the free
world, that treaty isn't worth the paper it's written on."
Bush pugnaciously took issue with those who wanted to disengage from the Vietnam
quagmire before the bulk of the war's human losses had occurred. He made this part of
his "Freedom Package," which was a kind of manifesto for a worldwide US imperialist
and colonialist offensive --a precursor of the new world order ante litteram. A March 30
campaign release proclaims the "Freedom Package" in these terms: "'I do not want to
continue to live in a world where there is no hope for a real and lasting peace,' Bush said.
He decried 'withdrawal symptoms' propounded by UN Ambassador Adlai Stevenson and
Senators William Fulbright and Mike Mansfield. 'Adlai has proposed we
[inter]nationalize the Panama Canal,' Bush pointed out, 'Fulbright asks us to
accommodate Red Cuba and renegotiate our Panama treaty, and Mansfield suggests we