[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Avumede:
So tell me, if you truly are a skeptic, which has more evidence,
a) LHO killed JFK
b) A conspiracy killed JFK.
Keep in mind, that you can’t just shoot holes in A without trying to build a reasonable scenario about B. A explains all the available evidence. Can you suggest a scenario B that explains all the available evidence, and also does not violate Occam’s Razor?{/quote]
First, you definitely can try to shoot holes in ‘A’ without necessarily having to build a scenario ‘B’. You’re connection of one with the other is a total non sequitur.
Second, before you demand ‘evidence’ of ‘B’, how about doing a review of the evidence for ‘A’?
Yes, you can (as in, it is possible) to shoot holes in A without building a scenario B. It just doesn’t mean a whole lot. Suppose you proved the lone-gunman theory is very unlikely (it hasn’t been done before, in my opinion, but let’s just assume you could do so). Net result: you have just proved the lone-gunman theory is very unlikely. You have not disproved the theory. You haven’t proved, or even suggested, a conspiracy. If you think you have proved some sort of conspiracy, or disproved the lone-gunman theory, you have committed a logical error.
The logical error would be to assume that you have proved that some conspiracy is more likely than the lone-gunman theory. Since you have just been shooting holes in the lone-gunman theory, there is no alternative theory, and thus you could not have even begun to prove such a theory. It may well be that all theories that you could think up are even less likely than the already unlikely lone-gunman theory. This is the possibility that is ignored by the conspiracy-mongers.
Again, I am not saying that the lone-gunman theory is unlikely. I have just assumed so for the sake of argument.
In response to your second point, the evidence for the lone-gunman theory is quite straightforward. If it wasn’t JFK, but some random motorist who LHO was shooting at, the case would be open and shut. The only reason it’s not open and shut to the conspiracy-mongers is because of the importance of the shooting, and like I’ve said before, if you look hard enough for strange, “unexplainable” things, you will find them.
Jack Ruby killed Oswald before he went to trial; it was only two days after the assassination. At the time, Oswald was being transferred from the Dallas City Jail to the County lock-up, which had better security. Ruby was well-known to the DPD and allowed cops to see his strippers for free (and date them) and he hung out at Police HQ a lot. The cops were used to seeing Ruby there and didn’t suspect a thing. He hid his handgun in his coat pocket and since the cops knew him, they did not search him. This was in the days before metal detectors at the doorways, remember.
Why did Ruby do it? My uncle’s WAG was that Ruby wanted to be seen as a hero, as the man who killed the man who assassinated a beloved president. Also, he wanted to be known for something other than the owner of a seedy strip joint.
RELATED POINT: People who claim they saw Kennedy shot on live TV are wrong; it was OSWALD who was shot on live TV. My parents saw this and I’ve seen the B&W videotape. Years ago, on the 25th anniversary, Channel 8 in Dallas replayed it.
Did anyone else besides me since the A&E series on “The Men Who Killed Kennedy”? My apologies for not being able to recall all the details, but they made a pretty good case for LHO not being responsible for the assassinaton; from their perspective it was indeed an effort that included CIA personnel. The presentation included a number of interviews with people whose testimony was never presented to the Warren Commission, including witnesses to some odd activity in the area behind the grassy knoll.
Now, for anyone says that such new info STILL doesn’t prove the LHO was a lone gunman… sure, that’s true. It will be virtually impossible to prove anything in this matter, because at this point in time, for whatever reasons, evidence has been lost/deliberately obscured, and witnesses have died or their memories have gotten misty. If proof of some kind still exists (e.g., letters, memos), we are not likely to see it, because I imagine that the government is not in a rush to let everyone know just how a president was assassinated. Besides, given the near-godlike status accorded to the Kennedy family, I can’t imagine anything coming to light while Ted is still alive, or perhaps even Caroline.
A general comment re: Occam’s razor - yes, it’s often a good rule to follow, but one has to be careful not to slit one’s own throat with it. How many things in life are really simple?
Okay, look, bda, I’m sorry buddies of yours have gotten shot in the head. But you’ve implied that they were mostly shot with .223 or other small, low-power rifle rounds, which as CurtC indicated tend to tumble, so that they hit their target sideways (or at least not straight-on) and thus impart a lot more of their momentum to the point of impact. Long-range high-power rifle bullets, like those from a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, are designed not to tumble so that they will be accurate out to much longer ranges.
So, bda, I have to ask: Do you know, for sure, if ANY of the people you’ve witnessed getting shot in the head were hit with high-powered rifle bullets and not the low-powered bullets typical of assault rifles? Did THEIR heads lurch away from the bullet and not towards it? And why would a live human head behave so VASTLY differently from the head of a human corpse if so?
Like you said, step forward or shut up.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
I didn’t see it - I don’t get that channel, but I think that the letters stand for Art and Entertainment. That should tell you something.
In your heart, do you really believe that you could recruit dozens of highly trained CIA employees, and get them to participate in the cover-up of their boss’s murder? And then expect them to keep quiet about it for 36 years? And they all do it?
If you want to fantasize about whether someone could have put LHO up to it, such as pro-Castro Marxists or Mafia types, that’s fine. But there are two kinds of conspiracy theories that are just irresponsibly negligent of the facts we know: those that say there were more gunmen, and those that say the US government was involved (even just in the cover-up).
By the way, tracer, I didn’t mean to imply that M16 bullets tumble in flight, but that they tumble immediately upon striking their target. I’m no expert, but I have some friends into guns, and they have explained it to me like that.
Really? Huh. Apparently, I’ve jumped to an incorrect conclusion. I knew that assault rifle ammo (such as the .223) were supposed to have a minimal kick, but I assumed they achieved this by having a low muzzle velocity. It seems they instead achieve a minimal kick by having a low bullet weight.
I take back everything I said about a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle being a “high powered” rifle in comparison to an M-16 or similar assault rifle.
This does not mean, however, that a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle bullet will not impact its target in such a way as to make a small entry wound and a large exit wound. Nor does it mean that a human head hit by such a bullet will not tend to lurch toward, rather than away from, the direction the bullet came from.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
Thank you for having the good grace to admit that I am correct.
Your opinion, not fact. How much it ‘means’ depends on the extent to which one can establish that theory ‘A’ is less likely than theory ‘B’.
Well. Duh.
Your splitting hairs, and the hairs aren’t even visible. We’re assuming for the sake of the argument that the lone-gunman theory has been shown to be ‘very unlikely’, but there is a range likelihood and unlikelihood. If, for instance, the evidence against the LGT is that it would have been very difficult for Oswald to have fired, stashed the rifle, dashed downstairs, and gotten a coke in time to be seen by a Dallas police officer and a supervisor in a lounge area, cool, collected, and no signs of sweat – well, that’s one kind of unlikely. Say, 60%.
If, however, the evidence against the LGT also includes computer-enhanced analysis of the Zapruder film’s ‘headshot’ frame, which indicates a bullet path from the right front to the left rear, that’s another thing. Say, 75% unlikely.
But if the evidence against the LGT further includes a photograph of the Presidential limousine from the other side of the the street as it passed in front of the grassy knoll which, when enhanced (which is not to say modified), reveals a semi-circular spray of blood that could only have been produced by a bullet’s impact occuring in a direct line between the camera and the grassy knoll, the ‘unlikelihood’ index goes up to ~85-90%. When a different area of that same enhanced photograph shows a flash of light in front of the silhouette of a man in a policeman’s uniform in a rifleman’s stance – that’s got to push it solidly to 90%; especially when that flash correlates well with the testimony of several witnesses to a puff of smoke and the reek of gunsmoke on the knoll immediately after the shooting.
And before anyone mentions a ‘coincidence’ of light and shadow to account for the image – yeah, right. Maybe I just find it odd that, at the exact split second the President of the United States was getting his brain sprayed over the trunk of his car , the universe ‘conspired’ to create that easily discernible (with the assistance of digital imaging) effect for the benefit of us ‘conspiracy nuts’.
Where was I? Oh, yeah – 90%.
Finally, when a Dallas police officer of long service testifies (with nothing to gain and everything – his reputation, his career, his pension, his property and savings, even his freedom – to lose) that he was ordered out of the area by a man with Secret Service credentials, a man the Secret Service cannot identify and avers was never detailed to be there – that pushes it for me into the range of 95%.
Now I know what some will say to that last – probably the same thing Gerald Posner said when I asked him the question in a phone call soon after the book was published. His response: “Well, that’s never been confirmed.” I began to ask him if he thought that amounted to a refutation, only to discover the connection broken. Never confirmed? We’re talking the assassination of the President, and he dismisses the single most convincing piece of evidence for a conspiracy simply by saying it’s not confirmed? That’s not what I call rigorous investigative technique. However, it does push the ‘unlikelihood index’ into the 95% range (speaking hypothetically, of course – just for the sake of the discussion, you understand).
Dream on.
Have you been paying attention? There’s no direct evidence to prove that Oswald fired the rifle, or any other firearm, in Dealey Plaza that day. The Mannlicher-Carcano has not even been – cannot even be, at this point – proven to have been the actual murder weapon.
Yeah, and ya know what? We’ll also find things like penicillin, the Hubble Constant, et al. If that is, we are intelligent enough to recognize the signficance of the ‘unexplainable’ and find a real explanation.
“If I want any shit outta you, I’ll pick yer teeth!”
Now, on the lone-gunman front, I’ll add one possible explanation for people thinking the shots came from somewhere else (and I’m surprised I’ve never come across this in print before).
If you look at the picture below, you’ll see a structure called the ‘Pergola’, which is a hemispherical building. This thing would have acted like a very, very good reflector of gunshot sounds. To people standing in the plaza in front of the limousine, the echoes of the gunshots from the pergola may well have been louder than the gunshots themselves, because of the concentrating effect the lens-shaped building. And the apparent source of those shots would have almost exactly come from the grassy knoll. If you know anything about reflectors, draw some straight lines from the 6th floor window to the hemispherical building, then back out again at the proper angle. You’ll see what I mean.
[Image deleted by David B for possible copyright problems and 'cus it was screwing up the page.]
Oh, I just looked up both the .223" Remington and the 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano in Cartridges of the World, 8th Edition.
The .223 has a higher muzzle velocity than the 6.5mm, but because .223 bullets are so light-weight they actually have a lower muzzle energy than the 6.5mm.
What effect this has on the size and severity of the entry wound I have no idea. I would think the rigidity of the metal jacket would make the biggest difference. (According to an episode of Frontline a while ago, the metal jackets on .223 bullets are notoriously thin; they would sometimes break open on impact and allow the soft lead core inside to deform and cause more tissue damage.) A bullet which doesn’t deform or tumble on impact would make a pretty small entry wound, and would not impart much of its momentum to a human head on first impact.
The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.
Sorry about screwing up the formatting of the page with that photo. I had it scaled down, and didn’t realize it would come out that large.
Anyway, I may have to retract some statements I’ve made about the possibility of the shots coming from one shooter. I did a whole ton of research tonight, and the crack earlier about my not understanding statistics made me do a bit of thinking about trying to reproduce statistical events.
I’ve never bought into most of the conspiracy theories. My whole problem with the lone shooter hinged around the possibility of someone managing to fire three shots with accuracy from a bolt-action rifle in just a few seconds. As I said, the
marine marksmen couldn’t manage the same thing.
However, it occured to me that if you ask me to throw a baseball at a wall, and you mark the three spots that I hit, then ask someone else to hit the SAME spots they will almost certainly not be able to, giving a false
impression that I managed quite a feat. In fact, if Oswald was aiming at Kennedy’s head, he only managed to hit it once out of three shots, with the other two being essentially random. And if the first shot
missed clean, he may have had as much as four seconds to reload and line up the second one, and that’s quite a long time. The time between the second and third is shorter, but within the range of possibility.
I also spent about half an hour watching the Zapruder headshot footage over and over again. It’s clear that Kennedy’s head moves FORWARD at the instant of impact, then his whole body moves backwards. It’s something I never noticed before. And there is definitely a large exit wound slightly in front of and above his right ear.
I still can’t explain the splatter of material all over the back of the car and the motorcycle cop driving behind the limo, but if the material went essentially straight up (as it looks in the video), then maybe it just slowed down from wind resistance and they drove under it. Possible, I guess.
Since Oswald was killed before convicted, why are we even saying he is the shooter? I thought it was innocent until proven guilty. From what I have read, he was just in the area at the time, no prints on the weapon, no witness saw him fire the rifle. Motive is what? Crazed gunman? How do you win a case on that evidence? It seems to me he was killed at the first opportunity so as not to testify to what he knew… at that point Oswald was just a suspect of the crime, not enough to brand him as the man who killed JFK in the history books. I think the rest of America was screaming to put the blame on someone, and to lynch the monster that did this to our President… Oswald was the easy way out.
“Wow! Spider-Man! Are you really friends with the X-men?” "Not since Cyclops tried to use my viewmaster."
(Marvel Team Up #1)
After looking at the gif of the Z-film and using someone else’s logic of the body moving towards the shooter, it appears to me that the shooter (of fatal shot) would then have had to be located at the 7 o’clock position relative to the limo and not the 5 o’clock position LHO fired from the school book depository.
In that short gif, you see JFK reach for his neck (the 1st shot & from LHO[?]) and then his whole body - head & shoulders - moves towards the left rear of the limo.
I still believe that the fatal shot came from the front and no amount of shooting pumpkins, apples, watermelons is going to change that until someone puts a real, live human in that limo seat.
Yes, I have fired fatal shots to deer, dogs and cats in the head and yes, the head moved towards the barrel but it was hardly noticeable - why? Because their heads were lying on the ground and the bullet came out the other side into the ground - there is your jet effect. However with JFK, there is no backboard for the concussion of the bullet/jet effect to reverberate off of and move the head.
I can understand LBJ’s decision to bury any evidence non-supportive of the lone gunman theory - fear of commies & all - since it was at the height of the Cold War. But we won that war and now it is time for the govt to come clean. I very seriously doubt that JFK will be exhumed for an autopsy but I am sure there are boxes of photos, testimonies, etc. that are sitting in a vault with the Cancer Man holding the key. On the day when I am 101 and its the 100th annivesary of the shooting, maybe then the govt will come clean.
CurtC, if you’ve never seen A&E, how can you make a judgment about what they broadcast?
A couple of points I’d like to make:
First, as dhanson pointed out earlier, simply thinking that the evidence points to a more complex situation than LHO deciding to shoot the president by his lonesome doesn’t make me a nut, or mean that I’m fantasizing. There are indeed a lot of poorly accounted-for bits of evidence, and from my perspective this is a murder investigation that shouldn’t have the books closed on it just yet. To draw a parallel to a more recent event, would you say I’m a nut for thinking that OJ was guilty despite the outcome of his criminal trial?
Second, you are basing your comments on “the facts we know”; what do we know, really? Do you think that the government is going to turn around and say, “Gee, the Cold War’s over & there’s no more threat to national security, so let’s declassify all the pertinent documents because the media have filed information requests under FOIA?” I doubt it.
Third, who said anything about “dozens of highly trained CIA employees” being involved? I don’t think you’d need more than one or two snipers and a handful (maybe) of higher-ranking staff in the know. Do I believe they could keep their mouths shut for all this time? Absolutely! All you need is someone with a strong sense of duty and the conviction they were doing the right thing (for whatever reason).
As an example of such a mindset, think of former Secret Service agents who have served over the past 40 years or so. Think of all the things they must have seen and heard in the course of performing their duties guarding the president (e.g., JFK’s fun times with the ladies). Have any of those agents written kiss-and-tell books? No. Have any of them even commented publicly? I believe that only one has, and no other agent still alive will discuss either those comments or what they themselves saw.
I’m not irresponsibly negligent; I’m just curious.
By that logic, a rocket engine shouldn’t work in space because there’s no air to “push against”. Thing is, that’s not how Newton’s Third Law works. If you push something away from yourself really hard, it will “push back” with equal force, even if you’re in a vacuum in deep space and what you’re “pushing” is a small clump of material that you’re throwing away from yourself.
Have you shot animals in the head when their head wasn’t lying on the ground? I’d bet you dollars to donut-holes that the head would still lurch toward the barrel.
Okay, now I get to take the pro-lone-nut side of the argument for a while, for the sake of objectivity.
First, there is NO DOUBT that Oswald was involved. It was his gun, they have photos of him holding it, he was seen carrying a long package into the building, he ran from work after the assassination, multiple witnesses saw him shoot a policeman that tried to question him. When he was arrested in the theatre he tried to shoot the cop that grabbed him. His first comment when someone asked if he shot the president was, “You figure it out” or words to that effect. Not the words of a random innocent person. His mental history showed all kinds of violent tendencies, he was implicated in the attempted assassination of a General, etc. A classic nutbar.
Here is a link that quite devastatingly skewers the ‘magic bullet’ theory. I have read about a dozen ‘conspiracy’ books, and not one of them showed the simple photographs at this link which show that Connolly was NOT seated directly in front of and level with Kennedy. Connolly was sitting in the middle ‘jump’ seats in the limo, and they are lower than the back seat to allow the back seat occupant to be prominantly displayed. They are also offset about a foot or so towards the center of the vehicle to allow access to the back seat from the door.
If the conspiracy books won’t present the evidence evenly, how can you trust anything they have to say?
Here’s the footage showing the Kennedy head shot:
[Footage deleted by David B for possible copyright problems.]
If you watch very closely at the moment of impact, you can see his head move forward very rapidly but a small distance. Kind of what you’d expect to see from a rear shot. Then his whole body moves the opposite direction. It seems to me that jet effect is a poor explanation for this, but perhaps a neuromuscular spasm would. Also, I’ve heard that Kennedy was wearing a back brace because of his Addison’s disease. If so, then his posture just before the shot may have had him straining forward against the brace, and when he’s hit in the head his body goes limp and the brace pulls him backwards. I don’t know. But there’s clearly some complex dynamics going on here.
[Note: This message has been edited by David B]
Isn’t the Zapruder film in the public domain? Not the actual film itself, which I know the government just paid millions for, but copies of it? I thought it was freely distributable.
Look at Connally: In the frames before the fatal shot, he’s clearly resting against his wife, who was seated on the driver’s side; he’s looking almost directly into the camera. Further evidence, I think, that he was hit by the bullet that first passed through Kennedy’s throat; he has an expression of both pain and surprise, then turns toward the front of the car, but before he faces fully forward again, Kennedy gets the fatal shot. Connally’s body, it looks to me, is thrown FORWARD by the impact of the bullet hitting him in the BACK!
GOOD GOD, I’ve just realized something! A split-second AFTER Kennedy slumps BACKWARD, Connally’s body lurches FORWARD.
Here’s what I think happened:
Kennedy’s body loses motor control when he gets the head shot; like a puppet whose LEFT strings have been cut, he slumps to his left, coming to rest against Jackie. He slumps to his left because it’s the RIGHT side of his brain that was destroyed, and the RIGHT side controls the LEFT side of the body! No longer under control, the left-side muscles go completely slack and Kennedy topples to his left. And he slumps backward because the construction of his seat caused him to fall backward. Look at this photo: The seat-back is greatly reclined, and the seat itself slopes BACKWARD. The seat and perhaps acceleration (the driver is supposed to have hit the gas at this point) caused Kennedy to fall backward, NOT the impact of a bullet hitting him in the front.
Still with sufficient velocity, the bullet next hits Connally in the back. The impact causes Connally to lurch forward and he appears to be trying to put his head between his legs. His wife is also ducking down; no doubt they are both trying to get out of the line of fire. Since the bullet did not hit Connally in the head or spine, he still retained enough motor control to try to conceal himself AND lean forward in spite of the limousine’s acceleration. Kennedy, being totally limp, at least on the left side, is unable to resist either the acceleration or the construction of the seat. So he falls back and to the left.
CONCLUSION: Kennedy and Connally were both hit by a single bullet that hit them both from behind. And it seems to me that LHO is the most likely candidate to have fired that fatal bullet because of where he was at the time and what he is supposed to have done that day.
Thanks for the link, dhanson, that provided that photo of the limousine.
