Regards,
Shodan
Thank you for the cite. I wasn’t aware they had compared another fragment removed from Connally years earlier.
He won the Bronze Star in WWII. Connally knew what getting shot at sounds like. He served as a fighter-plane director aboard an aircraft carrier.
In which case prior to Nov 1963 he would have had exactly zero experience at being shot at with small arms in the open. Your point is?
I don’t know if his carrier deck was strafed or not. He saw some kind of combat to win both the Legion of Merit and Bronze Star. He had quite a war experience. Kennedy appointed him Secretary of the Navy and then he was Governor of Texas.
I don’t dispute the single bullet theory. LHO managed to hit two guys at one time. Pure dumb luck. I guess weirder things have happened. Recent computer simulations demonstrate that the angles worked out just right for Connally to get hit after the bullet exited Kennedy.
Just to fight some ignorance, That’s not true. One need not see combat to earn (not win) either the Legion or Merit or the Bronze Star. I’m looking at an office mate right now as proof. I do believe that the air craft carrier that LCDR Connally was under attack, but that’s a long way from hearing a rifle being fired at you, or making you an expert at being shot.
So will this new found knowledge “take” or are you susceptible from changing your mind when the next CTer knocks on your door? It seems like you really want to believe the nonsense, as opposed to truly being open to accepting that there was no CT.
If the entire case rested on Connally’s ability to distinguish the shot order, it would matter.
It doesn’t (not by a heh heh long shot) and therefore… it doesn’t.
What, two paragraphs to fucking bitch about my asking for a page, or a quote, instead of a link to a 50 page paper? Wow, you nailed me, didn’t you?
:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
Did you even read the abstract? In case you don’t know, the abstract is that little summary on the first page. It’s one paragraph long.
[QUOTE=the very first page]
Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy.
[/Quote]
Now, the next 28 pages (because it’s a 29 page document, not 50 pages) amplifies, restates, provides background, etc., but everything you challenged me on is right there on Page 1.
So I’ll simply repeat my previous comment. Got a problem with my cite? Provide your own evidence.
That inconsistency between the ER docs’ memories of the wounds and the autopsy photos nagged at me for a while, back when I was still intrigued by the conspiracy possibilities. But then I saw a television show (wish I could cite it, but I don’t remember) in which they showed the main ER doc the autopsy report and gave him time to study it privately. When he came back on camera, he was a little flustered and said that he now understood why his recollection was different from the autopsy report.
He went on to explain that his priority was trying to save the president and he never took the time to fully examine the damage to the head. From his perspective, particularly with the scalp flapped back into place over the worst damage, he didn’t recognize the massive damage that would be described later in the autopsy report. That report included photos that showed Kennedy from the front, as the ER doc saw him, and also the back and the massive wound.
That’s when the ER doc realized he had not explored the back of Kennedy’s head because there was no need at that moment and he was busy trying to keep the patient alive. And once Kennedy died, no one was going to manipulate the body out of respect. So the ER doc honestly believed for years that what he saw didn’t match the autopsy report, but then he realized his error.
For me, that was an excellent lesson in how someone’s honest but incorrect recollection can be explained.
(This might have been covered in the excellent Case Closed by Gerald Posner.)
I recall that same show - since the photos are both gruesome and still technically private (even Bugliosi had artist renderings of them in his book) - the doctors went into a separate room, then came out to discuss the issue.
You’ve already said it, but the right side of JFK’s head was blown apart, with many fragments towards the front and one large piece to the rear, which remained attached by the scalp. Hanging loose, it was a vast, open, grotesque wound. Fitted back into place, the rear of the head appeared intact except for the bullet whole. There are autopsy photos from both perspectives, and lying on the table, the flap would have been hanging back open.
Whole vast production runs of CT stew have been made from misunderstanding this variation.
I was going to respond more to your post, then I read this childishness.
Hie thee home, youngster.
Thank you all.Very helpful.
Without disagreeing with what you have said, I think there is some suspicion about Posner running free with the truth. He presents facts which suit his book, (Reclaiming History page XXXVIII).
Reclaiming History is a very difficult and long read but leaves little doubt that it was Oswald alone. Whereas Posner has a more Readers Digest approach.
Yes, Bugliosi rages pretty effectively at Posner for putting so much effort into “right conclusion, sloppy prosecution.” A little unfair but to be, well, fair, VB was out to write the concrete truth about every detail, not gently pat a fellow traveler on the back, and Case Closed does have some lapses.
There appears to be at least two versions of Bugliosi’s book and I can’t figure out the difference between the editions. The masterwork is Reclaiming History, with the 1300-page CD of supplementary material. Others seem to only include the first half of that book (the actual factual recounting and analysis of the assassination), without the second half that investigates and debunks the conspiracy theories.
But anyone who doesn’t have time for such things can just read the 44 page introduction to RH and come away with a solid, concise dismissal of the conspiracy approach. Nothing is more telling to me than his informal poll of trial lawyers, recounted therein.
Anyway, I decided to read VB’s Reclaiming History and … I’m back.
First, comments about the book. Then comments about the OP from that.
Egad, it is indeed huge. But well documented, etc.
As far as writing style, it’s all over the place. Some parts quite gripping, others incredibly pointless and tedious.
E.g., he dwells far too much on Jack Ruby. Once the timeline of him walking down the ramp just as Oswald is about to be brought out is explained, any conspiracy involving Ruby is nearly completely buried. A few more factoids here and there is all that’s needed. No need to have an extensive bio on Ruby. A whole chapter on Ruby and the Mob (not!) is a waste.
VB also has a huge bug about Garrison and Oliver Stone. I get it. Garrison was a terrible person with no evidence whatsoever. And Oliver Stone bought the rights to Garrison’s lie-filled book and added even more crap to make his movie. But VB just drags on and on about it. One of VB’s techniques is to enumerate certain key points. In going on about JFK, one of his summary points goes on for page after page after page. Terrible writing.
(One part of that I did like was VB making fun of Stone’s claim that there were 3 trained marksmen who made a total of 6 shots. One of which was a kill shot. Right. OTOH, as many groups have shown, it was entirely possible for LHO to take just 3 shots and make at least one kill shot.)
The flow in various timelines and bios keeps getting derailed. Backing up to something that should have been brought up earlier, if it all.
VB makes certain things quite clear. There is no “magic” bullet. The single bullet theory is by far the best explanation. Conspiracy buffs just ignore key facts, especially where Connally was sitting relative to JFK.
But he has certain flaws on logic. He keeps harping about how something others have questioned doesn’t need to be addressed since he’s already shown it doesn’t matter, then goes into disproving the issue. Just leave out the disclaimer already.
He did clear up some of my faulty memories. E.g., I thought LHO left his wallet with Marina. Just his cash. I also thought Marina’s father was some big deal in the KGB or something. She was illegitimate. Her father was a non-factor. She did have an uncle that was kind of notable, and he was trying to keep her out of trouble with LHO, rather than abetting anything cabal-ish.
Anyway, he covers every realistic issue concerning whether the Warren Commission got it right or not and concurs with their overall conclusion. (One matter is where and when the missed shot occurred.) The HSCA pretty much confirmed all the details except it got sidetracked by a recording that wasn’t a recording of the assassination and had an investigator that was overboard on conspiracies. A similar HSCA today would confirm the Warren Commission.
So, no. No point in reviewing the original assassination anymore.
There is only one notable matter that isn’t resolved concerning LHO’s movements in the weeks prior. Silvia Odio. Odio claims to have met 3 alleged anti-Casto people 2 months before in Dallas. One of whom she ids as LHO (going by the name “Leon Oswald”.) She later learns from one of the other men that Leon was suggesting killing JFK.
The LHO timeline has him travelling from New Orleans to Mexico at that time. (He hadn’t moved back to Dallas then.) There is a small window where he could have gone to Dallas. But given his personality, going with two Cubans to see someone else, etc. is odd.
Her sister saw the 3 men, ids one of them as LHO. Other materials suggest the meeting took place around that time (but doesn’t confirm the id or the later phone call.)
Conspiracy buffs cite this as proof of a conspiracy. Not really, even if it happened as Odio claims.
She was going thru a really hard time. Broke, divorced, having mental issues. Her father imprisoned by Castro. Lots of reasons to doubt the id.
It’s like in the old days of UFO investigations. I remember seeing numbers like 94% of all UFO sightings are easily explained as planets/starts/planes/etc. or are hoaxes and such. True Believers then claim the remaining 6% are Real ETs. Rational People note that the remaining 6% are also normal phenomena where there isn’t just enough info to fully debunk them.
Odio’s report falls in this category. It’s probably nothing of note (and even if true isn’t a big deal), we just aren’t sure where it falls apart.
Wasting more time and money on something so little would be a huge mistake.
Dealey Plaza that day is turning into Woodstock. 10 times more people are claiming (or alleged) to have been there that day than actually were. You are not going to find any new, reliable witnesses at this point.
To expand on this: At a certain point, the fact the evidence isn’t getting any better is evidence in and of itself. If there were UFOs, you’d expect good evidence of them coming to light simply by chance, simply through the perfectly natural semi-random process of reasonable-quality recording equipment disseminating out into the general public, some of whom are going to semi-randomly stumble on a real UFO incident assuming there is any such thing. Instead, the recording equipment has gotten better, but the evidence in favor of UFOs has not. We’re still at the “blurry ambiguity and otherwise-uncorroborated eyewitness testimony” level, which was where we were in the 1990s, the 1980s, the 1970s, and on and anon. In short, we literally have pocket computers capable of capturing full-color full-motion video and audio in general use and we still haven’t made a single really convincing video of a UFO.
This reasoning applies to the JFK assassination CTs. It’s been five decades, with people getting old, talking to others, dying and leaving memoirs and friends behind, and constant low-level investigation of pretty much everyone and everything connected to November 22, 1963 in Dallas, Texas, and we’re still at the same level of innuendo and blatantly misinterpreted or, to be generous, highly ambiguous physical evidence as we were in the 1960s and 1970s. Heck, we’ve even seen new evidence which supports the official story a lot better than it supports any of the conspiracy claims.
To tie this all together: It’s simple statistics. In order to continue to believe in either UFOs or JFK assassination conspiracy theories, you have to believe that the people looking for evidence of both of those things are the unluckiest beings alive. They’d have to continue to miss every single piece of solid evidence which exists to bolster their claims, not just over the course of a day, but over the course of decades, and it couldn’t just be one sad sack schlub, it would have to be all of them, collectively, being equally unlucky. Because they only have to win once. They’re the attackers. All they need is one opening, one spot where consensus reality clearly and unambiguously breaks down, and they’re in. And they haven’t found it, after decades of prodding in every direction at once.
Right.
Maybe this has been covered but I always thought that the idea of a misfire/accidental firing of a gun by an official in the excitement on the scene could explain why there are paradoxical events and why there has never been an explanation.
If it was a cop or CIA gun that killed Kennedy then it would be a state secret that would never come out via the Warren commission. So they would leave us with Single bullet theory as the best answer for “the good of the nation”
Where do you get the idea that there was never an explanation for what actually happened?
It’s not satisfying to most because of the timelines and physical events.
If another bullet killed Kennedy but it was an accident then all the explanations of how oswald could get off two hits in a few seconds and how one bullet could do so much would be just rationalizations ex post facto and we would all go back and think that the evidence was contradictory and not complete, and how could we ever have believed that.
I think for the government, it is a closed case. I also have no doubt that when all the folks who were involved, J. Edgar, LBJ, other folks still alive, et al are deeply buried in history and the Top Secret papers are finally released to the public, (why there are documents which cannot be released is beyond my ken) that the truth may finally come out.
This thread is not a debate, however, I find it hard to believe that after all these years (and confessions) that there 1) is still any doubt that the assassination was a conspiracy, and 2) that people still believe in the lone assassin theory. Amazing. To do this you have to ignore all the genuine evidence and still be drinking the kool-aid.
Read the book by Republican party insider Roger Stone “The Man Who Killed Kennedy”. Much is revealed in this book.