JFK's assassination: your thoughts

[abaddon]

You didn't know that...

Not a single reference, no evidence, no nothing reveals that you have a bucket of nonsense claims.

 

[Rich_C]

You had little time to read my post and reply so quickly. It's good to know people are devouring my information, unable to soak it up fast enough!

My criticism and anger certainly wasn't directed at you. Clearly you welcome new ideas and want to grow. And, your argument is convincing. Your refutations solid.

I concede that Oswald was the lone assassin and will in advance of any evidence to emerge to the contrary, declare it to be purely, entirely coincidental.

I gave up when you started ranting about Herbert Hoover. He was dead long before JFK was shot.

 

[vtbub]

I gave up when you started ranting about Herbert Hoover. He was dead long before JFK was shot.

Nope.

Hoover died in '64.

 

[Rich_C]

Nope.

Hoover died in '64.

Wow! I forgot he lived so long.

Anyway, the real point was I'm not going to bother with someone who doesn't know the difference between Hebert Hoover or J. Edgar Hoover.

 

[BStrong]

As somebody with a higher than average first hand experience with weapons, cancer would make a piss-poor weapon.

 

[Border Reiver]

As somebody with a higher than average first hand experience with weapons, cancer would make a piss-poor weapon.

Agreed.

If it's gonna take months to years to kill the intended victim, allowing the victim to carry on as before until it gets real bad, I think the evil overlord in charge needs to re-visit the Weapons Procurement and Development Division and have a "chat" about priorities and effectiveness.

 

[Mudcat]

So Oswald was working in the book depository for about a month before it was announced that the president's motorcade would be passing by his work place? Sounds like Kennedy's assassination was a crime of opportunity to me. Call it an argument from incredulity if you like, but I'm failing to see how that's in any way suspicious.

 

[BStrong]

Agreed.

If it's gonna take months to years to kill the intended victim, allowing the victim to carry on as before until it gets real bad, I think the evil overlord in charge needs to re-visit the Weapons Procurement and Development Division and have a "chat" about priorities and effectiveness.

Just did some reading.

Judyth Vary Baker is another Michael Riconosciuto.

 

[JayUtah]

The results of this poll are disgusting and...it still enrages me.

Rage on, but don't pretend that's a suitable prelude to the study of history or a forensic investigation. Most credible investigations don't start with a tantrum.

Adult Americans should value knowledge and increase time spent seeking it by orders of magnitude. They should understand the perilousness of their present condition by observing it objectively. If more did, I have little doubt it would cause change the likes of the sun exploding.

Most of you (not all, thankfully) will have already developed a narrow range of images...

Standard JFK conspiracy rhetoric: "If you don't believe what I'm about to tell you, then you're just credulous sheeple and clearly not as smart as I am."

I could go on to list hundreds of scenarios in various combinations that would still fall within your narrow range of possibilities. Why is this?

Why is this? Because there is no credible alternative conclusion upon which the conspiracy theorists can converge. Everyone goes off in a different direction, scatter-brain fashion, so that each one can have his place in the sun or make his meager coin. There are a thousand ways to connect the outlying dots because that's the nature of connecting outlying dots with speculation. It's a pointless exercise in pseudo-history.

Well, frankly it's largely ignorance of the persons and events and misinformation driven by its popularity. I can forgive the ignorance...

Unfortunately I can't forgive your arrogance. As I mentioned up the thread a ways, every single JFK conspiracy theorist starts the argument by telling us how much more enlightened he is than everyone else and how ignorant and ideologically entrenched his critics must be. When you start out a debate by trying to shame everyone away from disagreeing with you, and attaching moral or emotional baggage to the criticism against you, you've already lost. What you don't realize is how easily we can see through such ham-fisted debate tricks.

...as we can't all be expected to see clearly the importance of unraveling the lies.

"I'm so much more perceptive than others." Yeah, that's not a premise to a winning argument. "Unraveling the lies," according to the massive wall of conjecture that follows in your post, boils down to the standard speculative romps through outlying data that nearly every JFK conspiracy theory is predicated upon.

So, prepare to be shocked!

I was neither shocked nor overwhelmed. You didn't give us a paradigm shift. You didn't enlighten us. You just repeated (without citation or supporting fact) the standard bale of undirected, speculative nonsense that conspiracy authors have been feeding us for decades.

*yawn*

To make things worse ... Comic Sans? Really? Typography's "D student?"

If I'm as much as even 50% wrong about what I've just written, Oswald is still not a lone assassin.

And the same pointless conclusion as every JFK conspiracy proponent. You can't do any better to explain the assassination than the Warren Commission or the HSCA. As with all the standard conspiracy bunk, you simply lower the bar until all you say you have to prove is that "Oswald didn't act alone." But you can't state or defend a better (or even credible, or especially testable) hypothesis. Hence your rant has absolutely zero value as history.

You told us you were about to unravel or rewrite history, but all you can tell us is that you don't know what happened. Underwhelmed, I am.

The law enforcement and intelligence world goes way, way back. It is a cold and dark place that doesn't usually reveal that to a new recruit until the frog is nearly boiled dry.

"I'm just so much more insightful than other people."

Hell, what do you think Watergate was about?..."That Damn, Bay of Pigs affair?!

And when you figure out the main difference between Watergate and JFK assassination conspiracy theories, then you'll understand why your claims aren't convincing.

 

[JayUtah]

You had little time to read my post and reply so quickly. It's good to know people are devouring my information, unable to soak it up fast enough!

No, you just don't realize that the massive wall of screed that forms the middle of your post is entirely inconsequential to why your argument fails.

It first fails (or rather, poises itself to fail) because you present it as if none of your audience is familiar with it or with the larger historical context from which it emerges. When you realize that the regulars in this thread have been debating this topic for more than 200 pages, you should probably alter your approach.

It fails conclusively for lack of a testable conclusion. As I said, you reword the exercise to be merely an exoneration of Oswald, not an actual study of history. You think that by offering a negative, refutory case to the various commissions who fingered Oswald, you've made a better study of the historical question. But you haven't. Picking away at the prevailing theory doesn't make it less the prevailing theory.

My first point supports my contention that your aim is not to give an alternate and better-supported answer to the historical question of Kennedy's murder, but to frame people who disagree with you as intellectually inferior and unobservant.

Clearly you welcome new ideas and want to grow.

You wrongly believe your rant was filled with new ideas. Most of us would be delighted to hear a new theory about who actually killed Kennedy, if not Lee Harvey Oswald. However, what monumentally disappoints us is old information presented as if it were new. Most conspiracism works this way. A new crop of gullible readers devours it and pretends that because it is new to them, it's new to everyone.

I concede that Oswald was the lone assassin and will in advance of any evidence to emerge to the contrary, declare it to be purely, entirely coincidental.

Actually yes. You have the burden to prove the significance of the dots you propose to connect is a proper significance. That's how real history works.

 

[abaddon]

Well, let us take a look.

164 accept that it was a lone LHO.
1 believes it was the mafia, but neglected to post that POV in this thread. Maybe for irrational fear of the mafia. In any event, not an argument posted at all
4 believe it was the CIA. once again, where are these CIA conspiracy bleevers? They are conspicuous by their absence.
10 others. All of whom have nothing to say, no other theory to present, nothing.

And so we are left with those in the majority, who are prepared to participate in this thread on the basis of facts and evidence, and on the other hand, anonymous nobodies who simply cannot bring themselves to contribute.

YMMV.

 

[Mudcat]

10 others. All of whom have nothing to say, no other theory to present, nothing.

Not true. I was one who voted 'other', simply because there was no 'Planet X' option. And then I expanded by saying that JFK assassinated Oswald (as a joke, obviously).

 

[Robrob]

As somebody with a higher than average first hand experience with weapons, cancer would make a piss-poor weapon.

I suspect such claims are more a factor of CT's overall paranoia than any real possible weaponized uses. Obviously from a normal perspective, being shot dead is a much greater immediate danger (and much more efficient means for eliminating opposition) than catching "teh cancers."

 

[swright777]

...
If I'm as much as even 50% wrong about what I've just written, Oswald is still not a lone assassin.
...

What if you're 100% wrong? Or 110% wrong?

 

[Mudcat]

What if you're 100% wrong? Or 110% wrong?

Or what if they weren't even wrong?

 

[RoboTimbo]

If I'm as much as even 50% wrong about what I've just written, Oswald is still not a lone assassin.

Posit a testable alternative hypothesis to who you think did commit the assassination and then we can talk about what percentage of wrong or right you are.

Make sure that your comprehensive alternative hypothesis accounts for all of the evidence.

 

[swright777]

Or what if they weren't even wrong?

I was trying to think of a good 3rd choice. Can't believe I didn't think of that one.

 

[Tolls]

Not true. I was one who voted 'other', simply because there was no 'Planet X' option. And then I expanded by saying that JFK assassinated Oswald (as a joke, obviously).

And I seem to remember at least one person saying they voted Other because the poll says "Probably just Oswald acting alone" and they were far more certain than a probably implied.

 

[jargon buster]

I voted for "Probably just Oswald acting alone" , the reason I voted "probably" is the nagging doubt that 40+ medical witnesses seem to suggest otherwise.

 

[Jetblast]

If you read James DiEugenio's book 'Destiny Betrayed' you'll see dense vetting of the evidence and a clear evidence trail for CIA involvement in JFK's assassination. No honest objective person would deny that after reading 'Destiny Betrayed' and 'JFK And The Unspeakable'.

DiEugenio has completely exonerated New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison and his case against the New Orleans plotters headed by CIA operative Clay Shaw. In doing so he has proven beyond a doubt that Oliver Stone's movie 'JFK' is fact-based and accurately reflected the Jim Garrison trial center of the plot.