Moderated JFK conspiracy theories: it never ends III

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"Conclusion" conveys an air of finality that skeptics don't hold. My conclusion on this matter is simply that of all the scenarios presented to explain Kennedy's death, Oswald as the lone gunman is the most credible -- it explains the most observation with the fewest requirements or loose ends. Want to change my mind? Show me a scenario that's more explanatory and/or more parsimonious.
...[Respectful snip for space]...

Well, yabbut...so are you saying that The Most Technologically And Militarily Advanced Superpower On The Planet couldn't undertake covert operations, maintain secrecy or ever do anything considered morally wrong? Har har!!! Sheeple!!!

(Or so goes the argument from rhetoric, at least as I understand it)
 
* How a guy who barely managed to qualify at the middle of three marksmanship levels in the Marines could perform a shooting feat that even WC counsel Wesley Liebeler admitted was not duplicated in the WC's shooting reenactment, which was done by three Master-rated riflemen.
If a marine can qualify at the marksman level, he shouldn't have any problems hitting a man sized target slowly moving away at a small angle at close range.

* * How Oswald would have known to adjust his aim because he was firing from an elevation and how elevation would alter the bullet's trajectory.
The range was less than 100 yards, the bullet was moving at about 2100 fps (if I recall) and the elevation was much less than the horizontal distance to the target. This means the effects of height and distance was negligible. You appear to be rather naïve about how firearms operate. Shoot my Carcano sometime; I'll show you how easy it is.

* * Why Oswald didn't open fire when he had a much easier shot as the limo came up Houston Street.
Does it matter for some reason?

Do you understand how much this link sucks?

That long list what constitutes a valid test is just plain silly. It doesn't have to be that detailed to be valid. Use the same type of gun/ammo, moving target of the same size, same shooter position and you're just fine.

What is a difficult bolt and odd trigger? Merely stiff or extremely hard to operate?

Ranb
 
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Yes, I know that there isn't airtight historical coverage, but that's not what I was drawing from -- I said Someone's Story I.e. the version of the story as told by the government I.e. the one they'd recite today if asked is the one which I find fault in whereas you do not, which isn't all too surprising 'cause if I were to take the regulars here at face value then I'd be living in a world where the only superpower who is orders of magnitude ahead of rivals militarily and technologically cannot undertake covert operations, maintain secrecyor do anything considered morally wrong, particularly against its own, mostly dumb and politically ignorant people. That cheese isn't cutting it no matter what public relations angle a person comes from.

Funny how when I had fun in the sun down south in the early to mid 1980's everybody and their brother knew what was going on, except President Reagan.

The most important real world covert op lately can be read about in two books, and if you don't want to read you can watch the movie.

Come back when you can discuss reality, not the plot of your self directed movie.
 
If a marine can qualify at the marksman level, he shouldn't have any problems hitting a man sized target slowly moving away at a small angle at close range.


The range was less than 100 yards, the bullet was moving at about 2100 fps (if I recall) and the elevation was much less than the horizontal distance to the target. This means the effects of height and distance was negligible. You appear to be rather naïve about how firearms operate. Shoot my Carcano sometime; I'll show you how easy it is.


Does it matter for some reason?


Do you understand how much this link sucks?

That long list what constitutes a valid test is just plain silly. It doesn't have to be that detailed to be valid. Use the same type of gun/ammo, moving target of the same size, same shooter position and you're just fine.

What is a difficult bolt and odd trigger? Merely stiff or extremely hard to operate?

Ranb

And Oswald as a kid before the Corps went hunting with his older brother, so it's no stretch to believe he had fired on moving targets before he ever received formal marksmanship training.
 
If a marine can qualify at the marksman level, he shouldn't have any problems hitting a man sized target slowly moving away at a small angle at close range.

Most people are surprised at how small Dealey Plaza is and how short a shot it was in the grand scheme of rifle marksmanship. Photographs don't necessarily represent the scale, and conspiracy theorists exaggerate the supposed difficulty of the shot.

You appear to be rather naïve about how firearms operate.

And probably hoping his audience is similarly naive. But in order to pad out the Gish Gallop to epic proportions he has to invent a bunch of "impossible" things, whether they actually matter or not. It's only important if the reader believes it matters. Conspiracism is about marginalia, which naturally leads to the complaint, "What do you mean that's not important, of course it's important!"

Does it matter for some reason?

It's just the aforementioned Gish Gallop of "holes." The list has to be as long as possible so that it looks like there's an endless series of "problems" with the conventional story. That means trumping up a bunch of them. "Better shot" in whose estimation? By what standard?

This kind of question is perfect conspiracy fodder because it seems rigorous until you reveal the assumption behind it. "Gee, it's obvious this other thing should have been done instead," is the form of the hidden assumption. Well, no, you're just letting the author sneak his assumptions past you without letting you examine them.

And ultimately questions about "Why did this person do this?" can be debated endlessly without resolution, and the answer to them doesn't necessarily bear on the overall question. It's just distraction to keep the debate going and the conspiracy proponent relevant.

That long list what constitutes a valid test is just plain silly. It doesn't have to be that detailed to be valid.

That's one of the insidious fallacies of the recreationist approach -- the notion that a happenstance occurrence has to be reproduced in all discoverable detail in order to validly demonstrate whether it was possible.

If the goal of darts is to hit a bullseye, and I throw three darts and hit the bullseye on my last shot (i.e., achieve the goal), then how would another player of comparable skill be asked to duplicate my feat? Would he have to hit the bullseye on the third dart? Would the other two darts also have to land where mine did? Would he have to duplicate my arm and torso movements exactly? What if he hit the bullseye on the first dart -- would that satisfy the objective of duplicating my feat?

It's a lot harder to duplicate the first thrower's performance (including all the intervening happenstance factors) than to duplicate his results.

Manipulating the conventional theory's supposed standard of proof, to raise it to an absurd height, is a pretty common tactic. It especially fails when the manipulation is so blatant. Of course it also fails for the epistemological reason that no such arbitrary standard exists in order for some theory to be rationally the most credible of all its peers.
 
Oswald "barely managed to qualify at the middle of three marksmanship levels in the Marines" which means...he qualified. What do you call a doctor who graduated at the bottom of his class? Doctor.
 
Why not? Skepticism is the doubt of accepted truths, eh?

Not really. It's the ability to modify one's conclusions based on new evidence, and reach proper conclusions despite one's biases.

Well, when a person looks at the Kennedy assassination, from top-to-bottom, the published version of events isn't pliable to what actually happened and what has been later revealed to true.

Well, I'm a person. I disagree with you. Let's try this: what's the most damning piece of evidence against the official story ?

The moment when someone's story stops being airtight is exactly when a person should push further and investigate.

Unless one is knowledgeable enough to know that stories are rarely airtight even when true.

if I were to take the regulars here at face value then I'd be living in a world where the only superpower who is orders of magnitude ahead of rivals militarily and technologically cannot undertake covert operations, maintain secrecy or do anything considered morally wrong, particularly against its own, mostly dumb and politically ignorant people.

No, what they are saying is that superpower is A) not a monolithic entity, B) not composed of immoral drones and C) unable to break the laws of physics.
 
Increasingly so. Unless a closing target is coming directly toward you, his bearing rate increases the closer he gets. So you either have to fire at a small, distant target with minimal bearing rates, or you have to wait until the range closes to present a larger target and then deal with a higher bearing rate.

Never thought of it that way. Thanks.

The War of 1812 proves the United States military had much to learn from the Candians. :D

Especially in the arson department.
 
The conspiracist's partisan approach proposes that there exists some "natural" standard of proof that the conventional narrative must meet in order to be rationally held at all. Thus they focus on trying to show the conventional story doesn't clear this arbitrary bar, and thus must be rejected in favor of any other story -- even one that hasn't been invented yet.

Remind you of something else ?
 
No, what they are saying is that superpower is A) not a monolithic entity, B) not composed of immoral drones and C) unable to break the laws of physics.

Or simply didn't do what they're accused of in some particular case.

As part of the colossally mismatched burdens of proof between the conventional story and some conspiracy theory, conspiracists seem to think they only have to prove that something was "possible." Conversely they want their critics to have to prove the proposed conspiracy is impossible. But reality is a little less one-sided. Proving that a person is capable of doing something isn't the same as proving he actually did it. I can believe that the U.S. is capable of doing some dastardly thing, but if I can't see any evidence that they actually did so, I'm not compelled to believe they must have just because someone can imagine it.
 
Never thought of it that way. Thanks.

Build a few differential tracking systems and the math is right there. I'm not saying Oswald was doing this math. But I'm saying that there is math behind what Border Reiver was taught.

As to why Oswald did what he did and didn't do something else -- who has any idea? How does such an argument not simply devolve to If I Ran the Zoo? "Gee, this person didn't do in the spur of a moment what I've had decades to mull over? How suspicious!" For reasons that made sense to him, and possibly in ignorance or indifference over possibly better ways, he set up the shot he wanted to take. This is how humans work. There's nothing inherently suspicious about it. The question is entirely second-guesswork.
 
I always like the "personal incredulity" arguments that are, ultimately, not all that incredulous.

The "why didn't he shoot the front" is one example. My other favorite is the "a single person couldn't pull off such a big feat" claim.

Personally, I take it the other way - "a lone nutter" is the ONLY way it could have been pulled off. If you get others involved, the chance of someone messing it up goes up really fast. In order to pull it off, you have to keep it completely under the radar. You are best to be by yourself, doing things as normal and mundane as possible. Anything else is going to draw attention and get in the way.

Can a lone whacko take out the President? He's pretty much the only one who can!
 
Never thought of it that way. Thanks.







Especially in the arson department.


In the interests of honesty - the lads who burned the Whitehouse were British soldiers who had been brought there by ships from Halifax.

On the other hand Chateaugay and Lundy's Lane were all us.
 
I always like the "personal incredulity" arguments that are, ultimately, not all that incredulous.

The "why didn't he shoot the front" is one example. My other favorite is the "a single person couldn't pull off such a big feat" claim.

Personally, I take it the other way - "a lone nutter" is the ONLY way it could have been pulled off. If you get others involved, the chance of someone messing it up goes up really fast. In order to pull it off, you have to keep it completely under the radar. You are best to be by yourself, doing things as normal and mundane as possible. Anything else is going to draw attention and get in the way.

Can a lone whacko take out the President? He's pretty much the only one who can!

When I visited Dealey Plaza, I was with military friends and was able to take the time to visit the TSBD.

When we went for the TSBD tour, one of my buddies made an off the cuff remark that cracked us all up - when we checked out the actual view to the impact points, my buddy made the observation that "****, Manuel could have killed him with a lime!" (our mutual buddy Manuel having thrown a lime about 300 yards in front of witnesses)

Contrary to observations made by assassination cranks, the shooting wasn't "world class" or anything close to it.

If anybody is interested, here's a link to the Wimbledon Cup wiki, along with a list of the winners from the first year to today - that list of men and women are world class marksmen, very few others qualify, not Howard Donahue, and for sure not me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimbledon_Cup

You can put Tom Sarver in for this bit of shooting:

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2007/07/sarver-shoots-1403-group-at-1000-yards/
 
When I visited Dealey Plaza, I was with military friends and was able to take the time to visit the TSBD.

When we went for the TSBD tour, one of my buddies made an off the cuff remark that cracked us all up - when we checked out the actual view to the impact points, my buddy made the observation that "****, Manuel could have killed him with a lime!" (our mutual buddy Manuel having thrown a lime about 300 yards in front of witnesses)

Contrary to observations made by assassination cranks, the shooting wasn't "world class" or anything close to it.

If anybody is interested, here's a link to the Wimbledon Cup wiki, along with a list of the winners from the first year to today - that list of men and women are world class marksmen, very few others qualify, not Howard Donahue, and for sure not me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimbledon_Cup

You can put Tom Sarver in for this bit of shooting:

http://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/2007/07/sarver-shoots-1403-group-at-1000-yards/

And still, he missed twice.

"Why did LHO take three shots?"
"Because the first two missed"
"Why didn't he shoot more?"
"Because he didn't have to"
 
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