The Bay of Pigs - The Truth by Humberto Fontova

"They fought like Tigers," writes the man who commanded the Cubans who splashed ashore at the Bay of Pigs 41 years ago this month. "But their fight was doomed before the first man hit the beach."

That commander, CIA operative Grayston Lynch, knows something about fighting - and about long odds. He carries scars from Omaha Beach, The Bulge and Korea's Heartbreak Ridge. In those battles freedom's cause also appeared doomed. In each, Americans were out-manned and out-gunned. In each, the odds looked hopeless. In each, surrender beckoned.

But in France, Belgium and Korea people are free to rant, screech and trample American flags today because half a century ago Lynch and his "band of brothers" yelled "NUTS!" rammed in another clip, and charged forward, smiting the enemies of freedom. America's reward, "Just a little land to bury our dead," as Barry Farber so pricelessly put it. They won every time. Such enemies might be tough, but not invincible. Back then Lynch and his brothers could count on the support of their own chief executive. At the Bay of Pigs Lynch and his men learned - first in speechless shock and finally in burning rage - that their most powerful enemies were not Castro's soldiers massing in Santa Clara, but the Ivy League's Best and Brightest conferring in Washington.

Grayston Lynch put it on the line for the U.S. Constitution like few living today. I'd say he's earned the right to indulge in a little "freedom of speech" himself. So when he writes "Never have I been so ashamed of my country" about the bloody and shameful events 41 years ago this month, I'd say we owe him a respectful audience. The problem is he writes this in a book that castigates Kennedy's Camelot. Such impudence won't get you a respectful anything from the Beltway media. Their darling remains untouchable. So Lynch's eye-opening and simply superb "Decision to Disaster: Betrayal at The Bay of Pigs" has been mostly ignored or mocked by "The Best and The Brightest."

Lynch commanded, in his own words, ''brave boys who had never before fired a shot in anger" - college students, farmers, doctors, common laborers, whites, blacks, mulattoes. They were known as La Brigada 2506.

Small wonder the Beltway media, academia and liberal Democrats spare no opportunity to impugn their honor. Well, brother-in-arms Grayston Lynch does them the ultimate honor - the truth. And coming from a man like him, it almost makes up for 40 years of mud slinging and calumny by liberals.