TJx said:If Oswald did do it for the infamy, why did he vehemently deny it?
TJx said:History doesn't happen by accident.
TJx said:There is NO evidence he was on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting. The best evidence puts him on the 2nd floor.
He was on the sixth floor. His rifle was found there, with his prints all over it, and fibers from the shirt he was wearing at the time he was apprehended were later found on the rifle. Three expended shells were found near it. Witness on the floor below heard the shots and the sound of the shell casings hitting the floor. Witnesses all over the plaza heard the three shots fired by that rifle. The only "evidence" that he wasn't where the forensic evidence indicates he are assumptions made by people based on the inconsistent statements of Charles Givens, and statements from other who say they glimpsed him elsewhere, turned into more assumptions that he didn't have time to get to the makeshift sniper's nest on the sixth floor. Dismissed entirely by the conspiracy theorists is that these people are simply wrong about times and their recollections are a bit off. Human memory is fallible, which is why you can take reports of the same incident by multiple witnesses, and often get as many versions of the incident as there are witnesses.There is NO evidence he was on the 6th floor at the time of the shooting. The best evidence puts him on the 2nd floor.
Conspiracy theories do seem to be immortal don't they? But I think conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg made the best statement on the matter that I have heard:Billy Shears,the voice of reason.Thank you. There are over 50 points of evidence linking LHO to the murders of JFK and Officer J.D.Tippit.
After almost 49 years there is not one thread of credible evidence linking any other human being ,living or dead ,to the murders of either gentlemen.
But the conspiracy folks just want go on building those fantasy castles in the air,and selling books and DVD's,a very profitable niche racket.
You have to imagine that government (or the mob, or the Russians, or Castro, or LBJ, or the Israelis, take your pick) is supremely competent, and they managed to cover their tracks so well that in half a century, no one has ever let the cat out of the bag.Oh come on. I distrust the government but as a realistic conservative I think government is staffed with mostly well-intentioned but incompetent people — not because they’re dumb, but because bureaucracies are dumb. These conspiracy theorists reverse this entirely. They think government is evil-intentioned but supremely, even divinely, competent. That’s crazy-talk, Count Chocula.
It means there's certainly a whole lot more evidence that it was him than there is that it was some shadowy, unknown person.This is almost too silly to respond to but I will.
Because his rifle was found that must mean he fired the shots? PPPlease!
Yes, it's totally impossible that a former marine would ever disassemble his rifle and reassemble it, and might leave prints on the weapon in doing so.Prints all over it? Try a palm print under hand guard.
Again, the evidence, such as it is, points to Oswald. What you have is speculation and conjecture based on flaws or gaps in the evidence. That's all. I'll leave it to reasonable people to decide which is more reliable.Spent shells found, heard dropping on floor, people hearing shots hardly puts LHO at scene of crime.
And you would be wrong there too. To take another assassination, for example, that of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sparked off the First World War. The Archduke and his wife passed one assassin, who failed to act, then another, who threw his bomb and missed, and the bomb rolled under the car and failed to kill the intended victim. The Archduke's car sped away. He was safe. After learning that the assassination had been unsuccessful Gavrilo Princip, one of the plotters, went to a nearby food shop (Schiller's delicatessen), thinking their plot had failed, and they had missed their chance. When Princip emerged, he saw, much to his surprise, Franz Ferdinand's open car backing up, right in front of him. The driver had taken a wrong turn as he drove past, near the Latin Bridge. As the driver was backing up, having realized his mistake, the engine of the car stalled and the gears locked, giving Princip his opportunity, which he took. Princip, a poor shot, began spraying bullets from a little .32 pocket pistol, inflicting fatal wounds on the Archduke and his wife, and setting into motion a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War One, and it was a freak accident. Franz Ferdinand should never have been in that spot, and it was only happenstance that one of the assassins happened to be there in the same moment.What I meant by history not happening by accident is political events like this, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Reichstag fires, 9/11, not boat wrecks, natural disasters, etc.
TJx said:"He was on the sixth floor. His rifle was found there, with his prints all over it, and fibers from the shirt he was wearing at the time he was apprehended were later found on the rifle. Three expended shells were found near it. Witness on the floor below heard the shots and the sound of the shell casings hitting the floor. Witnesses all over the plaza heard the three shots fired by that rifle."
This is almost too silly to respond to but I will.
Because his rifle was found that must mean he fired the shots? PPPlease!
Prints all over it? Try a palm print under hand guard.
Spent shells found, heard dropping on floor, people hearing shots hardly puts LHO at scene of crime.
What I meant by history not happening by accident is political events like this, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Reichstag fires, 9/11, not boat wrecks, natural disasters, etc.
Believe what you want as I will, lets agree to disagree, I'm done debating point by point.
It has been my belief that LHO bought the gun mail order instead of getting it from another source locally because his handlers told him to purchase it mail order with the intent of using the JFK assassination for bringing on gun control legislation and ending mail order sales of firearms. Five years later the GCA become law and mail order sales were outlawed.Conspiracy theorists make a big deal about how he bought a traceable gun via mail order instead of buying something superior and untraceable locally. He may have been thinking ahead to his defense: "How could I have made those shots with this inaccurate POS?" when he knew all along that he had a very capable weapon.
Just a thought.
Why did LHO buy through mail order when he could have bought the rifle from other much less traceable sources instead? Didn't he realize that the gun would be traced back to him?BTW,Midwest, who were these phantom "handlers", of which you speak?!
Do I really have to explain to you what's wrong with that statement? You don't start with an assumption or a preconceived notion and then figure its true if you can't find any evidence to prove it wrong. That's not how rational inquiry works. You are supposed to take an objective look at the evidence, and only then draw your conclusions based on what the evidence supports.How do we know that LHO was not helped or handled along the way?
Let me break it on down for you:I'm not sure why this is so hard. Spent shell casings being heard by witnesses on the 5th floor, which am I no disputing, does not place LHO on the 6th floor at the time of the assassination. In fact, the last eye witness, Carolyn Arnold, places LHO on the 2nd floor at 12:15, where he was next seen by Officer Marion Baker and building superintendant Roy Truly within 90 seconds of the assassination at 12:30 drinking a Coke.
This timeline is one of the most important facts that prove that LHO didn't do it. The Warren Commission wants you to believe that after firing the final shot he cleaned rifle, hid rifle ~ 150 feet away, ran down 4 floors passing 2 people (Adams & Styles) who never saw him, entered 2nd floor lunchroom, purchased a Coke, opened Coke and started drinking it, all the while being calm, cool, and collected when seen by Baker & Truly?
There are absolutely no witnesses that place LHO on the 6th floor or anywhere near it at the time of the assassination.
You have to imagine that government (or the mob, or the Russians, or Castro, or LBJ, or the Israelis, take your pick) is supremely competent, and they managed to cover their tracks so well that in half a century, no one has ever let the cat out of the bag.
TJx said:I'm not sure why this is so hard. Spent shell casings being heard by witnesses on the 5th floor, which am I no disputing, does not place LHO on the 6th floor at the time of the assassination. In fact, the last eye witness, Carolyn Arnold, places LHO on the 2nd floor at 12:15, where he was next seen by Officer Marion Baker and building superintendant Roy Truly within 90 seconds of the assassination at 12:30 drinking a Coke.
This timeline is one of the most important facts that prove that LHO didn't do it. The Warren Commission wants you to believe that after firing the final shot he cleaned rifle, hid rifle ~ 150 feet away, ran down 4 floors passing 2 people (Adams & Styles) who never saw him, entered 2nd floor lunchroom, purchased a Coke, opened Coke and started drinking it, all the while being calm, cool, and collected when seen by Baker & Truly?
There are absolutely no witnesses that place LHO on the 6th floor or anywhere near it at the time of the assassination.
Some people are just impervious to reason. "I know what I know. Don't bother me with facts."I see your valid points as I too have read a 'bit' on the subject and was old enough at the time to ask the questions that have never been truthfully answered.
Glad that some are still seeing the truth.
This is a book I cannot recommend highly enough. Not only is its central thesis well and convincingly argued - that Kennedy's assassination proved to be the catalyst for a dramatic leftward shift in American liberalism in general, and in the democratic party in particular; that this New Left embraced an often anti-American political philosophy and worldview; and that this philosophy and worldview were actually squarely in opposition to the views of John F. Kennedy, a man this New Left (rather ironically in light of his actual views) came to regard as its martyr. But Mr. Piereson also writes in a clear, concise, highly readable style that makes it difficult to put this book down. Moreover, Piereson's thesis also explains the apparent immortality and widespread acceptance of the conspiracy theories surrounding JFK's assassination.
Fittingly, Piereson begins by explaining what some of Kennedy's actual views, and the actual policies and programs he promoted were, and thus reminds us that Kennedy, far from being a liberal in the current popular use of the term (like his recently deceased youngest brother Edward Kennedy), was actually a moderate with some views that would today be classed as fiscally conservative (and indeed some of his policies were later adopted by conservatives), as well as a truly ardent cold warrior, whose hawkish stance on anti-communism and national defense would also be embraced by conservatives. Also, while JFK was generally liberal in his views on civil rights, support of labor unions, and some other matters, these views were not extreme in him, and his support for some liberal causes, such as desegregation for example, was cautious, since he feared alienating Democrats in the South, and thus imperiling his ability to accomplish things in the areas which really were priorities for him. Given these facts about the man, it's rather ironic that John F. Kennedy was posthumously made into a martyr for the civil rights movement, and a symbol for late 20th century liberalism.
Piereson argues convincingly that Kennedy was recast in this image after his death, by liberals trying to come to terms with his assassination and the way it challenged some of their most deeply held core assumption about the United States and its society. Liberals had long regarded the right as paranoid for its insistence on the danger that communism represented, not just as a foreign threat, but also as a domestic one. The true danger to American society, they had always believed very deeply, was not from communism, but from the right's overreaction to communism. McCarthyism, for example, was regarded as far more dangerous to the American way of life than communism ever was (and to be fair, they were certainly not entirely wrong in this either.) With JFK dead at the hands of a communist, however, suddenly those on the right looked a lot less paranoid and extreme in their views, and liberals were confronted with the uncomfortable possibility that they hadn't judged matters as well as they had thought. This is the seed of the subsequent remaking of JFK into a liberal martyr of the civil rights movement, and victim of the hateful, bigoted elements of American society.
It wasn't that liberals cynically and opportunistically tried to exploit JFK's death in order to advance their agenda (though there may have been some cynical enough to do this - Lyndon Johnson comes to mind), it was merely that JFK's assassination at the hands of a pathetic, maladjusted nobody like Lee Harvey Oswald, who was also an ardent, dyed-in-the-wool Marxist, so completely shook their core assumptions, that deep down, on a fundamental level, many of them just couldn't accept it. If Oswald shot Kennedy, and Oswald was a communist acting from ideological motives, then it followed that communism was the cause behind the assassination, and maybe they hadn't taken this threat seriously enough. No, it just had to be something else. It HAD to be! And then they started looking for what that something else was.
Jackie Kennedy, in the immediate aftermath, was perhaps the first to express this perception of things, saying, upon learning of Oswald's arrest: "He didn't even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It had to be some silly little communist. It even robs his death of any meaning." She had earlier assumed that it was right wing reactionaries, responding to suggestions that she change out of her bloodstained clothes for the cameras "No, I want them to see what they've done." "They" were the forces of right wing reaction who had opposed desegregation, founded the John Birch Society, and other things. Then, within days, the editorials and commentaries began to appear, casting Kennedy as the victim of a current of rage and hatred in American society. NY Times columnist James Reston weighed in with a piece titled "Why America Weeps: Kennedy Victim of Violent Streak He Sought to Curb in Nation." Two days later, he added an article titled "A Portion of Guilt for All," in which he wrote that there was a "rebellion in the land against law and good faith," and laid the blame for JFK's murder at its feet. Martin Luther King Jr. said that JFK's death had to be seen against a background of violence in the South in reaction to the Civil Rights Movement. Numerous commentaries and eulogies picked up this theme, and before very long, it was accepted wisdom. John F. Kennedy was a victim of a streak of anger, bigotry, hatred, and revanchism that deeply corrupted American society.
But how does one square this interpretation of events with the fact that JFK was apparently killed by a single man whose life story shows with abundant clarity that he was very, very far from representative of American society? Well, really you can't, so it must follow, must it not, that someone or something else was behind all this? Oh Oswald was involved, certainly, the evidence makes that clear. But there must have been someone else. He didn't act alone. In fact, it's not too far a jump from here to making Oswald just a pawn in a greater conspiracy. And that's precisely what happened, and today, a majority of American's believe it.
But this interpretation of JFK's death had another unintended consequence as well, and one that's far darker. If, after all, the nation itself were in some way responsible for Kennedy's murder, then a mood of punishment and chastisement was a more appropriate attitude to take toward that nation than the mood of self-confidence and optimism that had prevailed up to that time. If American values are in fact so deeply corrupted that they led to the slaying of so noble and idealistic a leader, who was trying to make the country a better, freer, more just nation, then does it not make sense to reject those values? Why would one embrace or defend a society that is so polluted and so rotten? And many of the liberals who had had their assumptions so badly shaken asked this very question, and began to drift toward radical, even anti-American views. And since many suspect the CIA, or other elements of the U.S. government itself, of being involved, does it not follow that our country's government is deeply corrupt, and highly untrustworthy? And if this is the case, it might lead you to a whole new view of American policy in general -- a view in which this corrupt, untrustworthy government seldom if ever acts from good or admirable motives (and is this not precisely how the far left today does think of America)? And to this trend Piereson attributes the rise of the New Left, whom he names punitive liberals, many of whom were among those who grieved most deeply for Kennedy, and then went on, in another great irony, to embrace views which were deeply antithetical to those of the slain president himself, but sometimes quite close, ideologically, to those of the man who had murdered him.
This is Piereson's thesis. And he argues for it so persuasively, and with so many detailed notes and references, that I do believe he has produced a remarkable and accurate work of scholarship that elegantly explains both the anti-American current so evident in modern liberalism, as well as the durability of conspiracy theories about JFK's assassination. This is a book that should be in anyone's library.
How many people here remember widespread reports on radio and on television before JFK arrived in Chicago early in November 1963 about an alleged plot to kill him there? His trip was cancelled. Pierre Salinger said that Kennedy had "a cold."
I read a short story where Kennedy actually survived, but was brain damaged and sequestered in his now childlike state in his family's home in Massachusetts, periodically visited by Jackie and his brother Ted, and the rest of the world thinking he was killed in Dallas.I've come to think of the JFK shooting as something that we will never know the details of, but is interesting for people to speculate in fiction. My favorite was the Red Dwarf bit where they go back in time and prevent the shooting, leading to several scandals JFK was involved in becoming public and the country falling into disarray. They realized that JFK had to die in order for time to go on as it should have, and convince the JFK from a few years later that he has to go back in time and kill himself. Thus, the shooter behind the grassy knoll was JFK.
I have done my own research, and I have read more than 1 or 2 books that agree with the Warren Commission. You, on the other hand, do not appear to have done the research, or read the books that disagree with your preconceived notion.Do your own research rather than 1 or 2 books that agree with the WC.
I read a short story where Kennedy actually survived, but was brain damaged and sequestered in his now childlike state in his family's home in Massachusetts, periodically visited by Jackie and his brother Ted, and the rest of the world thinking he was killed in Dallas.