This op-ed by Mona Charen brought the subject to mind, but is otherwise irrelevant.
What do you believe to be the truth of the Kennedy assassination? Did Oswald act alone? Was he an agent of the Russians? The mob? The Illuminati? Did someone else actually do it? Will we ever know?
Poll in a moment. The results will be public because I am a jerk who feels like it.
Just wanted to point out that us Dopers are really, really smart.
As of right now, 100% of poll respondents agree with me.
Someone’s voted that Oswald both acted alone from start to finish, and also that he acted as part of a domestic criminal conspiracy. That seems self-contradictory to me.
Just because your part of a conspiracy doesn’t mean you can’t take off and do something by yourself.
I haven’t voted. As soon as I saw the poll options I realised that I just don’t know, despite of watching a number of documentaries and the Stone film. I’ve bneen interested in the assassination nearly all my life – it’s one of the first news stories I remember – but I simply do not know.
I also don’t have a dog in the fight, not being from the USA.
I think that you left out the option of Oswald being involved, but, he didn’t actually do the shooting. Key word: patsy.
Best wishes,
hh
I’m not sure how loosely “conspiracy” should be defined. I wouldn’t be surprised if Oswald had a circle of acquaintances who mouthed off how somebody oughtta shoot that bastard Kennedy. But I don’t think anyone else helped him plan it, or had any knowledge in advance of Oswald’s intent actually to do it.
I must say, I’m shocked at all the acted alone / Ruby acted out of patriotism votes.
Joe
I don’t trust Jack Ruby, nor do I believe in Jack Ruby’s self-proclaimed utmost patriotism.
Oops. This is a public poll, right? Can the CIA track me down because they mightn’t like how I voted?
This is me as well. Having been born in 1960, I’ve heard this hashed out for decades - I just don’t have enough data to make a decision about it.
You left out the possibility that it happened so long before we were born that we’ve never been able to sort through the conspiracy theories and propaganda we’ve been told all our lives to come to anything resembling a solid opinion on the issue.
I am shocked that you are shocked.
On the other hand I am somewhat quite reassured by the heavy majority
in favor of the lone conspirator view. I take it as evidence of a general
robustness of intellectual and emotional character.
I think I’ve said before – I believe the whole Warren Commission thing was effectively a coverup designed to tout a favored scenario that coincidentally happened to be true. After Kennedy was dead, a lot of people were afraid to find out the truth – though in retrospect it’s clear there wasn’t anything to be afraid of, after all. But they didn’t know that.
And that’s what’s sown so much confusion over the issue in the half century since.
Serious question- have you read the Warren Commission Report? A lot of people reject it without reading it.
I am still reading “Reclaiming History” and along with "Case Closed’ it enables me to easily believe that Oswald acted alone. (I will not get into the details in deference to this threads topic).
No, I haven’t. Hope you don’t misunderstand me, I also think Oswald acted alone, and there was no conspiracy (strictly defined). But the people at the time didn’t know that, and were afraid to find out. A Marxist nutjob and would-be Soviet defector shoots the President just a year after we almost got pulled into World War III? Holy crud, let’s keep our fingers crossed he was acting alone! :eek:
What I’m saying is that, based on human nature, I can easily believe all the criticism I’ve read that the Warren Commission was slipshod if not deliberately obfuscatory; but that does not preclude the ultimate truth that Oswald acted alone.
Sorry, no I didn’t read anything into your reply. I was just going to mention an incident in “Reclaiming History” where at a conference of around 600 trial lawyers heasked how many did not accept the findings of the Commission. Around 90 % indicated that they didn’t. Basically, he showed them they weren’t thinking rationally- before forming an intelligent opinion they needed to know both sides of the case. Yet very few indicated they had actually read the report and had to accept that they were not thinking rationally.
As to your last point, he points out that the Commission Report is very thorough and an exemplary investigative job. (not his view alone- supported by others). Yet the report has been very much vilified.
Anyway, going into territory outside the poll which belongs to another thread.
Suffice to say the report is criticsed - or at least not accepted -by many who have never read it.
I believe that Oswold was up in the Repository with a gun, I believe he cranked off several shots, and I believe that he probably even managed to hit JFK and the Governor of Texas. I think it is even very possible that there were a couple of handlers on the grassy knoll as well. I think Jack Ruby may have been involved as a cleaner as some part of a deal to get some sort of evidence against him conveniently lost or as having been pressured to do. I think there was probably some sort of conspiracy going on, though whether or not it was our side, some criminal element [mob?] or some foreign country organizing it. I do not know and would rather not get into an argument about the whole thing. I seriously doubt that we will ever find out the truth as I believe that documents and evidence were destroyed.
There is no evidence that cannot be explained by a single gunman, and we have Occam’s Razor. And I cannot fathom any conspiracy that would not involve someone in the government being in on it–even if only to cover up the original one. If there was any evidence, we would have found it. Come on–we even have a ballistics match.
If there is no conspiracy, then there is nothing for Ruby to have done. And, unlike Oswald, we were able to question him. He very much fits the profile of someone who thought he’d be lauded as a hero for killing the guy. I wouldn’t really call it patriotism, but he did not act as part of any conspiracy, as there wasn’t one.
And of course old Screwtape arranged Jack’s death upon that day for outing some stuff he shouldn’t have–but that was a completely different kind of conspiracy.
I cannot explictly discredit the official account.
However, I view the facts & circumstances of that account with a degree of mistrust.
I accept, tenetively, the official view, but I label it Loose Ends: Subject To Review.
I think the Mob took him out via Oswald.