Did Chomsky actually say that? Only a couple months after the blockade we'd pulled all our nuclear-armed Jupiter IRBMs out of Turkey; that was the deal Kennedy made with Khrushchev at the height of the Crisis.
Good for Khrushchev too, because with a surprise attack by ICBMs the time from first detection by the forward radar bases until warheads hit airbases and cities was 30 to 40 minutes, in which period a U.S. president or a Soviet premier had to find out whether that image on the radar screen was a bunch of ICBMs, a flock of loons, or the moon rising, and to decide whether or not to launch a world-wrecking retaliatory attack. But with IRBMs, that period from detection to detonation was a mere six to ten minutes. As a result of forcing the issue by stationing Soviet IRBMs in Cuba, Khrushchev succeeded in greatly lessening the danger of accidental nuclear war.
Yours WDK - WKiernan at concentric.net