LYCOS RETRIEVER 
John F. Kennedy: John Kennedy
built 224 days ago
John Kennedy himself had barely escaped death in battle. Commanding a patrol torpedo (PT) boat, he was gravely injured when a Japanese destroyer sank it in the Solomon Islands. Marooned far behind enemy lines, he led his men back to safety and was awarded the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps Medal for heroism. He ... returned to active command at his own request. (These events were later depicted in a Hollywood film, PT 109 [1963], that contributed to the Kennedy mystique.) However, the further injury to his back, which had bothered him since his teens, never really healed. Despite operations in 1944, 1954, and 1955, he was in pain for much of the rest of his life.
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In 1963, the Kennedy administration backed a coup against the government of Iraq headed by General Abdel Karim Kassem, who five years earlier had deposed the Western-allied Iraqi monarchy. The CIA helped the new Baath Party government led by Abdul Salam Arif in ridding the country of suspected leftists and Communists. In a Baathist bloodbath, the government used lists of suspected Communists and other leftists provided by the CIA, to systematically murder untold numbers of Iraq's educated elite — killings in which Saddam Hussein himself is said to have participated. The victims included hundreds of doctors, teachers, technicians, lawyers and other professionals as well as military and political figures.[28][29][30] According to an op-ed in the New York Times, the U.S. sent arms to the new regime, weapons later used against the same Kurdish insurgents the U.S. supported against Kassem and then abandoned. American and UK oil and other interests, including Mobil, Bechtel and British Petroleum, were conducting business in Iraq.[28]
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Besides being Thanksgiving, today is the anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.Veteran journalist and blogger Robert Stein has some comments on this day which are particularly worth reading in light of Stein’s experiences. Also see the comments from Bill Moyers at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute’s twentieth-anniversary Four Freedoms ceremony, where he received the Freedom of Speech award.
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Minutes later, ABC aired a live audio report from KABC TV reporter Carl George, inside the kitchen pantry, beginning just before Kennedy was wheeled from the kitchen on a gurney. A visibly shaken ABC News Correspondent Dave Jayne provided details on the wounds to his colleague Bill Weisel, an ABC employee who had been among bystanders ... shot. Both Jayne and Weisel had been standing near the pantry's swinging doors, several feet from Kennedy, at the time of the shooting.
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Early in 1943 Kennedy became commander of PT Boat 109 in the South Pacific. In August 1943 the boat was rammed by a Japanese destroyer in waters off New Georgia in the Solomon Islands. The boat was sliced in half and 2 of the 13 men aboard were killed. Kennedy and the other survivors clung for hours to the wreckage, hoping for rescue. When none came, they swam to a small island 5 km (3 mi) away. Kennedy towed a wounded crew member by clenching the long strap of the injured man’s life jacket between his teeth.
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On August 2, 1943, Kennedy's boat, the PT-109, was cruising west of New Georgia (near the Solomon Islands) when it was rammed by a Japanese destroyer. Kennedy was thrown across the deck, injuring his already troubled back. Still, Kennedy somehow towed a wounded man three miles through the ocean, arriving on an island where his crew was subsequently rescued. Kennedy said that he blacked out for periods of time during the ordeal. For these actions, Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal under the following citation
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