JFK Conspiracy Theories: It Never Ends II

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bobtaftfan said:
You might want to chat with the many forensic pathologists, physicists, engineers, historians, acoustics experts, medical professionals, and photographic experts who believe there is hard evidence of conspiracy in the JFK case.

I'm guessing you didn't bother to read either of the articles that I cited.

The Tague wounding is a good case in point. The piece of curb that was struck was examined and photographed, and Tague's wound was photographed. The lone-gunman theory has no plausible, credible explanation for the Tague wounding. None of the three shots of the lone-gunman scenario could have produced a fragment that would have landed within 50 feet of the curb that was struck, much less Tague himself.

The Wounding of James Tague: Evidence of a Second Gunman in the JFK Assassination
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/tague.htm

Or how about the fact that not a single rifle test has yielded a gunman who could duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting feat on the first attempt under conditions reasonably similar to the ones Oswald would have faced? Reasonable people would say that when Master-rated riflemen abjectly failed to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting performance, this is evidence that either Oswald was not the gunman or that Oswald secretly managed to squeeze in years of target practice that nobody knew anything about.

Was Oswald A Poor Shot?
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/poorshot.htm
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I could write a laundry list of marksmanship feats documented in every which way, no dispute of proof possible, and the fact that another shooter on another day (including the original shooter) can't duplicate the shot or the score doesn't negate the fact of the original shot.

Let's start with Billy Dixon:

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

To Tom Sarver:

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

I've spent my life behind a rifle, and I couldn't ding a target at 1538 yds. with an open sighted BPCR rifle (which I own and shoot) and for sure can't shoot a five shot sub .15 MOA group at 1000 yds.

The fact I can't do it has -0- to do with what was done by Dixon and Sarver.

If you wish to read what a real world end user has to say about the GSW evidence wrt the JFK assassination, here's a good place to start

http://jfkassassination.net/russ/testimony/macpher.htm

You may also want to get a copy of the review of the ballistic evidence and the GSW evidence by Dr. Martin Fackler.

ETA: doesn't take much to find that in live fire testing using LHO's rifle, the results were duplicated:

http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0226b.htm
 
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Hans said:
Even funnier he wrote this



When you are that far off into the [fire]swamp of confusion and error there is no map that can save ya!
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.ftfy:)
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And beware of the ROUS!.... Rodents Of Unusual Size!
 

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bobtaftfan said:
The Tague wounding is a good case in point. The piece of curb that was struck was examined and photographed, and Tague's wound was photographed. The lone-gunman theory has no plausible, credible explanation for the Tague wounding. None of the three shots of the lone-gunman scenario could have produced a fragment that would have landed within 50 feet of the curb that was struck, much less Tague himself.

The Wounding of James Tague: Evidence of a Second Gunman in the JFK Assassination
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/tague.htm
Click to expand...

mtgriffith.com said:
But if the first shot was fired before the limousine drove beneath the oak tree, how could that missile have caused Tague's injury and/or struck the curb? However, if Tague's wound wasn't caused by the first miss--which, according to WC supporters, was the only miss—then what bullet or bullet fragment could have caused it?
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I recently watched a documentary about the JFK Assassination called "JFK: The Lost Bullet".

In it, they made a very good case that the first bullet may have struck the support arm of a traffic light on Elm St, fragmented and ricocheted; and that it was one of these fragments that nicked James Tague on the cheek.

I guess the weapons experts on here could explain this better than I could, but AIUI, while a fragment of a high-velocity bullet loses a much of its "punch" after a ricochet, it can still travel a considerable distance and do some damage. I recall an incident many years ago at the Vernon Rifle Range near Blenheim, NZ, where a bullet from an L1A1 struck the concrete front of the target bunker, ricocheted over the butts and struck & killed a sheep some 500 metres away.
 
I Ratant said:
Quoting Mike is not a plus.
His advanced degrees are in theology, which is a field of study with no subject.
He and I conversed many times 20 years ago, and his fixation on being wrong has apparently never altered over the years.
You might as well quote Jack White.
.
I used to have a full-scale layout of Dealey Plaza in AutoCad, but that was 5 computers ago, and I can't find it now.
Using that, I could go to any spot in Dealey Plaza and look in any direction.
For the Tague wound, it's pretty obviously the result of a fragement of the head wound bullet, which hit the windshield chrome and shattered there, leaving debris in the limo on the passenger's side, and a small fragment probably went downrange to hit Tague... as I've said before.
There was no "curb strike" from any bullet.. as I've said before.
Going out to see if I can find a 3-1/4" disk reader for USB.
I might be able to pull some of the old drawing into the new computer.
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These are the drawings... 3 by me and one by Thompson..
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dealey.htm
.One of the ongoing mysteries of Dealey Plaza is the origin of the fragment that hit James Tague. Three graphics images, all rendered Autocad drawings, test two scenarios. First is Posner's theory that a shot at about Zapruder frame 160 was deflected off a branch of the Live Oak in front of the Depository and hit the curb in front of Tague. The other theory is that a fragment of the head shot hit Tague. TAGUE1.GIF, TAGUE2.GIF, and TAGUE3.GIF show the trajectories involved.

TAGUE4.GIF deals with the same issue, but this time the drawing is from conspiracy author Josiah Thompson. The diagram, drawn on a map of Dealey Plaza, shows the path a fragment from the head shot would have to have taken to hit Tague. Warning: this file is extremely large for screen viewing, and you may prefer to download it and print it.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, buy you really have no clue what you're talking about regarding the Tague wounding. The theories that Tague's wound was caused by a fragment from the head shot or that it resulted from a fragment that deflected off the oak tree in front of the TSBD are beyond far fetched: they are ludicrous.

How in the world do you get a fragment from the head shot out of the limo in the first place, especially when the other fragments merely fell insde the car and did not even penetrate the windshield? How would any head-shot fragment have cleared the limo's roll bar and still have struck Tague or the curb? Posner's theory is even more ridiculous (see below).

I again invite you to read my article on the Tague wounding, since you apparently did not read it before you wrote your reply.

http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/tague.htm

Here's an excerpt:

J. Edgar Hoover said the mark on the curb must have been caused by the lead fragment of a bullet. The WC suggested the fragment might have come from the fatal head shot. In other words, a lead fragment from the fatal head shot struck the curb and sent a piece of concrete or lead streaking toward Tague. However, the fatal missile was around 260 feet away from the curb when it struck Kennedy in the head. Furthermore, according to this hypothesis, the lead fragment separated from its metal jacket while plowing through JFK's skull, exited the skull, then somehow cleared the limousine's roll bar and traveled over 200 feet to the south Main Street curb, yet struck the curb with enough force (1) to send a concrete chip flying at least 20 feet, and (2) to cause that chip to cut Tague's face at the end of the 20-foot journey.

But after plowing through a human skull, it is extremely doubtful the fragment could have traveled over 200 feet and still have been moving fast enough to visibly mark the curb and to send a concrete chip, or a lead fragment, streaking toward Tague. Moreover, how could the supposed fragment have traveled the required distance and speed, when two other fragments dropped into the car and did not even penetrate the windshield or the soft surfaces on which they were found? . . .

Perhaps the most fanciful theory of all has been proposed by Gerald Posner, the author of the book Case Closed (New York: Random House, 1992). Posner suggests that the mark on the curb was caused by a lead fragment from a bullet that allegedly struck a limb of the oak tree, in spite of the fact that the tree was at least 400 feet from the curb. Additionally, according to Posner, this was the first shot, but Tague said it was the second shot that caused the mark on the curb and/or which wounded his face (Weisberg, Case Open, 146-147; WCR 116).

Even more problematically, Posner theorizes that the lead core separated from its copper jacketing after the alleged tree-branch collision and then traveled over 400 feet in a straight line from the Depository to the curb (Posner 326). But after separating from the jacket and then flying over 400 feet, it is highly doubtful the lead core would have been able to hit the curb with enough force to cause a concrete chip to reach Tague with enough speed to visibly cut his face; it is equally doubtful that such a missile fragment would have had enough force to fly straight to Tague's face and then cut it.

Another problem with Posner's theory is that it would require us to believe that the alleged lone assassin fired--and missed--sometime between Zapruder frames 145 and 166 (see Posner 324; see also Weisberg, Case Open, 98). But to make this assumption, we would have to believe that the supposed lone gunman completely missed, not only Kennedy but the entire limousine, from an elevation of 60 feet and from a distance of less than 140 feet. Even the WC admitted it was hard to believe the gunman would have been so wildly off the mark with his first and closest shot (WCR 111).

Additionally, in order for Posner's errant shot to have fragmented off a tree limb, one would think the missile would have had to strike far enough up the limb so that the limb would not move, bend, or snap when the bullet hit it. This would have been an unbelievable miss from the sixth-floor window.​
 
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bobtaftfan said:
The question of which bullet caused James Tague's injury is not really "unanswered." We know one thing: Whatever bullet fragment struck Tague in the face, that fragment could not have come from any of the three shots acknowledged by the lone-gunman theory, and therefore Tague's injury is clear evidence that there was more than one gunman firing in Dealey Plaza.

http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/tague.htm

Now, as for the supposed duplication of the single-bullet theory in the Australian test, a few questions:

* Did the bullet that emerged from the JFK block/object somehow nick the knot of the tie (there was a tie over the exit point, right?) and nick the knot, not on the edge, but slightly in from the edge?

* Did the bullet that passed through the JFK block/object enter at an upward angle in relation to the block/object, as established by the HSCA forensic pathology panel, and yet travel on a downward track through the block/object, as required by the SBT?

* Did the JFK block/object include a human skeleton with a torso anatomically comparable to JFK's torso, and did the bullet somehow magically avoid smashing through the spine, as required by the SBT? (Of course, on the night of the autopsy the autopsy doctors were positive, absolutely certain, that the bullet that struck the back did not exit. We know from medical personnel at the autopsy that the pathologists even probed the wound after they removed the chest organs to ensure they could track the path. See, for example, http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/historic.htm.)

* Was the JFK block/object housed in a shirt and coat comparable to JFK's shirt and coat, and did the bullet create a hole in the shirt and coat that was at least 2 inches lower than any back-wound location acceptable to lone-gunman theorists?

10 Reasons I Reject the Single-Bullet Theory
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/10reasons.htm

The Shifting Sands of the Single-Bullet Theory
http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/sbtsand.htm
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The CT subforum is thataway =========>
 
bobtaftfan said:
I'm sorry, buy you really have no clue what you're talking about regarding the Tague wounding.
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"None of my critics knows as much as I do." -- every JFK theory, ever

Considering how wrong you are -- and you are colossally wrong -- on the matter of the shot reproduction, we really can't take your bluster in this forum as anything but posturing.

The theories that Tague's wound was caused by a fragment from the head shot or that it resulted from a fragment that deflected off the oak tree in front of the TSBD are beyond far fetched: they are ludicrous.
Click to expand...

Not nearly as bad as yours. You have to invent an entire new human being in order to make your theory work.

I again invite you to read my article on the Tague wounding, since you apparently did not read it before you wrote your reply.
Click to expand...

And we've invited you several times to read this thread, but you won't do it. You just seagull-spam the links to your web site here every few months -- some of them rebutted by statements just a few posts earlier! And you rarely if ever stay long enough to debate the claims you make in them. So since you're obviously just shilling your website, your claims of dereliction on our part are unwarranted and irrelevant.

Here's an excerpt...
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100% argument from incredulity. It's all supposition of what "one would think" ought to be the case. Not only is this laughably indirect case as far as you can get from the "hard evidence" you say you have (but obviously don't), it's not even a good basis from which to draw an inference. All you've done is loudly deny.
 
bobtaftfan said:
I'm sorry, buy you really have no clue what you're talking about regarding the Tague wounding. The theories that Tague's wound was caused by a fragment from the head shot or that it resulted from a fragment that deflected off the oak tree in front of the TSBD are beyond far fetched: they are ludicrous.

How in the world do you get a fragment from the head shot out of the limo in the first place, especially when the other fragments merely fell insde the car and did not even penetrate the windshield? How would any head-shot fragment have cleared the limo's roll bar and still have struck Tague or the curb? Posner's theory is even more ridiculous (see below).

I again invite you to read my article on the Tague wounding, since you apparently did not read it before you wrote your reply.

http://www.[HILITE]mtgriffith[/HILITE].com/web_documents/tague.htm


I told you, I know Mike. He is a fantasist. "your article" is disingenuous, as it is Mike's product, not yours. And incorrect in all respects. I told him this 20 years ago.
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bobtaftfan said:
The theories that Tague's wound was caused by a fragment from the head shot or that it resulted from a fragment that deflected off the oak tree in front of the TSBD are beyond far fetched: they are ludicrous.
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Firstly, the theory is that it deflected off a traffic light support arm, not the Oak tree.

Second, how is it ludicrous? The Presidential limo passed right under the support arm, and was right in his LHO's firing line. If you shoot a high-velocity, steel jacketed bullet and it strikes a steel pipe, what do you think it is going to do, vanish into thin air? Vapourize? It is highly likely to ricochet, the direction of the ricochet will be determined by how far around the radius of the pipe it strikes relative to the shooter. If the first bullet did strike the traffic light support it could have gone anywhere, It is not beyond reason for it, or fragments of it, to have struck one or more of the approximately 600 people in Dealey Plaza at that time.

bobtaftfan said:
How in the world do you get a fragment from the head shot out of the limo in the first place, especially when the other fragments merely fell insde the car and did not even penetrate the windshield?
How would any head-shot fragment have cleared the limo's roll bar and still have struck Tague or the curb?
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Head-shot. Who is saying anything about the bullet that hit Tague being from a head shot. The theory is that ..

► the first, so called "lost bullet" either ricocheted or fragmented off the traffic light support arm, struck James Tague standing in the triple underpass beyond the motorcade.

► the second bullet struck Kennedy; it was a through-and-through that also struck Governor Connally.

► the third bullet struck Kennedy in the head (the kill shot)


This theory has the advantages of plausibility and simplicity.

It does not require an unlikely scenario of a complicated conspiracy involving multiple "acronym" agencies, criminal organisations, trade-unions and religious groups, for which there is not a single shred of evidence.

It does not need or involve the existence of several shooters. A bullet defelcting the support arm is a far more likely occurrence than 65 shooters in Dealey Plaza shooting bullets in all directions, for which there is not a single shred of evidence.
 
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So we have someone proposing sixty-five shooters? I'm hardly an expert on firearms or military maters but wouldn't that many shooters firing on one target produce a lot of collateral damage?

smartcooky said:
I recall an incident many years ago at the Vernon Rifle Range near Blenheim, NZ, where a bullet from an L1A1 struck the concrete front of the target bunker, ricocheted over the butts and struck & killed a sheep some 500 metres away.
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Did you have mutton that night? :)
 
Mudcat said:
So we have someone proposing sixty-five shooters? I'm hardly an expert on firearms or military maters but wouldn't that many shooters firing on one target produce a lot of collateral damage?



...
Click to expand...
.
No, those are the collected shooters from the CTwinkie books.. all of them 'proven', if the books are correct.
The list leaves off Jackie, who among all of them would have had the best reason to shoot JFK.
 
I Ratant said:
.
No, those are the collected shooters from the CTwinkie books.. all of them 'proven', if the books are correct.
The list leaves off Jackie, who among all of them would have had the best reason to shoot JFK.
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OT but has there been a CT which had Jackie as the organizer of the assassination, as noted above she did have a concrete emotional reason to want to shoot him...could the head wound have come from a frantic wielding of her hat pin?
 
bobtaftfan said:
I'm sorry, buy you really have no clue what you're talking about regarding the Tague wounding. The theories that Tague's wound was caused by a fragment from the head shot or that it resulted from a fragment that deflected off the oak tree in front of the TSBD are beyond far fetched: they are ludicrous.

How in the world do you get a fragment from the head shot out of the limo in the first place, especially when the other fragments merely fell insde the car and did not even penetrate the windshield? How would any head-shot fragment have cleared the limo's roll bar and still have struck Tague or the curb? Posner's theory is even more ridiculous (see below).

I again invite you to read my article on the Tague wounding, since you apparently did not read it before you wrote your reply.

http://www.mtgriffith.com/web_documents/tague.htm

Here's an excerpt:

J. Edgar Hoover said the mark on the curb must have been caused by the lead fragment of a bullet. The WC suggested the fragment might have come from the fatal head shot. In other words, a lead fragment from the fatal head shot struck the curb and sent a piece of concrete or lead streaking toward Tague. However, the fatal missile was around 260 feet away from the curb when it struck Kennedy in the head. Furthermore, according to this hypothesis, the lead fragment separated from its metal jacket while plowing through JFK's skull, exited the skull, then somehow cleared the limousine's roll bar and traveled over 200 feet to the south Main Street curb, yet struck the curb with enough force (1) to send a concrete chip flying at least 20 feet, and (2) to cause that chip to cut Tague's face at the end of the 20-foot journey.

But after plowing through a human skull, it is extremely doubtful the fragment could have traveled over 200 feet and still have been moving fast enough to visibly mark the curb and to send a concrete chip, or a lead fragment, streaking toward Tague. Moreover, how could the supposed fragment have traveled the required distance and speed, when two other fragments dropped into the car and did not even penetrate the windshield or the soft surfaces on which they were found? . . .

Perhaps the most fanciful theory of all has been proposed by Gerald Posner, the author of the book Case Closed (New York: Random House, 1992). Posner suggests that the mark on the curb was caused by a lead fragment from a bullet that allegedly struck a limb of the oak tree, in spite of the fact that the tree was at least 400 feet from the curb. Additionally, according to Posner, this was the first shot, but Tague said it was the second shot that caused the mark on the curb and/or which wounded his face (Weisberg, Case Open, 146-147; WCR 116).

Even more problematically, Posner theorizes that the lead core separated from its copper jacketing after the alleged tree-branch collision and then traveled over 400 feet in a straight line from the Depository to the curb (Posner 326). But after separating from the jacket and then flying over 400 feet, it is highly doubtful the lead core would have been able to hit the curb with enough force to cause a concrete chip to reach Tague with enough speed to visibly cut his face; it is equally doubtful that such a missile fragment would have had enough force to fly straight to Tague's face and then cut it.

Another problem with Posner's theory is that it would require us to believe that the alleged lone assassin fired--and missed--sometime between Zapruder frames 145 and 166 (see Posner 324; see also Weisberg, Case Open, 98). But to make this assumption, we would have to believe that the supposed lone gunman completely missed, not only Kennedy but the entire limousine, from an elevation of 60 feet and from a distance of less than 140 feet. Even the WC admitted it was hard to believe the gunman would have been so wildly off the mark with his first and closest shot (WCR 111).

Additionally, in order for Posner's errant shot to have fragmented off a tree limb, one would think the missile would have had to strike far enough up the limb so that the limb would not move, bend, or snap when the bullet hit it. This would have been an unbelievable miss from the sixth-floor window.​
Click to expand...

"Unlikely" "doubtful" "fanciful" "problematic"- these are all easy words to use about others' theories when you don't have one of your own. Maybe you can make up this lack by saying exactly where you think the Tague fragment came from, and developing an actual evidence-backed theory. Otherwise, you're in exactly the same position as a fundie creationist who just says "not evolution, therefore goddidit!" with a "conspiracy" as your deity.
 
turingtest said:
"Unlikely" "doubtful" "fanciful" "problematic"- these are all easy words to use about others' theories when you don't have one of your own.
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And also when you're trying to make an absolute argument in a relative context. As you note above, and as I've excerpted in my previous post, the fatal approach in conspiracism is to hold up one's conspiracy theory as the default that must prevail if the "official story" is sufficiently impeached.

Then one attempts that impeachment with words like "problematic" and "doubtful," which do little to actually probe the argument. The aim is to make the prevailing story look very shaky in a sort of absolute sense -- as if it had now fallen below some minimum standard of proof and must be discarded. Then the reader "must" believe in some kind of conspiracy theory because that's all that's left.

But of course the conspiracy theory is never put to the same level of rigorous scrutiny as the prevailing story. When others do -- and it fails even more dismally -- the proponent will try to shift the burden of proof back onto the prevailing theory (essentially just a replay of his case-in-chief), or he can argue that any "official" story necessarily must meet a higher standard of proof because it comes from sources "known" to be corrupt, deceptive, and extremely powerful.

What conspiracy theorists never seem to figure out is that skeptics almost always approach the problem using a relativist perspective. That's because Occam's Razor is our guiding cutlery, and that requires us to set each competing hypothesis at the same a priori level and see which finished first.

In that way of thinking, terms like "problematic" aren't a death knell for the prevailing view as long as it is the least problematic. No matter how "doubtful" is a ricochet hypothesis, for example, it's still far less doubtful than multiple hypothetical shooters and a vast web of conspiracy to support them, for which affirmative claim no author has yet been able to create a case that convinces even the majority of his peers.

This is the same tone I've taken with O'Rourke, our other present conspiracy theorist. No matter how hard you swing away, bashing competing theories without subjecting your own theory to a commensurate standard of proof simply has little probative value.
 
smartcooky said:
Firstly, the theory is that it deflected off a traffic light support arm, not the Oak tree.
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You must be a newbie to this. The oak tree was proposed by the Warren Commission back in 1964:

The First Shot

If the first shot missed, the assassin perhaps missed in an effort to fire a hurried shot before the President passed under the oak tree, or possibly he fired as the President passed under the tree and the tree obstructed his view. The bullet might have struck a portion of the tree and been completely deflected....
Click to expand...

Josiah Thompson proposed in 1967 in his book SIX SECONDS IN DALLAS that a fragment of the head shot struck James Tague.

Gerald Posner proposed a first-shot miss striking the tree as well.

The traffic light theory is fairly new by comparison.


Head-shot. Who is saying anything about the bullet that hit Tague being from a head shot.
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Josiah Thompson in 1967. Here's a link to his drawing from his book (previously provided by IRatant).

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/tague4.gif

The Warren Commission also suggested it as a possibility:

.... the mark on the south curb of Main Street cannot be identified conclusively with any of the three shots fired. Under the circumstances it might have come from the bullet which hit the President's head, or it might have been a product of the fragmentation of the missed shot upon hitting some other object in the area.364 Since he did not observe any of the shots striking the President, Tague's testimony that the second shot, rather than the third, caused the scratch on his cheek, does not assist in limiting the possibilities. [emphasis added]
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The theory is that ..
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That's the one theory that you've learned about, and that you therefore favor. It is not necessarily the best nor the only one.

[remainder snipped].

Hank

You can find the Warren Report here:
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/
 
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