After reading through this thread so far, it appears to me that most of you believe that the JFK assassination was not a conspiracy, but that LHO did it on his own? Is my take on this correct?
Now I can understand that folks that believe that the moon landings were faked may need to lie down for a while, but the JFK assassination is something that doesn’t fall into this category for me.
I’ve done a lot of reading about this subject, and for anyone that’s interested, Garrison’s books are a great place to start. However if your only idea of research is to watch JFK, then you are selling yourself short.
I don’t know what really happened behind the scenes to kill JFK, but to believe that LHO did it on his own stretches the limits of my logic. My BS detectors go off. I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth, but one shooter, with a bolt-action rifle hits the bulls-eye on the last shot instead of the first? I’m not buying that.
But that’s just me. Perhaps I will start my own OP on this one topic, because I really don’t think that believing there was more than one shooter in Dallas that day makes me someone who should get my head measured for a tin-foil hat.
You’d be more accurate to say that the U.S. started the Taliban, by that logic.
bin Laden was one rich member of one very wealthy family in a land dominated by a plutocracy. While most of them are Wahabbists, religiously, (with a number of hedonist exceptions), they have the usual amount of internecine feuding and Osama bin Laden has been at odds with the Saud family for a very long time.
When he went to Afghanistan, he joined up with the mujahideen who were the most virulently Islamist–the ones selected by the Reagan administration to receive the lion’s share of the funds that Carter had begun sending to the anti-Soviet opposition. The Taliban evolved a few years later from the better organized, (thanks to their religion), and better armed, (thanks to the U.S.), groups within the mujahideen. At the same time, bin Laden moved from the typical name calling and background plotting against the Saud family to open hostility, based for the most part, on the Saudi willingness to base infidel, (U.S.), troops in the “Holy Land” of Mecca and Medina as protection against the Iraqi threat.
Saying that bin Laden “got started with help from” or “was RAISED” by the Saudis, with an implication that they can be materially connected to the WTC/Pentagon attacks is rather like saying that Timothy McVeigh “got help” from the U.S. to bomb the Murrah building. Technically true in regards to his education and military service, but utterly irrelevant in a serious discussion.
While it’s always a joy for you to look down your nose in my direction from time to time, you didn’t even debunk any word that I said, you made up some points and then debunked them.
First of all Osama bin Laden was raised by the Saudi state as I said after Mohammed bin Laden died, as were all of the potential heirs to his fortune.
Second of all the US funds were half and even less than half of the money used to fund the Afghan Mujahideen, because the Saudis matched American funds and provided even more unrelated to what America was willing to provide. Some of this money did indeed find its way into Osama bin Laden’s projects. He wasn’t always at odds with the Saudi regime. Some of those projects were the precursor to what became Al Qaeda, though bin Laden was a bit player during the Jihad against the Soviets.
The Saudi royal family is a big family and has a lot of different people with various agendas and lots of money. Trying to discuss them as though there was some singular agenda that was followed to the T is what is utterly irrelevant in a serious discussion.
The Taliban on the other hand were and are specifically the Islamist faction of the Pushtun tribe.
So next time you are going to snottily look down your nose with a response, please at least try to actually respond what I am saying, don’t erect straw men for me to knock down, it’s tedious.
FinnAgain See that’s why I feel like the erroneous connotation for ‘conspiracy theory’ that you are using, which is quasi-mainstream is problematic. Wouldn’t it be easier if we could just use the denotation of conspiracy and theory so that we wouldn’t have to jump through hoops to describe why something is a conspiracy theory and another thing is not? We don’t have two different terms for scientific theories that are true and ones that are not, so why should conspiracy theory automatically mean, ‘an idea that isn’t true’? With Scientific Theories we say it’s true if we can prove it, and it’s not or that we are studying it to see if it’s true. By applying an unspoken modifier, one that is not even agreed upon by everyone I might add, to the term just makes it confusing and leads to these endless threads where intelligent people talk a lot of dumb shit. Some conspiracy theories are true, and some are not.
XT - I’ve tried to come up with conspiracies that fit your criteria, but it’s very difficult. Once something is proven to be true, you don’t find a lot of people saying, “Wow, did that blow me away. I was sure the government was telling the truth until those documents got declassified.” Instead there’s a lot more, “Oh yes. [Government] did a bad bad thing in [year].” I’ve tried to list some that hit around the target you’re looking for; please remember that the intersection of Conspiracy Theory and History is tough to document.
The whole story of Allied code breaking in WWII wasn’t told until 1974. I couldn’t find any indication that anything was released before 1967. It’s probably the best example of a massive effort that multiple governments cooperated to hide the scale and success of.
The Vela Incident is a conspiracy that’s still holding up - someone (probably South Africa) detonated a nuclear bomb in the southern Indian Ocean.
The CIA’s involvement with drug trafficking might be the closest to what you’re looking for. It’s an example of a conspiracy theory that’s being borne out as evidence continues to accumulate.
Heh, I reiterate MKUltra. It’s always bizarre that people often don’t even respond. That one must have had work down to it over at Fnord Motor Company. It really is the mother of all true conspiracies. CIA mind-control experiments and they REALLY DID HAPPEN!
Well, that just goes to show how effective MKULTRA is.
Seriously, I didn’t mention it because it had already come up. I think people ignore it because it’s attracted so many conspiracy theories it’s easy to lump it all together and dismiss everything. <Meta-conspiracy theory>See, the CIA creates nutjob theories as part of a disinformation campaign.</M-c t>
If you’d like to start a thread on it, I’ll certainly lurk and might even participate.
Nah that’s ok, but when people say that there is a dirth of information on government funded conspiracies that seems like the mother of them all and yet it so often gets no mention whatsoever, and yet it’s 100% provable as well as sounding like something from a Science Fiction novel. It’s truly astounding the way people react to it with such a null reaction.
The CIA trying to use LSD to erase people’s memories, pretty intense stuff.
To my mind, the hallmarks of a “conspiracy theory” (as opposed to an actual conspiracy which may or may not have happened) can be found, not merely in what is alleged (although outlandishness is a good clue), but by the following.
A “conspiracy theory” often tends to contradict basic logic when one puts oneself in the shoes of the so-called conspirators. Such as:
Goals: Are the goals of the conspiracy really worth the risks the conspirators are running?
Silence: Does the conspiracy rely on an improbably large number of people remaining totally silent forever concerning the conspiracy?
Means: Do the means the conspiracy intend to use appear to be unreasonably complex and baroque, when something much more simple would do?
Outcome: Is the success of the conspiracy something that a reasonable person would not have anticipated in advance (relying on coincidences or thousand-to-one chances for success)?
Essentially, would a reaonable person have planned such an event to carry out their goals, or does it look more like a false pattern descerned from a bunch of random stuff by people in hindsight - like a cloud that happens to look just like a human face?
Now, there is no question that some real-life conspirators are awfully stupid - like the guys who conspired to murder the Archduke Ferdinand, which did no good at all to Serbian nationalism. The hallmarks of a “conspiracy theory” as opposed to a real conspiracy is that the conspirators are seemingly both amazingly stupid and all-powerful and successful.
In other words, one shooter keeps shooting until he hits his target with the third shot, then stops. The shots, by all accounts, were fairly easy. What’s not to buy?
Go ahead and start an OP, I think you’ll learn a lot. You seem pretty reasonable so it should be a productive discussion.
Well, consider the differences in the goals of the conspiracy - criminals and terrorists aren’t trying to hide their goals; be they to make money and/or create fear and/or gain power. The specific actions are kept hush-hush during the planning stage but ultimately they want people to know what they’ve done, after the fact, because their power depends on building a ruthless reputation.
Compare this to the shadowy goals claimed by conspiracy theorists. A secret government cabal wants to keep people in a state of sheeplike docility (why?) by a series of actions that are kept completely secret (how?) and anyone who denies the conspiracy is either part of it or has been fooled by it.
As a side note, this reminds me of the first X-Files movie in which the shadowy conspiracy, which has successfully kept itself hidden for decades and yet somehow also has minions everywhere is revealed (well, sort-of, since the premise can only be kept going if every discovery just leads to yet another mystery) by one deus-ex-machina coincidence after another, proving that when it comes to uncovering conspiracies, being smart counts for nothing while being lucky counts for everything.
Simple answer - Oswald was excited and he rushed the first shot, then steadied himself and scored a hit on the second (a shot that went through JFK’s back and exited his throat and by itself could easily have been fatal) then got the spectacularly gory kill on the third.
I don’t know why this is complicated. Heck, the longest sniper killshot in history (by Canadian soldier Rob Furlong), at a range some thirty times longer than Oswald faced, had a similar pattern - the first shot missed, the second hit the target’s backpack, the third was fatal.
It’s too fine a nit because once you label something as a legitimate conspiracy it’s easy to label the conspirators as criminals or terrorists. And criminals ALWAYS try to hide their goals. Terrorists not as much. But ObL hid his goals up to a point, so his conspiracy was in secret for many years.
That’s one type of conspiracy theory that you are extrapolating as being the end all be all of conspiracy theories. It’s not the only type of conspiracy theory.
I have a couple of friends that seem to enjoy believing in conspiracy theories/strange religions just for the joy of the new. I haven’t known anyone that stuck to one of them for a long time. I know that there are people who do stick to one conspiracy and don’t let go, but I don’t know them. I don’t know how large a part of the population each group is, but it might give you some idea to how the phenomenon works if we could find some numbers. In my world, though, they’ve not really been committed, but there’s a new one just around the corner.
I haven’t thought about it, until now, but “a couple” really means about 25% of my friends in the last 20 years. Dozens of loony theories believed at different times between them. The only thing they’ve really exposed me to that turned out to be true was ECHELON. I’ve got to collect less loony friends.
I do feel that Oswald performed the assassination himself. Mostly because I have lived in the DFW area for a very long time, and have seen the area over and over again. I am not spectacular with a rifle, but if you bet me a 100$ that I could not make the shot 3 out of 3 times with the same setup, with the same amount of time between the first and last shot, I’d take the bet. If you made it 1000$ and 2 out of 3, I’d take that too. I’m not a gambling man, but It’s a short declination shot. It would be an easy few seconds pay.
Now, I would not have the incredible pressure of shooting the president, mind you. This is a non-living stand-in we’re talking about in this hypothetical shooting contest. I am willing to say that the most likely cause of the first non-lethal hit and second miss were most likely due to him feeling at least some nervousness about killing the president.
Does your definition of conspiracy theory exclude those in which a government is involved? Do you believe that the successful classification of ULTRA is irrelevant when people claim that governments inherently cannot keep secrets? Do you have a point you’d like to make, or do you prefer to simply sneer?
Perhaps we have a diferent understanding of “goal”, then (moving the goal posts?). Infigure the goals of crimilans and terrorists are fairly well-known (to make money, to create terror). Their plans are kept secret, though, because otherwise governments would try to stop them from robbing banks or planting bombs or whatever the means to their ends entail.
What is the ultimate goal, though, of the people who brought down the WTC with explosives? Of the Freemasons? Of the Jews? As far as I know, OBL is quite open about his goals, even to the point of making videotaped speeches about them
Hmm, typos, and this computer won’t let me run the editor, possibly because javascript is diabled or something. Anyway, I figure the goals of criminals, etc.