JFK Conspiracy Theories IV: The One With The Whales

[MicahJava]

Read the actual eyewitness testimony and expert testimony instead of the conspiracy theorist versions of same.

It worked for me.

Hank

To be frank, get outta here!

So far, you have only given me more reasons to believe that this cowlick business is a hoax. I'm pretty convinced that the small head wound is not and can not be the cowlick fracture on the X-ray.

 

[BStrong]

To be frank, get outta here!

So far, you have only given me more reasons to believe that this cowlick business is a hoax. I'm pretty convinced that the small head wound is not and can not be the cowlick fracture on the X-ray.

And you can't articulate why your pin-the-headwound-on-the-drawing riff means anything. You remind me of the kid that plays the "Smoke on the Water" riff over and over at the guitar shop.

How does disagreement between parties outweigh the collected physical evidence of LHO's guilt?

 

[Axxman300]

To be frank, get outta here!

So far, you have only given me more reasons to believe that this cowlick business is a hoax. I'm pretty convinced that the small head wound is not and can not be the cowlick fracture on the X-ray.

To be blunt, you have no valid reason to believe any of the forensic evidence is a hoax for the simple reason of there is not enough information available to the public to make any assessment to counter the final autopsy conclusions.

From the National Archives:

I have seen the autopsy photographs and x-rays in books. Did NARA make them available?

Any photographs that have been published in books throughout the years were not obtained from NARA.

The autopsy photographs and X-rays of President Kennedy were donated to the National Archives by the Kennedy family by an agreement dated October 29, 1966. This agreement limits access to such materials to: (1) persons authorized to act for a Committee of Congress, a Presidential Commission, or any other official agency of the Federal government having authority to investigate matters relating to the assassination of President Kennedy and to (2) recognized experts in the field of pathology or related areas of science and technology whose applications are approved by the Kennedy family representative, Mr. Paul Kirk.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/faqs.html#autop

This means that NOBODY currently arguing conspiracy has enough accurate information to do so using autopsy photos.

The photos which are out in the world just aren't conclusive enough to suggest anything other than what is already on film: JFK being struck in the head from behind.

And you continue to ignore the bullet itself, the 6.5x52mm was a moose. Everything we see from the ballistics and forensics is consistent with damage done by this particular round, and it is foolish to argue otherwise.

 

[HSienzant]

To be frank, get outta here!

So far, you have only given me more reasons to believe that this cowlick business is a hoax. I'm pretty convinced that the small head wound is not and can not be the cowlick fracture on the X-ray.

Nobody cares about your non-expert and uneducated opinion. Not sure why you're not understanding that. And nobody cares what you are or are not 'pretty convinced' about. Nor what you believe is a hoax or not.

You are not the final arbiter of anything here, so convincing you or not convincing you doesn't move the needle on what's factual one iota.

Hank

 

[BStrong]

snipped with respect...

No, it's not. It's not like these weapons were all fresh off the assembly line. They are war surplus weapons, and even the one Oswald bought had to be refurbished before it was fit for sale. While all are no doubt operable when sold into the American retail market, as I noted all have their own idiosyncrasies. Some might have an easier or harder bolt to work than Oswald's. Some might be less (or more) accurate..




Again, it's his only weapon. So if he found out about the motorcade going past his place of work on Wednesday evening (11/20/1963) for instance, he didn't have much of an opportunity to sight in the rifle, did he?

So it was either use the unsighted rifle or none at all. Or if he found out on Sunday morning (11/17/63), then he could have taken that opportunity to take the weapon to a gun range, where some people affirm they saw him.

You don't know what he did, or what he thought, so stop trying to pretend you're a mind reader.

You avoided every point I made entirely, claiming without any proof or argument that my points cancel each other out. Please elaborate and show us how.

Hank

My first actual job in the firearms business was taking the stripped barreled actions of military surplus rifles my father was buying by the pound and selling by the piece and placing the stripped actions into a 55 gallon drum filled with boiling water (heater unit attached to the drum - how I didn't get electrocuted or set fire to myself or the house I'll never know) to clean the cosmoline from the actions. Big fun!

My father would strip the bolt, check the headspace and if it passed, it went on the rack at the shop.

That's all the "refurbishing" we did - if something that came through was in excellent condition it was strictly luck. I know the big importers (like Kleins) did throw scopes on surplus rifles to get a few more dollars out of them but people buying mail-order rifles pre-'68 did so because they couldn't afford a new U.S. factory rifle or they wanted a project - always on the cheap. There were U.S. rifles (primarily 1903 Springfields) that were available from the DCM arsenal reconditioned, but these were more expensive than any of the foreign surplus bolt-actions. IIRC a arsenal re-conditioned barrel action for an '03-A3 was $30.00. a complete rifle was $50.00 - $60.00.

At the time there were very few foreign WWII rifles available that were in excellent condition - those were primarily rifles that were vet-bringbacks and they hadn't hit the secondary market very much. I had only seen a few numbers-matching K98k's until the late 70's into the 80's.

 

[MicahJava]

To be blunt, you have no valid reason to believe any of the forensic evidence is a hoax for the simple reason of there is not enough information available to the public to make any assessment to counter the final autopsy conclusions.

From the National Archives:

I have seen the autopsy photographs and x-rays in books. Did NARA make them available?

Any photographs that have been published in books throughout the years were not obtained from NARA.

The autopsy photographs and X-rays of President Kennedy were donated to the National Archives by the Kennedy family by an agreement dated October 29, 1966. This agreement limits access to such materials to: (1) persons authorized to act for a Committee of Congress, a Presidential Commission, or any other official agency of the Federal government having authority to investigate matters relating to the assassination of President Kennedy and to (2) recognized experts in the field of pathology or related areas of science and technology whose applications are approved by the Kennedy family representative, Mr. Paul Kirk.

https://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/faqs.html#autop

This means that NOBODY currently arguing conspiracy has enough accurate information to do so using autopsy photos.

The photos which are out in the world just aren't conclusive enough to suggest anything other than what is already on film: JFK being struck in the head from behind.

And you continue to ignore the bullet itself, the 6.5x52mm was a moose. Everything we see from the ballistics and forensics is consistent with damage done by this particular round, and it is foolish to argue otherwise.

That's a complete irrelevancy because no autopsy photo unquestionably shows where the small head wound was located, unless in the future more work is done on the skull photos. If you think the red spot is an entry, you must feel it's somehow appropriate to contradict the statements of Humes, Boswell, Finck and Stirnger who specifically said the red spot was not the wound. If you want to believe that the red spot on the scalp corresponded to the depressed cowlick fracture on he skull, you must believe that they were pulling the scalp back which gave a misleading view of where the red spot was located.

Nobody who has ever seen the official autopsy photos at the National Archives has ever said the bootleg versions are any different, besides maybe being of lesser quality.

You have a hollywood idea of what a bullet going into a head looks like. A bullet entering a head doesn't always create a large noticeable backspatter.

Also, you fail to provide any experimental evidence that a high-velocity 6.5x55mm bullet entering the cowlick area of a human head would even leave an intact entry wound like that. In this experiment, a bullet entering the back of this dummy's head leaves something more like a tangential wound:

Obviously this is a dummy, and experts like Sherry Fiester have been very critical of how this experiment was done and presented, but where's your evidence that we would even expect an intact entry wound?

It's all meaningless trivialities for the sake of discussion only. We know that the cowlick fracture almost certainly is not the small head wound described in the records and experts and witnesses who were there. It's like debating creationism at this point.

 

[MicahJava]

Nobody cares about your non-expert and uneducated opinion. Not sure why you're not understanding that. And nobody cares what you are or are not 'pretty convinced' about. Nor what you believe is a hoax or not.

You are not the final arbiter of anything here, so convincing you or not convincing you doesn't move the needle on what's factual one iota.

Hank

I understand the basic concepts of volume and shape, which is an issue the head wound location boils down to when considering how Dr. Finck was still able to see the small head wound completely intact in the skull.

 

[BStrong]

That's a complete irrelevancy because no autopsy photo unquestionably shows where the small head wound was located, unless in the future more work is done on the skull photos. If you think the red spot is an entry, you must feel it's somehow appropriate to contradict the statements of Humes, Boswell, Finck and Stirnger who specifically said the red spot was not the wound. If you want to believe that the red spot on the scalp corresponded to the depressed cowlick fracture on he skull, you must believe that they were pulling the scalp back which gave a misleading view of where the red spot was located.

Nobody who has ever seen the official autopsy photos at the National Archives has ever said the bootleg versions are any different, besides maybe being of lesser quality.

You have a hollywood idea of what a bullet going into a head looks like. A bullet entering a head doesn't always create a large noticeable backspatter.

Also, you fail to provide any experimental evidence that a high-velocity 6.5x55mm bullet entering the cowlick area of a human head would even leave an intact entry wound like that. In this experiment, a bullet entering the back of this dummy's head leaves something more like a tangential wound:

[qimg]https://i.imgur.com/9esxsUf.gif[/qimg]

Obviously this is a dummy, and experts like Sherry Fiester have been very critical of how this experiment was done and presented, but where's your evidence that we would even expect an intact entry wound?


It's all meaningless trivialities for the sake of discussion only. We know that the cowlick fracture almost certainly is not the small head wound described in the records and experts and witnesses who were there. It's like debating creationism at this point.

Get with the program.

Carcano - 6.5 x 52R = a 6.5 millimeter diameter projectile seated in a rimmed case measuring 52 millimeters nominal.

Swedish Mauser - 6.5 x 55 =a 6.5 millimeter diameter projectile seated in a rimless case measuring 55 millimeters nominal, with different case dimensions than the Carcano. They aren't interchangeable.

There is -0- need to duplicate the JFK headwound for the autopsy evidence to be validated or invalidated - JFK was killed by two gsw's, one a head shot.

All your pin-the-headwound-on-the-drawing nonsense is aptly described by yourself in the final bolding of your post.

 

[BStrong]

I understand the basic concepts of volume and shape, which is an issue the head wound location boils down to when considering how Dr. Finck was still able to see the small head wound completely intact in the skull.

Oh yeah.

Thanks much.

Any evidence you'd like to provide about how brain tissue and skull fracturing related to GSW's is typically quantified and how those calculations are related to the JFK headwound?

Since playing the pin-the-headwound is your one trick pony lately, how about something with a little better level of detail and evidence for interested parties?

http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/Scientif...II/Resolving_the_logical_incompatibility.html

Rather than listen to Smoke on the Water ad infinitum, there's some information at the link based in science rather than rumor and wish fulfillment.

 

[MicahJava]

Oh yeah.

Thanks much.

Any evidence you'd like to provide about how brain tissue and skull fracturing related to GSW's is typically quantified and how those calculations are related to the JFK headwound?

Since playing the pin-the-headwound is your one trick pony lately, how about something with a little better level of detail and evidence for interested parties?

http://www.kenrahn.com/JFK/Scientif...II/Resolving_the_logical_incompatibility.html

Rather than listen to Smoke on the Water ad infinitum, there's some information at the link based in science rather than rumor and wish fulfillment.

You have got to be kidding me. One of the first things I learned reading this stuff is that Neutron Activation Analysis for the purpose of identifying bullet lead is long-debunked.

See here:

A metallurgical review of the interpretation of bullet lead compositional analysis

Here's a free link to the entire paper: http://libgen.io/scimag/ads.php?doi=10.1016%2Fs0379-0738%2802%2900118-4&downloadname=

 

[BStrong]

You have got to be kidding me. One of the first things I learned reading this stuff is that Neutron Activation Analysis for the purpose of identifying bullet lead is long-debunked.

See here:

A metallurgical review of the interpretation of bullet lead compositional analysis

Here's a free link to the entire paper: http://libgen.io/scimag/ads.php?doi=10.1016%2Fs0379-0738%2802%2900118-4&downloadname=

I believe you mean to say "one of the first things I took at face value."

Might want to look a little deeper - Dr.Martin Fackler was the founder and head of the Wound Ballistics Laboratory for the Letterman Army Institute of Research from 1981 to 1991. He actually has expertise in the field you pretend to understand.

It's interesting that Rahn's description and noting of CTist's playing the pin-the-headwound" game accurately describes your current posting flurry - from what, 15 years ago?

The players may change, but "Smoke on the Water" is still the same old riff.

Interested parties, read MJ's cites, read Rahn's cites and have at it.

 

[abaddon]

Help me understand, Zoidberg Jesus.

Sure. How rigid do you think a human brain is, exactly? You seem to be considering it to be akin to a rock. For some reason, you have forgotten that thousands of years ago, the Egyptians were extracting brains through the nose as a matter of course. Also you seem to have forgotten that it matters not a whit that no matter how many bits one chops a brain into the mass remains the same. Similarly formalin fixation and it's effect on mass escapes you.

I am wondering why this is?

 

[BStrong]

Sure. How rigid do you think a human brain is, exactly? You seem to be considering it to be akin to a rock. For some reason, you have forgotten that thousands of years ago, the Egyptians were extracting brains through the nose as a matter of course. Also you seem to have forgotten that it matters not a whit that no matter how many bits one chops a brain into the mass remains the same. Similarly formalin fixation and it's effect on mass escapes you.

I am wondering why this is?

I know! I know! and I suspect you and a bunch of other people know too!

 

[MicahJava]

I believe you mean to say "one of the first things I took at fact value."

Might want to look a little deeper - Dr.Martin Fackler was the founder and head of the Wound Ballistics Laboratory for the Letterman Army Institute of Research from 1981 to 1991. He actually has expertise in the field you pretend to understand.

It's interesting that Rahn's description and noting of CTist's playing the pin-the-headwound" game accurately describes your current posting flurry - from what, 15 years ago?

The players may change, but "Smoke on the Water" is still the same old riff.

Interested parties, read MJ's cites, read Rahn's cites and have at it.

BS. The paper I linked is from 2002. You linked BS which only cites stuff from the 80's.

From Reclaiming Parkland:


Bugliosi and Guinn vs. Aguilar

Bugliosi’s reliance on Larry Sturdivan is even worse. Dr. Gary Aguilar did a long review of Reclaiming History for the legal publication Federal Lawyer. In that review he focused on Bugliosi’s use of the Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) for bullet lead analysis done by Vincent Guinn for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Enamored by Robert Blakey’s HSCA experts, the prosecutor actually used Guinn at the London show trial. But by the time Reclaiming History was published in 2007, the use of NAA for the purpose of bullet identification and linkage was collapsing around the prosecutor’s ears. Yet Bugliosi actually spent four pages on this issue to tie the bullet fragment evidence to Oswald’s rifle. In those four pages in the text, there is not a hint that the whole procedure had been exposed as forensically false, but, as Aguilar discussed at length in his review, such was the case: NAA for bullet lead analysis has been thoroughly and completely discredited. To the point where the FBI has announced it will not use it in court anymore. Before Reclaiming History was published, Texas A& M statistics professor Cliff Spiegelman had already denounced this technique as questionable. And he directly challenged its use in the JFK case. There have now been two published studies by two teams of experts that have completely invalidated the underpinnings of this test. In addition to the Spiegelman-Tobin study, there was another by statistician Pat Grant and metallurgist Rick Randich. The latter study had already been released before Reclaiming History was published.

But there had been so much material published even by 2004, that the man who inspired Bugliosi to use the test at his mock trial had already denounced it two years before Reclaiming History was published. In 2005, at a conference in Washington, HSCA Chief Counsel Robert Blakey let it be known that he was jettisoning bullet lead analysis. He actually called the test “junk science.” The previous year, in July 2004, Tobin had written a long analysis for a legal journal exposing the faults in Guinn’s assumptions. Tobin had been a metallurgist for twenty-four years at the FBI laboratory. Perhaps no one knew more about the process than he did. In that article— published three years before Bugliosi’s book came out— he predicted that bullet lead analysis would not withstand a strong Daubert standard hearing. And Daubert was the legal standard to apply for a judge admitting so-called expert testimony. Tobin pointed out that “recent testing yields results at odds with the premises, and there is no meaningful peer reviewed and referenced literature supporting” the theory.

In fact, Tobin actually came up with a citation which showed that Guinn himself had objected to the FBI overselling the accuracy of what came to be known as CBLA, or Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis. As Tobin put it, the most obvious manner in which CBLA could be challenged was to ask the question: Did the available research data validate the specific theory on which the expert was testifying? The answer to that question by these two teams was: No, it did not. For instance, as far back as 2002, Pat Grant found error rates in the process as high as 33 percent. Which is simply unconscionable for a legal venue. So, from a sheer statistical viewpoint, the process was questionable. As one judge asked, if the jury did not know how many bullets were out there, and how big the original melt was, how could they accord the analysis probative value? Because of this research, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) warned the FBI to review the whole CBLA process before continuing with it. As Tobin notes, this was in 2004. Again, three years before Reclaiming History was published.

But this research went on beyond 2004. I had an opportunity to sit in on a small conference conducted by Randich and Grant arranged in San Francisco by Gary Aguilar. Here, the basic flaw in Vincent Guinn’s work was pointed out. Since he was a chemist and not a metallurgist, he had no knowledge of the way that metals melt in the smelting process and how this would impact the trace elements one gets from drawing samples. In other words, because of the way the elements coagulate in the smelting process, the position of sample drawn from the bullet will have a strong effect in determining the trace element particles you end up comparing. Which makes the process arbitrary. Bugliosi was aware of the Randich/ Grant study and even though his book was published before the Spiegelman/ Tobin study was peer reviewed, this was still three years after the NAS announcement. The FBI was going to stop using the practice at trial because the witness would have been in danger of being indicted for perjury. And, in fact, Guinn himself had contradicted the basis of his methodology at different points in his career. He had said that elemental traces varied widely within even one bullet. In other words, one could get a low concentration of antimony in one area but a higher one somewhere else in the bullet. In other words, there was no uniformity inside the bullet. The trace elements were arranged almost at random, but he never explained why. The fact that he seems to have been unaware of this shows Guinn did not know about the crystallization formations in the smelting process noted above.

Guinn was also wrong about the uniqueness of the lead used by Western Cartridge Company for Mannlicher Carcano bullets. Guinn falsely said that this lead “was found to differ sharply from typical bullet leads.” Western Cartridge Company Mannlicher Carcano bullets do not differ sharply from most bullet leads. It seemed different to Guinn because he compared the lead alloy to unjacketed handgun rounds. At the private conference in San Francisco in 2006, Randich stated that the lead used in these WCC MC bullets is much like other metal-jacketed rounds. Randich said that outside of .38 and .22 handguns, most bullet manufacturers use the same lead alloy most of the time. (He placed the figure at 75 percent.) This, in and of itself, sticks a harpoon in Guinn’s work since it says that the lead alloy for an MC bullet, far from being unique, is, more often than not, the same alloy that say, rival company Remington would use. With this, Guinn’s concept of the singular identifiability of Mannlicher Carcano ammunition is negated. In San Francisco, Randich and Grant projected a chart that measured the trace elements of five pieces of evidence Guinn analyzed: the bullet left in the rifle at the so-called sniper’s nest, the bullet that Oswald allegedly fired at General Walker, and the three samples from the Kennedy assassination. The values varied widely especially for the “sniper’s nest” bullet and the Walker bullet. Peter Dale Scott surmised that it appeared that those two bullets came from a different type of gun or type of ammunition. Right before this chart was placed on the overhead, Randich spoke about how trace metal values can vary widely in a particular run if one of the ingots used for the metals has been replaced on the production line. I then asked him if, theoretically, all of these bullets could have come from the same box even though they displayed such a wide variety of trace elements. He said yes, theoretically they could. The next question was, “Then what’s the basis for this science?” Randich replied, “You’re talking to the choir.”

Rahn’s Budapest Caper

In light of the above, it is amazing that Bugliosi does what he can to blunt the impact of these discoveries on the viability of Vincent Guinn’s work. In fact, his five-page discussion of the matter in his end notes spends about 75 percent of that space defending Guinn, rather than in elucidating the technical discoveries of this new work, which invalidates Guinn. Incredibly, the prosecutor never mentions the two major errors: that Guinn came to his faulty conclusion because he compared the WCC/ MC metal alloy with handgun bullets, and that the alloy used for the former bullets was unique when it was not. Nor does he explain that Guinn was not a metallurgist, therefore he knew nothing about the segregation process during smelting which meant that if you took one sample from one area and another sample from a close distance away, the trace elements results would be different. Since Guinn tested so few particles, the process was invalidated statistically.


In his end notes, the prosecutor praises a two-part article by Ken Rahn and Larry Sturdivan, but he does not state where it was published or in what journal. Rodger Remington tracked this article down. It was published in Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry in Budapest, Hungary. Why publish there? With the rising tide against CBLA brought about by Spiegelman, Tobin, Grant, and Randich, these two Warren Commission stalwarts could not get an article published in America. Also, the journal they published in had no visible background or experience in articles on CBLA. Third, the issue in which the two-part article was published contained a tribute to Vincent Guinn, who had passed away in 2002. The publication solicited articles from friends and colleagues, and then published the tribute in 2004. Clearly, as Remington points out, Sturdivan and Rahn were trying to get something into the record to blunt the impact of the CBLA being undermined by the scientific community. Since Rahn’s field is atmospheric chemistry and Sturdivan’s is physics, it is unclear why they should be allowed to publish in a peer-reviewed journal about CBLA in the first place. But revealingly, like Cecil Kirk, Sturdivan had done work for the Warren Commission and also served as a witness for Robert Blakey’s HSCA.

When the movement to form the HSCA was heating up in the midseventies, many people desired that the people hired by the committee be completely separated from the Warren Commission. This was in order to avoid the danger that the results of technical tests would be the same for the HSCA since the original people involved would have a bias against having their work overturned. Yet, both Guinn and Sturdivan did work for the Warren Commission. Despite this, HSCA chief counsel Blakey had no problem having Sturdivan testify about the ballistics of the Carcano. In addition, Sturdivan’s fields of specialty are statistics and physics but he testifies as an authority on things like ballistics, wound configuration, trajectory analysis, and for Bugliosi, NAA. Besides his lack of credentials, he, along with Kirk and Guinn, would have a hard time admitting that the verdict he helped create back in 1964 may have been wrong. For Bugliosi to use Sturdivan is almost like trotting out the likes of Gerald Ford to testify to the thoroughness and efficacy of the Warren Commission investigation (which he does).

This issue of the prosecutor’s use of CBLA— along with his use of Sturdivan and Guinn— is an important one. Bugliosi writes about Guinn’s work for about eight pages and then places the information that impeaches Guinn in the CD notes, not the main text. Therefore, reading the text, the reader would still think Guinn’s work has some validity. Bugliosi minimizes how effective the new discoveries in the field are, and he praises the Budapest work of Rahn and Sturdivan without saying it was published there. In the main text, he actually quotes from Guinn’s testimony at the ersatz London trial for about a page. Including Guinn’s most extreme, and now embarrassing, statements. Bugliosi then concludes, “. . . from the NAA evidence alone, it was now possible to state, with a high degree of probability, that the so-called pristine bullet, the “magic bullet” (CE 399), had indeed been the bullet that smashed into Governor Connally’s wrist.” (Emphasis added.)

It is only after saying that and using Guinn in the text that the author finally begins to explain why this work is now discredited. And he does this on the attached CD. And listen to how he does this: he says that the forensic value of CBLT “. . . may not be true, at least not anymore.” But yet, if CBLT has now been discredited, then the process must have been faulty back in 1963 when it was first used on the Kennedy case. There are no “mays” about it. Bugliosi also says that “. . . no one has successfully challenged the findings of Dr. Guinn in the Kennedy assassination. . . .” At the conference described in San Francisco, Rick Randich did just that. Spiegelman said that his findings indicate the fragments could have come from three or more bullets, and if that is so, “. . . then a second assassin is likely, as the additional bullet would not be attributable to the main suspect, Mr.Oswald.” Bugliosi then writes that the “conspiracy community has been quick to seize on the new findings about NAA as a weakness in the case against Oswald.” My question to the prosecutor: How are Spiegelman and Randich members of the “conspiracy community”? They and their illustrious colleagues have shown Guinn’s work to be untenable. Their work invalidates Guinn’s concepts for everyone. Bugliosi then tries to say that Guinn stated that WCC MC ammunition had different elemental compositions within the same box of bullets. Yet, as noted above, Randich proved this was wrong. The overwhelming majority of rifle bullets are made from the same lead alloy. To top off this discussion, like at the London sideshow, the prosecutor refers to CE 399 as the “Connally stretcher bullet.” And he says that it was fired from “Oswald’s rifle.” As if these are accomplished facts. They are anything but.

I have concentrated so far on what prosecutors call “core evidence.” That is: the alleged weapon, the ammunition, CE 399, the shells found at the scene, and the NAA tests used to link the fragments to Oswald’s rifle. Consider the legal state of this evidence. Today, the NAA could not be used. Any prosecutor would have to think twice before he even tried to get CE 399 and cartridge case CE 543 into evidence. How could you even talk about the ammunition if you cannot even prove Oswald purchased it? And as I have taken time to show, there is a string of unanswered questions about whether or not the rifle in evidence was ordered by Oswald under the circumstances described in the Warren Report. Bugliosi’s mantra is that the JFK case is a simple case, it’s the Warren Commission critics who make it complicated. However, the critics created none of the testimony, exhibits, or evidence noted above. It was all placed into the record by others: the FBI, the Dallas Police, and the Warren Commission. Bugliosi can argue against this record or try to explain it away until the cows come home, but these facts existed before he arrived on the scene, they exist right now, and they will exist when he leaves.

 

[MicahJava]

Sure. How rigid do you think a human brain is, exactly? You seem to be considering it to be akin to a rock. For some reason, you have forgotten that thousands of years ago, the Egyptians were extracting brains through the nose as a matter of course. Also you seem to have forgotten that it matters not a whit that no matter how many bits one chops a brain into the mass remains the same. Similarly formalin fixation and it's effect on mass escapes you.

I am wondering why this is?

Dear lord. Earlier I was thinking of making a joke about the doctors sticking an electric stick blender into the skull cavity and just letting the brain porridge fall out, but here you're being serious!

According to official materials, the brain recovered was relatively intact. The doctors did not squeeze the brain out of an opening too small in the head. They chipped and cut away skull fragments until the opening was large enough to remove the brain like they would with a normal craniotomy.

 

[Meadmaker]

Well, the thread seems to have dropped down to the level of typical JFK conspiracy threads. I jumped into it because it seemed that someone had actually asked an honest, and somewhat skeptical, question. There was a glimmer of hope that there was an open mind at work, and subsequent events proved that indeed that was the case. In one of the most rare events on an internet forum, someone actually changed his mind when presented with evidence. It was quite refreshing, and definitely worth the participation.


I don't see that happening at this point, so I think it's time to remove the subscription. It will still be here next time I get the itch, with the same or different players.

 

[MicahJava]

Well, the thread seems to have dropped down to the level of typical JFK conspiracy threads. I jumped into it because it seemed that someone had actually asked an honest, and somewhat skeptical, question. There was a glimmer of hope that there was an open mind at work, and subsequent events proved that indeed that was the case. In one of the most rare events on an internet forum, someone actually changed his mind when presented with evidence. It was quite refreshing, and definitely worth the participation.


I don't see that happening at this point, so I think it's time to remove the subscription. It will still be here next time I get the itch, with the same or different players.

whom'st'd've'ed?

 

[BStrong]

BS. The paper I linked is from 2002. You linked BS which only cites stuff from the 80's.

snipped jive..[/COLOR][/SIZE][/I]

You didn't read anything I linked to past a talking point you already had in your trick bag.

Had you taken the time to read Rahn's material, there is an interesting inclusion of material from Dr. Martin Fackler detailing projectile fragmentation and GSW'S based on velocity that has nothing to do with NAA and everything to do with your current fixation on "where be the headwound." Rahn also noted that the precise location of the headwound entrance is a sideshow, at best, to the established medical and physical evidence.

Yet here we are, you can't get that riff out of your head and those of us that have heard that same riff over and over and over...aren't so impressed.

Let's try this again, just for old times sake.

You note (not discovered) a difference of opinion concerning the headwound.

Now What? two little words that make you run like a man under fire.

 

[MicahJava]

You didn't read anything I linked to past a talking point you already had in your trick bag.

Had you taken the time to read Rahn's material, there is an interesting inclusion of material from Dr. Martin Fackler detailing projectile fragmentation and GSW'S based on velocity that has nothing to do with NAA and everything to do with your current fixation on "where be the headwound." Rahn also noted that the precise location of the headwound entrance is a sideshow, at best, to the established medical and physical evidence.

Yet here we are, you can't get that riff out of your head and those of us that have heard that same riff over and over and over...aren't so impressed.

Let's try this again, just for old times sake.

You note (not discovered) a difference of opinion concerning the headwound.

Now What? two little words that make you run like a man under fire.

The only thing your link has to say about the small head wound is "it was higher because it makes more sense when Oswald did it". Wow, brilliant science. Of course, if the large head wound was a tangential shot from behind, you could make virtually the same argument, albeit while acknowledging the separate bastard EOP shot.

 

[Joey McGee]

Per Agatha, we should not be discussing this in the other thread. So I am posting it here as well. Please respond to this thread.

Here's a link to the source post: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=11805849&postcount=64

No, it's not. It's not like these weapons were all fresh off the assembly line. They are war surplus weapons, and even the one Oswald bought had to be refurbished before it was fit for sale. While all are no doubt operable when sold into the American retail market, as I noted all have their own idiosyncrasies. Some might have an easier or harder bolt to work than Oswald's. Some might be less (or more) accurate.




You avoided the points I made entirely. Try responding on point next time.




Again, it's his only weapon. So if he found out about the motorcade going past his place of work on Wednesday evening (11/20/1963) for instance, he didn't have much of an opportunity to sight in the rifle, did he?

So it was either use the unsighted rifle or none at all. Or if he found out on Sunday morning (11/17/63), then he could have taken that opportunity to take the weapon to a gun range, where some people affirm they saw him.

You don't know what he did, or what he thought, so stop trying to pretend you're a mind reader.




You avoided every point I made entirely, claiming without any proof or argument that my points cancel each other out. Please elaborate and show us how.

Hank

So you are saying it is technically possible, and I am saying it is extraordinarily unlikely. To me, the first thing that happens when an expert marksman buys a guy is that he sights it in and then takes care of it after that. I am done here, thanks.