Defending Oswald

[Frishman]

Question: There doesn't seem to be any reasonable doubt that Oswald fired the shots that killed President Kennedy

If there were fingerprints on the gun (not a palm print put on by his corpse days later at the funeral home), and the gun had the power and accuracy to do the job, then you can say there is no reasonable doubt. The Italian $15 rifle was not good enough for the task. But Sgt. Lee Harvey Oswald (USMC) did not have the means (rifle), motive (he liked JFK), or opportunity (he was in the lunch room. Mac Wallace's fingerprints were on a box in the the 6th floor TSBD sniper's nest), so there are reasonable doubts. Don't be a gullible truster. A debate does not go on for almost 50 years unless there is something to it. I thought this forum was for skeptics not true believers.

 

[aggle-rithm]

A debate does not go on for almost 50 years unless there is something to it.

Yes. Yes, it does. All the time.

People still debate whether there is such a thing as ESP. That one's been going on for WAY longer than 50 years, and there's less evidence for it now than there was a century ago.

 

[Wolrab]

Personally, I would let the prosecution make its entire case. Not cross examine any witness or challenge any evidence. When the prosecution rests, I would stand up, approach the Jury and say,

"Baloney."

 

[Frishman]

Yes. Yes, it does. All the time.QUOTE]
Not all the time. All means 100%. Look it up in the dictionary.
Where is the debate about the NASA Challenger disaster?
That investigation had scientists on the panel, including a Nobel Prize winning physicist, Dr. Richard Feynman. We got a logical, scientific explanation, and the questions were answered.

For JFK we got a Warren Commission picked by LBJ who called the Kennedys the "Catholic Mafia" behind his back, and according to E. Howard Hunt, "had an almost maniacal desire to become President". The commission had no scientists, but politicians, including a Allen Dulles, who JFK had fired from being head of the CIA, not exactly a neutral guy.

Your comment on ESP makes no sense. Are you saying that there is less evidence than 50 years ago - so evidence has been destroyed?

Extra-sensory means beyond the senses, of which we have 5: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Perception is awareness of the environment. This web site is dedicated to critical thinking, including inference, which helps us be aware of our environment. Inference qualifies as a type of extra sensory perception.

Detectives often use inference to determine the cause of a crime or accident that they never saw, heard, felt, tasted or smelled. They show up later, and use their extra sensory perception (ESP) to reconstruct the scenario that caused the evidence they can now see and touch.

Inference uses the effect to determine the cause. Deduction uses to cause to determine the effect. The detective gives his notes to the prosecutor who will present evidence for the proposed cause and try to get the jury to use deduction (another type of ESP) to logically "see" the crime in action, even though it was in the past, and come to a conclusion.

We have never seen, heard, touched, tasted, nor smelled wireless signals. But we infer that they exist by their effects. Our laptops work wirelessly, and we talk on mobile phones. We often use extra sensory perception, with inference and deduction, to be aware of our environment.

In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. Watson was often astonished that Sherlock was able to tell what he was thinking, although not using the term ESP. For example, in the Adventure of the Dancing Men, Sherlock said "So, Watson, you do not propose to invest in South African securities". When Watson asked Sherlock how he knew (I won't spoil it for you), it was elementary logic.

 

[LaurelHS]

Yes. Yes, it does. All the time.QUOTE]
Not all the time. All means 100%. Look it up in the dictionary.
Where is the debate about the NASA Challenger disaster?
For that investigation had scientists on the panel, including a Nobel Prize winning physicist, Dr. Richard Feynman. We got a logical, scientific explanation, and the questions were answered.

You do know that conspiracy theorists continue to claim the Challenger disaster was murder? Sorry to be off-topic, but you're using a false analogy.

 

[beachnut]

If there were fingerprints on the gun (not a palm print put on by his corpse days later at the funeral home), and the gun had the power and accuracy to do the job, then you can say there is no reasonable doubt. The Italian $15 rifle was not good enough for the task. ...

... Bad defense, a rock could have done the job. The shot was so easy, a bad shot could have lucked out. Oswald did the easiest shot in history, he was unfortunately over-qualified to make the shot. Oswald, a better shot than some are at figuring out who killed JFK.

It would be hard to defend Oswald because he would take credit for the act. It was his only claim to fame. He would plead guilty.

 

[Frishman]

You do know that conspiracy theorists continue to claim the Challenger disaster was murder?

Your statement seems to imply "all" conspiracy theorists, putting them in one group. I know many CTs, and not a single one questions the Challenger. Name one.

Conspiracy simply means that more than 1 person was involved in something, usually some crime. Police arrest people for conspiracies practically every day. So they are CTs - and there is nothing wrong with that.

Since the JFK assassination, there has been an attempt to make CT a derogatory term, to try to riducule anyone who thinks more than one gunman was involved.

In the case of Sgt. Lee H. Oswald, the House Special Committee on Assassination in 1979 concluded there was "a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy". So the HSCA were CTs too.
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report

 

[Frishman]

... Bad defense, a rock could have done the job. The shot was so easy, a bad shot could have lucked out.

Jesse Ventura and other good rifle shooters, have not been able to consistently reproduce the shot from the 6th floor of the TSBD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSWSgcuYqDo

It would be hard to defend Oswald because he would take credit for the act.

The trouble for your theory is that he emphatically denied killing anyone.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lt6AE8ytJk

>It was his only claim to fame
Sgt. Oswald had a lot of good things to be proud of including a pretty wife, two children, and an Honorable Discharge from the United States Marines. No Marine would kill a President. All Marines take an oath including "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States."

 

[beachnut]

Jesse Ventura and other good rifle shooters, have not been able to consistently reproduce the shot from the 6th floor of the TSBD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSWSgcuYqDo


The trouble for your theory is that he denied killing anyone.

Sgt. Oswald had a lot of good things to be proud of including a pretty wife, two children, and an Honorable Discharge from the United States Marines. No Marine would kill a President. All Marines take an oath including "I will obey the orders of the President of the United States."

Fetzer was in the video; that pretty much makes the video woo. Swing, and a miss. Are you this gullible?
Oswald was a defector. A nut. This thread is about defending him in a court of law.

Jesse missed? Jesse missed a 238 foot shot?

Have you been to Dallas? I could hit the president with a tomato. The shot was so easy it was crazy. The idiots like Jesse who say they can't make the shot are proved idiots with their statement. Like idiots squared, too stupid to function. But in Jesse case, he is out to make Money. Follow the money and you have fake books, and CTs to make money from people too lazy, too gullible to do the critical thinking and research.

Oswald was a defector, a nut. Good luck getting on topic and making up a better defense.

Was Tim McVeigh in the military? Oops, another nut who murders, McVeigh and Oswald. What will your defense be? Oh, the rifle can't do it. That will be shown to be wrong. Easy shot, go to Dallas and learn. Too lazy to go to Dallas, so you can stop being gullible?

 

[LaurelHS]

Re the Challenger conspiracy theories: Bill Kaysing and John Lear both claimed the Challenger accident was murder. When I said "conspiracy theorists," I meant "some conspiracy theorists" not "all conspiracy theorists."

Being a Marine does not make a person above reproach. Charles Whitman was a former Marine too.

 

[Meadmaker]

If there were fingerprints on the gun (not a palm print put on by his corpse days later at the funeral home), and the gun had the power and accuracy to do the job, then you can say there is no reasonable doubt. The Italian $15 rifle was not good enough for the task. But Sgt. Lee Harvey Oswald (USMC) did not have the means (rifle), motive (he liked JFK), or opportunity (he was in the lunch room. Mac Wallace's fingerprints were on a box in the the 6th floor TSBD sniper's nest), so there are reasonable doubts. Don't be a gullible truster. A debate does not go on for almost 50 years unless there is something to it. I thought this forum was for skeptics not true believers.

You may or may not accept what I'm about to tell you, and if you don't accept it, I've done this enough that I know nothing I say would convince you.

Some of us who are adamant about Oswald, and Oswald alone, being the President's assassin did not always believe that way. We are not "true believers" in the sense that no evidence would convince us. I am a "true believer" because I started out as a skeptic, and became a true believer because of the weight of the evidence. Ineed, before I looked beyond the conspiracy books, I was more than a skeptic of the Warren Commission. I had seen a lot of information on 1970's television, and read some books, and knew that the Select Committee on Assassinations had found that there probably was a conspiracy. Based on that information, I assumed that there was a conspiracy. Determined to learn more about this conspiracy, I began research, and instead found that there was no conspiracy at all.

It's incredible the amount of misinformation that authors put out, and you have repeated some of it here. For example, the Mannlicher Carcano rifle is not some piece of junk. It's a perfectly good World War II era military rifle. I once saw a 1942 magazine article talking about what our servicemen would face when they went into battle. I remember that article saying that "Giuseppe's rifle" had an accurate range to 800 yards. Oswald's longest shot on November 22, 1963, was 88 yards.

I'm not a great shot with a bow and arrow, but I know people who could repeat Oswald's accuracy and timing with a bow. (I'm cheating just a tiny bit on that one. The usual amount of time allowed for the three shots is 4.3 seconds, but subsequent research has shown that the three shots probably actually took more than 8 seconds to fire, which would put it within the range of timing and accuracy of a very good bowhunter.) For a rifleman with a bolt action rifle, 4.3 seconds is more than enough time, but a somewhat difficult shot. With 8 seconds, any second rate marksman could have done the job, and one of them did.

At any rate, I know far more about the Kennedy assassination than any sane person ought to know, precisely because I was a skeptic. However, reading the evidence changed my mind. The evidence against Oswald really is overwhelming, and there is no evidence that there was any involvement by anyone other than Oswald. The books, movies, and probably web pages that claim otherwise are presenting very distorted views of reality that make it look like evidence exists, but if you examine it skeptically, you'll see that most of that evidence is distorted, except where it is just plain manufactured. If you have a few questions, and are genuinely skeptical, I can see if I could answer them.

You have an advantage that I didn't have. I was researching this stuff more than 20 years ago, before there was a world wide web. I'm sure the truth is a lot more accessible than it was then. On the other hand, the availability of the internet has made misinformation much more accessible as well, so it might be more difficult to sort truth from fiction.

 

[Frishman]

Oswald was a defector.

On an interview by James Earl Jones, Victor Marchetti, a former CIA Director's staff member, said that Sgt. Oswald was probably a "dangle" to try to get recruited by the KGB, then bring secrets back to the USA.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucQqm0xIjZ4 28 min.

James Bond books, such as From Russia With Love, were popular around 1960 and many guys like Oswald wanted the thrilling life of a spy. A former KGB officer has said that Oswald was not interesting enough, and did not try to recruit him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko

After 2 years of failure to be recruited, Oswald went back to the USA and had no problem getting in, although he had no job, plus he brought a wife and baby. Why would a "defector" get back in the US unless he had help?

Plus, we have E. Howard Hunt's taped confession.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96FDflK_Iug near 8:30 min.
Plus, attorney Barr McClellan's book on How LBJ Killed JFK.

>Have you been to Dallas?
Yes, I have been to the 6th Floor Museum and looked out the window. No way. The shot to a moving target was especially difficult. Plus, JFK's head when back and to the left, back and to the left... indicating a shot from the front and to the right.

>Was Tim McVeigh in the military? Oops, another nut who murders.
But no Marine would murder a U.S. President. Tim could also have been a patsy. Witnesses saw 2 men leave the truck in front of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma. There are still a lot of questions whether explosives in the truck could cause such damage from so far away. Here are main stream news broadcasts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpwO7eQCsk

 

[beachnut]

... But no Marine would murder a U.S. President. Tim could also have been a patsy. Witnesses saw 2 men leave the truck in front of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma. There are still a lot of questions whether explosives in the truck could cause such damage from so far away. Here are main stream news broadcasts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpwO7eQCsk

4,000 pounds of FOB would not do what 4,000 pounds of FOB did. Good one. You might be gullible. Do you study these things before you make up lies about them? The truck was essentially under the building. The building came out to the street on the upper floors. Why do you believe the lies you google?

No Marine would murder the President. Right, good one.

Tim McVeigh was not a patsy. You have no CT too stupid to believe. And you are off topic.

The shot in Dallas in not left to right, but fading away. It was even simplier, except when people spread lies like this. Oops, you have not been to Dallas.

The back and to the left is in a fictional movie, JFK. You are using a movie to support your off topic CT.

You are suppose to explain how you would defend Oswald, not show how many CTs you believe in.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Oh, dear! "Back and to the left. Back and to the left."

So as to not continue the derail of this thread, you might want to drop into the CT section and read the JFK Assassination thread. That's one of the most commonly debunked but favorite true believer myths out there. You'll find a few supporters for your position dropping in from time to time. This thread's supposed to be a hypothetical on how one would defend LHO in a court of law, and ninety per cent of your suppositions wouldn't be admissible, as they're unrelated to the simpler charges that would be brought - two counts of murder, one (possibly two) of attempted murder.

 

[angrysoba]

Plus, JFK's head when back and to the left, back and to the left...

No, it didn't.

 

[Noztradamus]

Yes. Yes, it does. All the time.

Not all the time. All means 100%. Look it up in the dictionary.
Where is the debate about the NASA Challenger disaster?

~~~~

Your comment on ESP makes no sense. Are you saying that there is less evidence than 50 years ago - so evidence has been destroyed?

Not destroyed. Reassessed. 50 years ago we had the Soal-Shackelton tests as ESP evidence. That "proof" is not now considered kosher.

"All means 100%. Look it up in the dictionary."

aggle-rithm's claim was not that everything is debated forever. Just that there is always some long "debate" about some subjects (UFOs, Loch Ness Monsters) that are complete tosh.
Myself, I go further: argument for more than 50 years without being settled only survives because the subject being argued is imaginary.

But settle one thing. When did Oswald make Secret Sergeant?

 

[timhau]

>Have you been to Dallas?
Yes, I have been to the 6th Floor Museum and looked out the window. No way. The shot to a moving target was especially difficult.

In that case, the question becomes "Have you ever fired a rifle?"

I first started to think that there's something odd about the conspiracy angle on the JFK assassination when I visited Dallas, Dealey Plaza and the 6th Floor Museum. First of all, compared to the way it looks on film and photographs, Dealey Plaza is very small -- so tiny, in fact, that when I was looking for it, I walked right past the place twice before realizing it.

 

[erwinl]

In that case, the question becomes "Have you ever fired a rifle?"

I first started to think that there's something odd about the conspiracy angle on the JFK assassination when I visited Dallas, Dealey Plaza and the 6th Floor Museum. First of all, compared to the way it looks on film and photographs, Dealey Plaza is very small -- so tiny, in fact, that when I was looking for it, I walked right past the place twice before realizing it.

That's what I thought as well.
If you look at Google maps you can see the distances involved are very short indeed.

Way back when I was a conscript soldier I received an Uzi for training with five bullets in it. The target was 100 meters away and I had never fired a single shot before in my life.
Yet, even with this puny 25 cm barrel, I was able to keep these five bullets within 20 cm of eachother.
How much better would a trained marine do with a real rifle (as opposed to a submachine gun) with a scope on it?

 

[aggle-rithm]

Not all the time. All means 100%. Look it up in the dictionary.

Not in this context. In this context it means "frequently".

Language has far more subtlety and complexity than you think it does. That's a failing you have in common with many conspiracy theorists.

 

[aggle-rithm]

But no Marine would murder a U.S. President.

Wow, what a bold, sweeping statement! I would love to see the evidence you have to support this notion.