Pres. Kerry's NASA

"Eric Chomko" wrote in message
...
Terrell Miller ) wrote:
: "Eric Chomko" wrote in message
: ...

: : So Terrell, it was a commie lone nut all along
:
: : yes
:
: Ah, no...

: extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, pal

No one has "proven" the manner in which JFK was assassinated. There is the
lone nut theory and various conspiracy theories. What you believe one way
or another is based upon a theory.

except that the lone gunman theory has been proven, repeatedly, beyond a
reasonable doubt. The evidence (which has been very carefully explained
numerous times) supports the conclusion that Oswald alone murdered Kennedy.
That is based on modern forensic examination of the evidence. The "evidence"
that there was a conspiracy *always* devolves into unsubstantiated
speculation, repeating other unsubstantiated allegations as if they were
fact, and simple sarcasm.

: : and the Warren Commission got it right?
:
: : got the 10,000ft. view right, lots of little details wrong. That's
the
: best
: : *anybody* could have done in 1964.
:
: No, several authors like Thomas Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy) did
better
: than the WC.

: no, all the early assassination literature basically just pointed out
: inconsistencies and flaws in the WCR (of which there were many), but it
: really wasn't until the 1990s that any kind of scientifically rigorous
: examination (as we would think of it today) of the evidence was ever
done.

The lapel flip and jet effect summarized by the likes of Gerald Posner is
as had as the worst conspiracy theorists when it come to intellectual
dishonesty.

and you say that because...you disagree with him? Therefore Posner was being
intellectually dishonest? (And you might want to read your commment again,
you just stated that conspiracy theorists are precisely that, something else
we agree on).

: I haven't read Buchanan's book, but here are a few quotes taken from a
: review of it on Amazon which we'll discuss:

: quote A few hours after JFK's death, a suspect was arrested although
there
: were no witnesses and no confessions!/quote

No one confessed, that is for sure. The witnesses at the time of the
arrest (1:30pm CDT) were who?

There were half a dozen eyewitnesses to Tippet's murder. One of them
(Domingo Benavides?) got on Tippet's squad car radio to tell the dispatcher
Tippet had been shot. That was about a minute after the murder.

: okay, he's apparently getting off to a typical CTer start: he's
attributing
: shady causes to something that can very easily be explained by common
sense.

: The shots came from the TSBD (even most CTers accept that at least some
of
: the shots came from there, although they don't think it was LHO).

Some do and some don't. But for some reasons the lone nut people seem to
think that since all CTs don't agree, then they are all wrong.

no, we don't think that. There are plenty of other reasons to think CTers
are all wrong, the vast majority of which are the words that come out of
their own mouths.

: Within
: fifteen minutes of the shooting the police had quarantined the building.
: Oswald was the only employee at work that day who was not still in the
: building. Therefore, and with very little required in the critical
reasoning
: area, he became the immediate Suspect Number One.

: There were several eyewitnesses to the murder of Officer Tippet, and a
: description of the shooter was almost immediately sent out on the police
: radio by one of the witnesses. Oswald not only fit the general
description,
: but was seen acting strangely several blocks from the murder spot. Then
he
: gate-crashed the Texas Theater. Again, here's someone acting suspicious
and
: breaking the law a very short distance from a murder scene. The lady
working
: the ticket booth called the police, who arrested LHO *for the murder of
: Officer Tippet*.

Some people said that two people were around Tippett.

And people in Dealey Plaza heard a varying number of shots from a varying
number of locations. Moral of the story: people don't all remember the same
event the same way, and eyewitness testimony is unreliable.

: Connecting LHO to the Kennedy assasasination was a logical step but came
: *after* he was in police custody for another murder.

: quoteWe were told Oswald was a fanatical Communist who hated America.
Was
: this too good to be true?/quote

Yes, it was.

why?

: well, the summer before the assassination, while LHO was living in New
: Orleans, he was photographed handing out leaflets for the Fair Play For
Cuba
: Committee, and he was interviewed by a local radio station and admitted
on
: air that he was a Marxist.

: You tell me, sport...

The term sheepdipping comes to mind. I believe that LHO was set up by
someone that wasn't privy to the fact that they themselves were assisting
in a sheepdipping that was a bigger picture. LHO, not communist, but LHO
assassin. Guy Banister was the guy who did the sheepdipping and was not
aware exactly what it was for. Too bad whes was dead before the WR came
out.

well, you believe an awful lot of stuff with no proof whatsoever. Ironic
since there are very tedious but common-sense theories to account for your
scenarios that don't involve sweeping conspiracies.

That all fits with the visit to Mexico City as well.

why would a "sheep dipped" assassin take a Greyhound bus all the way across
Mexico?

It fits with the shot
a Walker and various other oddities of Oswald poppoing up in wierd places.

but a much simpler explanation fits all the "facts" you mention as well.

: quote The fact that Oswald was never a member of the Communist party,
: /quote

: only because they didn't want him, he was Red as a firetruck. He *did*
: defect and spent over a year in the USSR, however. And that *was* widely
: reported starting the afternoon of the assassination.

Where was he debriefed when he returned to the US? Who did it? The LNT
would have us believe that LHO as a true defector and was not debriefed
when he returned to the US with a Russian wife in tow at the height of the
Cold War.

I think you've been reading too many John LeCarre novels, sport. Governments
don't work that way. Oswald was interviewed on several occasions by US
Embassy staff, both when he renounced his American citizenship upon reaching
Moscow and a year later when he wanted to return to the States. He came back
home not only with a Russian wife as you mention, but also with an infant
daughter. Was that a result of getting his sheep dipped?

People emigrated from WarPac nations all throughout the Cold War. The ones
that were allowed to leave the country were the ones that were useless to
their former country *and* were seen as harmless and not a security threat
by their new country.

Oswald was a former Marine who had been on routine duty stations. He didn't
have a high security clearance as a Marine, he just happened to be stationed
for routine duty at an Air Force base in Japan where they staged U2 flights,
but teh Sovs quickly learned that he knew nothing useful about the U2
program. His stay in the USSR was the epitome of proletarianism, he worked
at a tractor plant in Minsk IIRC. There was nothing to suggest to anyone
that he or Marina would be a security threat if they were allowed back into
the US. In short, there was no reason *not* to let them in. (I'd imagine
that the embassy pukes for the US and USSR used to swap stories about all
the riffraff like LHO that both sides had to deal with on a daily basis, it
was probably a running joke among the FSO types).

Ah, no... LHO to return to the US in the manner in which he did
MUST have cut a deal with the State Dept. and act in some official
capacity upon return.

sheesh.

: (Which brings up another point often made by the CTers: how did Oswald's
: life story get so widely disseminated so fast? If you saw the movie
"JFK"
: you'll remember Donald Sutherland's character telling Kevin Costner that
: They had a dossier on LHO all ready to be released to the press, more
: evidence of a conspiracy. But the reality is a lot less exciting,
though: an
: AP reporter in teh Buenos Aires (IIRC) bureau saw a wire report that one
Lee
: Harvey Oswald had been arrested in Dallas, and she immediately thought
"holy
: ****, that's the American defector I interviewed a couple years ago in
: Russia!", and basic journalistic competitiveness to get a scoop took it
from
: there).

Again, LHO gets press coverage upon leaving the US, gets press coverage
while he's in NO, but nothing upon his return to the US. Bunk!

well, the press coverage that he got when he defected didn't amount to much,
just a single story going across the AP wire if memory serves. His little
escapades in N'arluns attracted a bit of local interest (got his picture in
the paper and a local-events news show arranged a debate between Oswald and
an anti-Castro exile, but that's about it). Nothing remotely resembling
Celebrity, if that's what you were implying.

As far as him returning home goes, I'm a little surprised that nobody in the
States picked up on the story, but at that point Oswald was probably just
seen as a pathetic little boy who was slinking on back home, not as any kind
of news.

: quote or the "Fair Play for Cuba" group was omitted from the news
: reports./quote

: no, he was a card-carrying FPfC member for awhile until the
organization's
: leaders got sick of all his bull**** about having an unbelievable number
of
: people signing up. IOW, a Marxist fringe group dumped him when it became
: obvious that he was a loser, which is pretty sad if you think about it
g

The only card carrying member.

the only one in New Orleans. There were chapters in several cities, and IIRC
the headquarters (the people Oswald sent his "reports" to) were in DC. He
didn't invent the FPfCC, he just tried to join it and ultimately got the
brushoff.

Explain Bannister and his address on LHO's flyers.

I'd file that in with the Alek Hidell ID cards. Just Oswald being arch in
his typical dip**** way.

: quote Buchanan explains why neither Soviet Russia or Cuba could
benefit
: from JFK's death (pp. 17-21). /quote

: funny, ISTR the Warren report going into that as well g

What part?

in the introduction, actually. They go to some length to explain why there
was no reason to suspect a conspiracy of *any* kind, foreign or domestic.

We didn't know about how LBJ emotionally blackmailed Warren
(40 million lives) to head the group until many years later.

I'm trying to figure out what point you're trying to attach that one to, and
coming up blank. Yes, Warren was reluctant to chair the commission. Who in
their right minds would *want* that job?!? The fact that LBJ's utterly
typical armtwisting of Earl Warren didn't get much (if any) publicity at the
time is because back then the press didn't get too deep into the sordid
little realities of politics. It was a more naive age, is all.

: quote Buchanan states that Oswald could only have been convicted if he
was
: innocent (p.24)! But if he knew how the crime had happened, he would be
: silenced (p.26). /quote

: that's another thing about CTers, they "state" a hell of a lot of stuff,
but
: never seem to get around to actually *proving* any of it.

: quoteOswald's assassination by Jack Ruby proclaims that Oswald was not
a
: lone gunman, and powerful forces were threatened by Oswald's existence
and
: talking. Nothing over the last forty years has disproved this./quote

: another hallmark of a CTer: they don't have to prove what they are
saying,
: it's *your* job to prove them wrong, and if you try you're part of the
: coverup!

So, why DID Ruby kill Oswald?

I have no clue. It is *possible* that he was acting under orders from
organized crime (whhich would imply a Mafia hit on JFK), but I've never seen
compelling evidence of that. The best we can say is that Jacob Rubinstein
was a seedy character who had lots of seedy acquaintances.

My own theory about Ruby's motive, for all it's worth, is that he realized
that the transfer of Oswald to the county jail would be Ruby's last big
chance to be in the spotlight. He had long been known as an attention-whore
who hung around when there was something "big" going on in town. He had been
in the Dallas PD headquarters a lot that weekend, offering to arrange
interviews with police officers for the newsies, acting as a sort of "tour
guide" if you will, gate-crashing the press conferences, and handing out
free passes to his nightclubs. In general glomming as much attention as he
could get.

Then by Sunday morning Ruby is worn out (who wasn't) from all the constant
chaos of that weekend. He's at his emotional and rational lowpoint, totally
drained. He's down the block from HQ running an errand, so he stops by, and
by sheer chance there's LHO obviously being led away for a transfer...and I
think Ruby just suddenly lost it, he was totally ****ed that Oswald was
getting away from him and going to a place where Ruby couldn't wander around
acting like a bigshot anymore.

Ruby said he shot Oswald to keep Jackie and the kids from having to come
back to Dallas for the trial, and I'm sure that was one rationalization he
used so his actions made some sort of altruistic sense in his own mind. But
I doubt seriously that's the real "reason", I think it was just a twisted
form of jealousy, that Ruby suddenly realized he was about to fade into the
background again and Oswald would keep getting all the attention. Same basic
reason Oswald shot Kennedy, now that I think of it.

Again, that's just my own theory, nothing to back it up. So can I call
myself a CTer too? g

: quote Buchanan recalls the political circumstances of the
assassinations
: of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley./quote

: ...and probably totally failed to mention the nutcase that tried to
: assassinate Truman while the White House was being renovated. Not to
mention
: the nutcases that have taken shots at various presidents since the book
was
: written. Lots of different reasons why people get assassinated,
capital-P
: politics is just one of them. In LHO's case it was lowercase.

Right, but according to Warren here in America assassinations are always
by lone nuts and never conspiracies. How convenient!

I don't remember the WCR going into much detail about other assassinations,
care to provide a reference?

: quote Page 72 explains why Oswald was not insane: he tried to escape,
and
: plead 'not guilty' when arrested./quote

: couple points he first, I don't remember anybody on either side of
the
: debate *ever* claiming that LHO was insane. Jack Ruby, yes, but not
Oswald.

Right the term was "deranged". Posner spends way too much time on this in
his book, "Case Closed". And WR spends lots, less than Posner, but the
idea was to put a lot of focus on just one guy.

erm, because the evidence points to one guy?

"Case Closed" was the anti-CT. Posner wasn't trying to analyze every single
conspiracy theory and rebut each one. First, that's impossible to do in a
single volume. Second, he was strictly interested in explaining why all the
CTers were wrong about the WCR, that's all he was trying to do. He wasn't
trying to rebut the conspiracy theories' slaims about other gunmen and
what-have-you.

: Second, technically LHO never "plead" (sic) anything: he was never
committed
: to trial and therefore never had a chance to enter a plea. WHen he was
: arrested in the Texas Theater he said something to the effect of "well,
it's
: all over now" while drawing his pistol. Then when he was being led
outside
: to a police car he just yelled about police brutality. (WHich brings up
yet
: another thing the CTers igno the reason why he was so quickly hustled
: into a squad car was because the crowd that gathered was starting to
make a
: bunch of ugly comments about him having "killed our President!" and
such:
: the police officers were *protecting* Oswald from the flash crowd, not
: brutalizing him. Same reason Reagan's secret service agents stufffed him
: into his limo so rudely, they were just trying to get him the hell out
of
: there as quick as possible).

: Anyway, LHO was *arraigned* for the murder of Tippet and Kennedy on the
: night of 11/22, but that basically just means that he was officially
: informed of the charges filed against him. Oswald did claim he was
innocent
: in all the press conferences in the Dallas police headquarters, but
that's
: not the same as a "plea".

Right and he was interrogated for 12 hours without a lawyer and there is
NO record about that interrogation. Explain that!!

Easy. Under state law at the time, nothing of what a suspect said under
interrogation could be used as evidence in a criminal trial anyway. That was
a very rough-draft Texas version of protecting the rights of the accused.
The purpose of the interrogation was simply to focus the DPD's efforts at
shaking down leads in the case. IOW, you ask the perp questions not to get
usable answers for the trial, but to figure out which way you need to look
for evidence that you collect independent of the interrogation.

Why no lawyer all that time? Probably because at the time a suspect's rights
were much less clearly defined than they are today (wasn't the Miranda trial
at roughly the same time as the assassination, and didn't the Supreme Court
ruling that created the Miranda Rule happen *after* the assassination?).
Also because the DPD found themselves totally overwhelmed by an event they
simply weren't prepared to handle. Every account of that weekend paints the
police HQ building as an utter zoo, with reporters cramming the hallways all
day and police officers running around all over the place. The simple fact
is that there's almost nothing that the DPD did that weekend that would pass
muster today. Not getting in a Public Defender for Oswald was just a part of
the chaos and half-assedness.

That same night the autopsy doctor burned his autopsy notes. Explain that!

Dr. Finck (Humes?) burned his *original* notes when he realized they were
bloodstained (here's a hint: autopsies aren't very tidy proceedings), but
only *after* he had rewritten them on clean paper. He clearly states that he
had no intention of having the public or the press get their hands on the
bloody originals.

Again: by today's CSI-phile standards that was a big no-no, but in November
1963 nobody really had a clue how to handle something like the assassination
of a President, and they did what they thought was best, not what the
procedure called for or what was legally required to preserve
chain-of-evidence. There *were* no legal requirements before the
assassination.

Why was all the real fresh 11/22/63 evidence destroyed in a simple case
where LHO was a lone assassin?

for very mudane reasons, people trying to do the decent thing instead of
smearing all the gory details all over the media. Again, it was a much more
naive age, and people didn't see as much gore on TV as we're used to.

: (Which brings up another point about CTers: there are huge numbers of
little
: subtle distinctions like that one that they either ignore or totally
: overlook. One or two is no big deal at all, but the cumulative effect is
to
: suggest an almost total lack of common sense and ability to read for
: comprehension on the part of the CTers).

Your beliefs have gotten in the way of your ability to critically think on
this case.

erm...nah, way too easy g

: quote Page 91 says the official conclusion was based on the Bethesda
: autopsy. (Decades later we learned that this 'best evidence' was based
on
: the body of JFK's double, sacrificed to provide proof of a lone gunman
: firing from the rear. See "High Treason 2" for these pictures.) /quote

: no, we didn't "learn" that, it's just another little hook somebody used
to
: publish their own book. **** like that is the equivalent of "Hemi" in
the
: wonderful world of marketing

No one has ever explained why "surgery" was seen on the head of JFK by the
doctors in Bethesda who thought that it MUST have been done by the doctors
in Dallas who claim that they never altered the body.

I think you're misremembering. The Bethesda doctors thought that the
tracheostomy wound just under JFK's Adam's apple was simpy that, a surgical
wound. They had to talk to the doctors at Parkland to learn that it was the
exit wound of the "magic bullet". Tracheostomies being very inelegant
procedures, there was no way of telling anymore that a bullet had passed
through there.

That was the big confusion between the Parkland and Bethesda doctors, it had
nothing to do with any supposed surgical procedures to Kennedy's head.

Who performed surgery on a dead JFK between Dallas and Bethesda?

simple: nobody did.

: quote Pages 93-97 discuss the number of shots, and the impossibility
of
: three shots in less than 6 seconds from a bolt-action rifle. /quote

: except that it wasn't just six seconds, that was an *estimate* made in
the
: days after the shooting based on a flawed understanding of just one
piece of
: evidence: the Zapruder film. And that "understanding" that leads to the
: six-second number so widely quoted hinges solely on what you see in teh
film
: that tells you "there was the first shot!"

: The people making that judgement call and arriving at a six-second
figure
: were people who were stressed to the max at the time. They had gotten
almost
: no sleep for several days, they were having to pore over a grisly and
: unthinkable act, and they were not trained forensics examiners, even by
1963
: standards. They made their best guess, but later "cold light of morning"
: analysis with modern technology has proved that six-second figure to be
: mistaken.

Except that the Zapruder Film has an 18.3 frames per second timing

under ideal conditions. The speed varies quite a bit, as you can see from
watching the film itself. It's not as jumpy as the old silent movies, but
the camera's speed is nowhere near constant.

mechanism that the LN crowd MUST expalin away by stating that the first
shot had to of occurred earlier when the evidence does not support it.

The evidence clearly suggests that the first shot missed the limo entirely,
causing JFK to stop waving for a second and Connally to get a funny look on
his face and start to turn to his right. I forget which Z frame that was,
but it's well before the limo disappears behind the Stemmons Freeway sign
for a second.

: quote A bullet that struck JFK at that angle could not have struck
: Governor Connally's back only a few inches lower, and remained intact.
: /quote

: ah, the old Magic Bullet Theory again.

No, Gerald Ford's Big Lie!

again: you're going to have to come up with something better than
name-calling, sport.

: The interpretation that this Buchanan guy makes, and which was echoed in
Jim
: Garrison's trial and ever since, is based on an almost total ignorance
of
: (or ignoring of) the actual crime scene and of the photographic
evidence,
: incl. the Zapruder film.

: Elm Street slopes down and away from the TSBD, and Kennedy's limo was
: slanted down and with its back end to the right of LHO during the
: assassination. Kennedy himself was sitting jammed up against the right
wall
: of the limo so he could rest his arm against the side of the car.
Connally
: was scrunched down in a little jump seat bolted to the floor of the
limo, up
: against the drive shaft. Even on a level surface he would have been much
: lower and to the left of Kennedy. (In the "JFK" film and at the actual
: Garrison trial, however, the trajectory was illustrated by having two
men
: sit in identical courtroom chairs, directly in tandem, on a level floor.
: None of which remotely reesembles the actual crime scene).

I see you have spent time at the alt.conspiracy.jfk newsgroup.

Used to years ago, yes. For a while it was genuinely fun to be able to pick
apart all the dip**** theories and actually be able to tell someone that
they're a total moron (which you can't often do in RL), but after awhile
that got old.

Nice to be able to do it every now and then, though, thanks for the
memories! g

You quote Johm McAdams well. He would be proud.

well, I'm not quoting him, lots of other sources to rebut the "magic bullet
trqajectory" thing. I went to McAdams's website a couple of times, but I've
never met the man and beyond his being a professor at Georgetown who all the
CTers think is a CIA mouthpiece, I know nothing about him. He did seem to
make a lot of sense, although he was clearly doing the Posner thing of
trying to make a buck debunking all the CTers.

: At the time of the "single bullet" shot, the trajectory through both
men's
: wounds points *directly* back at the upper southeast corner of the TSBD,
: which is where Oswald's sniper nest was.

The problem is the head shot from that angle would have exited through the
left side of JFK's face instead of the right.

No, the headshot occurred at precisely teh point where Elm is pointing the
furthest from the TSBD. Oswald was at about the 7:30 position wrt the limo,
with a steep downward angle. Kennedy's head was turned to the left a bit,
with the result that the bullet entered his skull in the top right,
fragmented, and blew out the upper right side of his skull (btw, if you
watch the Zapruder film carefully you'll notice that a large chunk of skull
is blasted straight *up*, not back-and-to-the-left, thereby proving that the
head shot was fired from the floorboards of JFK's own limo g)

You're obviously very interested in the assassination, so I would strongly
urge you to make the trip to Dallas and actually go to Dealey Plaza. The
first thing that'll amaze you is how tiny it is, it's not really even a
*place*, just a stretch of grass wedged in between a few ugly buildings and
an ugly bridge. Then as you wander around you'll notice the geometry of the
place, how much Elm Street curves away from the TSBD and what a downslope it
is.

By all means buy the ticket to go to the Sixth Floor Museum. The TSBD has
been yuppified, it's actually a pretty nice little building these days. The
sniper's nest in the corner window is glassed off, but you can look out the
window next to it and get a good idea of Oswald's vantage point (just bear
in mind that the trees have been growing for forty years, so it's not
identical to the way it was that Friday). There's a spot painted on the
pavement where the headshot happened, so just wait until a car drives across
that spot and visualize the angles. Oswald fired all the shots, sorry to
disappoint you.

: That's been a nonissue at least since the Nova special back in 1993,
which
: is the first computerized trajectory analysis. many people have done
more
: "realistic" CG recreations of the event in the meantime, and Peter
Jennings
: recently did the single best job of explaining it of anybody I've ever
: heard, but the validity of the single bullet theory is old news.

The problem is that Connally who was hit by the magic bullet doesn't agree
with your analysis. He is/was quite sure he and JFK were hit by two
separate bullets.

again, you're misremembering. He was adamant that he was hit by *the second
shot*, not by a separate shot from the one that struck JFK.

But you folks explain that away by saying that be was
mistaken since he was hit by the bullet. Fuuny how he would have looked
back and seen a wounded JFK before he was himself was hit by the same
bullet.

He turned to look over his right shoulder (where the first shot came from),
and when he didn't see Kennedy he turned around to look over his left
shoulder, adn that's when he got hit. That's real easy to follow if you
watch the Zapruder film in slo-mo.

There's a DVD called "Images of an assassination" that's still widely
available, you probably can get it at your local Best Buy or whatever. I
would strongly urge you to get a copy, it's very helpful.

: quote Page 148 mentions Senator Kefauver's 1951 probe into criminal
: activities in New York, where the police, judges, politicians, and
gangsters
: shared the loot. In the 1930s Senator LaFollette had a similar
investigation
: that showed underworld forces were used by corporations against labor
: unions. Organized crime is often used to carry out tasks that can't be
: handled by legal means. /quote

: trying to find the relevance of any of this to the JFK assassination,
other
: than "this happened in the past to a wide variety of people, therefore
it
: explains the Kennedy assassination", which...won't get you onto the
debate
: team at school.

The CIA comes to mind with its mob dealings and trying to kill Castro.
Actually, it is quite relative to the JFK assassination.

I think you meant "relevant" there...

: quote The first Gallup poll had 52% believing Oswald represented an
: extreme right-wing group, gangsters, or some "unknown" force (p.152).
: /quote

: Mr. France, paging Anatole France...

It is more than 52% since then and even up to this day!

Here's something I don't think I've ever seen but would be absolutely
thrilled to read about: of all the people who believe that there was a
conspiracy in the JFK assassination, how many of those people:

- can find Cuba on a map
- know when the Bay Of Pigs invasion occurred
- know that it's the *Bay* of Pigs and the *Gulf* of Tonkin
- know who teh CIA director was at the time, who he replaced and why
- know the month and year of the assassination
- know in which city the assassination occurred
- know who JFK's VP was
- know which President JFK succeeded, and in what year
- know who JFK's Republican opponent in the 1960 election was
- etc. etc.

I would bet that the number of "conspiracy" believers who can answer more
than one or two of those questions accurately is, oh...ten percent? That
many?

: quotePages 155-6 note the strange behavior of Oswald in the Marine
Corps,
: which implies he was being trained as a secret agent./quote

: mainly, Oswald's strange behaviour consisted of being a loner, getting
: picked on by all his platoon mates, getting into trouble, learning
Russian
: and openly reading Marxist literature. None of which were even enough to
get
: him thrown out of the Corps, everybody knew he was just a useless
nut.What

So don't even bother to debrief him when he comes back to the US, but let
him back in and with a Russian wife at that, at the height of the Cold
War? What planet are you from?!?!

Earth. And you?

: CTers seem to forget is that he had been doing all that since he was a
: teenager, so he was just being Lee. Unless you think that he was already
: being trained to be a secret agent when he was in high school, in which
case
: you're probably beyond any help I can give you g

Yet he still gets accepted in the Marine Corps.

have you ever met any Marines? I have, adn with the exception of a Canoe U.
grad who decided to be a Marine logistics officer instead of a squid because
he was afraid of getting seasick, every other Marine I've ever met...let's
just say they're not the most functional of people, and not exactly the
sharpest bulbs on the turnip truck, okay? g

: quote While they denied Oswald worked for the FBI or CIA, nobody
mentioned
: the obvious: Naval Intelligence. /quote

: probably because Oswald was so obviously on the **** List in the Marine
: Corps that nobody in their right minds would go near him unless they had
to.
: Mostly he got ignored and given the **** jobs until his enlistment was
up.

No debrief upon from USSR.

yes, we've covered that already. It's no big mystery.

: Oswald wasn't a plant and he wasn't an "operative". He was too unstable
and
: grabastic to be trusted with anything beyond a simple, garden-variety
: security clearance and routine jobs. In short, he was a nobody.

...that managed to kill the president all by himself, if I'm to believe
you.

yep. Scary thought, innit?

: quote Page 178 tells of the Dallas ruling class, the how the oil
business
: controls them. /quote

: here this Buchanan guy is getting desperate. Kind of like "The men who
: killed Kennedy"; if you watch a single episode and you don't know
anything
: about the subject it's compelling and convincing. Watch three or four
: episodes and you begin to notice that so many people from so many
different
: organizations admit being the grassy knoll shooter, you wonder where
they
: all parked their cars! g

: Now we say goodbye to Mr. Buchanan and get back to your post:

No, Buchanan persists and still has one of the best books on the
assassination.

Well, I'll put it this way: I've done some pretty extensive reading on the
JFK case, adn I'd never heard of the guy or his book until you mentioned
him. He's long since faded into the background. Probably because he didn't
have as big a mouth as Cyril Wecht g

: In fact, how the Warren Report reflects the Warren Commission
: Hearings is beyond me.

: It's a couple thousand pages that try to distill the essence of about
nine
: months' (IIRC) work of investigation by dozens of investigators. It
can't
: possibly be a comprehensive account of every single piece of evidence
and
: every single activity of the Commission, and it was never meant to be.
It's
: a *report*, not a documentary.

: The WR as a summary of the WCH is a bad joke.

: well, the WCR is an unfunny joke at best, but that doesn't mean it's
wrong
: or that it's not an accurate summary of the Committee's activities and
: findings. Unfortunately, the political staffers that made up the
committee
: didn't really have a clue what they were doing and simply botched the
job.

The WR was a whitewash job and any thinking person familiar with the case
knows it.

uh no, but nice try at a sweeping insult.

: The WCH is one of the best references for a conspiracy in the case.

: no, simple paranoia and fast-buck greed are the best references for a
: conspiracy. That and the fact that some people **** their pants at the
: thought that large events can have tiny, meaningless causes. Which
happens
: *all the time* in life, sport, there doesn't have to be a Reason.

Right I simply can't accept that a lone malcontent did this as given the
prsident being killed it MUST be a conspiracy.

ah, there we go then. That's why.

: The WR is a peice of fiction.

: nope, it's a crime scene investigation made by men who were not trained
: investigators, but mainly congressional staffers. They did the best they
: could given the era and their own lack of formal training.

They did what they were told: one man, 3 bullets, no conspiracy. Outside
of that they can do anything that they want.

the 3-bullet thing came about very late into the investigation, btw. That
wasn't the working hypothesis for most of the investigation, they thought
they were only dealing with two shots. Then they remembered, IIRC, that
James Tague has gotten stung by a fragment and that one bullet had
ricocheted off the curb. That's when the WC realized there was a third shot.

--
Terrell Miller


"It's one thing to burn down the **** house and another thing entirely to
install plumbing"
-PJ O'Rourke

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 00:02:58 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

You're right. I should have said "the main officially advertized reason"
instead of "the main reason". :-)

Even that's not true. It's just a desperate straw that anti-war folks
are grasping at after the fact.

The problem being that the pro-war folks consitently fail to provide
anything other than US decided to invade and thats all[1] as a reason
that doesn't immediately get refuted as balatant lies.

Only to people who pay no attention and think it's all about the
oooiiiillll.

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 00:02:58 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
: Sander Vesik made the phosphor on my
: monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: You're right. I should have said "the main officially advertized reason"
: instead of "the main reason". :-)
:
: Even that's not true. It's just a desperate straw that anti-war folks
: are grasping at after the fact.
:
: The problem being that the pro-war folks consitently fail to provide
: anything other than US decided to invade and thats all[1] as a reason
: that doesn't immediately get refuted as balatant lies.

: Only to people who pay no attention and think it's all about the
: oooiiiillll.

Well, the wells are pumping and Halliburton IS there and the war effort is
using the oil. Tell me why we shouldn't think it is about the oil.

Eric

(Eric Chomko) wrote in
:


...for the oil.


Plonk! (shoulda done it before, I know...)

--
Reed

Terrell Miller ) wrote:
: "Eric Chomko" wrote in message
: ...
: Terrell Miller ) wrote:
: : "Eric Chomko" wrote in message
: : ...
:
: : : So Terrell, it was a commie lone nut all along
: :
: : : yes
: :
: : Ah, no...
:
: : extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, pal
:
: No one has "proven" the manner in which JFK was assassinated. There is the
: lone nut theory and various conspiracy theories. What you believe one way
: or another is based upon a theory.

: except that the lone gunman theory has been proven, repeatedly, beyond a
: reasonable doubt. The evidence (which has been very carefully explained

Totally false! The lone nut theory is just that, a theory.

: numerous times) supports the conclusion that Oswald alone murdered Kennedy.
: That is based on modern forensic examination of the evidence. The "evidence"
: that there was a conspiracy *always* devolves into unsubstantiated
: speculation, repeating other unsubstantiated allegations as if they were
: fact, and simple sarcasm.

The exact same can and IS said of the LNT.

: : : and the Warren Commission got it right?
: :
: : : got the 10,000ft. view right, lots of little details wrong. That's
: the
: : best
: : : *anybody* could have done in 1964.
: :
: : No, several authors like Thomas Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy) did
: better
: : than the WC.
:
: : no, all the early assassination literature basically just pointed out
: : inconsistencies and flaws in the WCR (of which there were many), but it
: : really wasn't until the 1990s that any kind of scientifically rigorous
: : examination (as we would think of it today) of the evidence was ever
: done.
:
: The lapel flip and jet effect summarized by the likes of Gerald Posner is
: as had as the worst conspiracy theorists when it come to intellectual
: dishonesty.

: and you say that because...you disagree with him? Therefore Posner was being
: intellectually dishonest? (And you might want to read your commment again,
: you just stated that conspiracy theorists are precisely that, something else
: we agree on).

Posner has NEVER set foot in the National Archives. John Newman as
repeatedly requested to debate Posner. Newman practically lives in the NA.
Posner used Harold Weisberg's library. He told Weisberg he was writing a
conspiracy book. He lied. Posner's timing (right after Stone's film "JFK")
was ripe for a LNT book given the current market climate regarding the
JFK assassination. Posner did his book for the $$$.

: : I haven't read Buchanan's book, but here are a few quotes taken from a
: : review of it on Amazon which we'll discuss:
:
: : quote A few hours after JFK's death, a suspect was arrested although
: there
: : were no witnesses and no confessions!/quote
:
: No one confessed, that is for sure. The witnesses at the time of the
: arrest (1:30pm CDT) were who?

: There were half a dozen eyewitnesses to Tippet's murder. One of them
: (Domingo Benavides?) got on Tippet's squad car radio to tell the dispatcher
: Tippet had been shot. That was about a minute after the murder.

: : okay, he's apparently getting off to a typical CTer start: he's
: attributing
: : shady causes to something that can very easily be explained by common
: sense.
:
: : The shots came from the TSBD (even most CTers accept that at least some
: of
: : the shots came from there, although they don't think it was LHO).
:
: Some do and some don't. But for some reasons the lone nut people seem to
: think that since all CTs don't agree, then they are all wrong.

: no, we don't think that. There are plenty of other reasons to think CTers
: are all wrong, the vast majority of which are the words that come out of
: their own mouths.

But the WCH is the BEST eveidence for a conspiracy. You ought to read it
sometimes.

: : Within
: : fifteen minutes of the shooting the police had quarantined the building.
: : Oswald was the only employee at work that day who was not still in the
: : building. Therefore, and with very little required in the critical
: reasoning
: : area, he became the immediate Suspect Number One.
:
: : There were several eyewitnesses to the murder of Officer Tippet, and a
: : description of the shooter was almost immediately sent out on the police
: : radio by one of the witnesses. Oswald not only fit the general
: description,
: : but was seen acting strangely several blocks from the murder spot. Then
: he
: : gate-crashed the Texas Theater. Again, here's someone acting suspicious
: and
: : breaking the law a very short distance from a murder scene. The lady
: working
: : the ticket booth called the police, who arrested LHO *for the murder of
: : Officer Tippet*.
:
: Some people said that two people were around Tippett.

: And people in Dealey Plaza heard a varying number of shots from a varying
: number of locations. Moral of the story: people don't all remember the same
: event the same way, and eyewitness testimony is unreliable.

Yes, and no. There were too many people that said a shot came from the
Grassy Knoll to dismiss that area as a possibility of having a shooter.

: : Connecting LHO to the Kennedy assasasination was a logical step but came
: : *after* he was in police custody for another murder.
:
: : quoteWe were told Oswald was a fanatical Communist who hated America.
: Was
: : this too good to be true?/quote
:
: Yes, it was.

: why?

Because too many people still felt that McCarthyism was good solid US
foreign policy. A commis assassin is a godsend to the anitcommunist types.

Look at Sirhan-Sirhan. He's a guy ahead of his time. Perfect "terrorist"
assassin given his middle easterner connection and the current political
climate.

: : well, the summer before the assassination, while LHO was living in New
: : Orleans, he was photographed handing out leaflets for the Fair Play For
: Cuba
: : Committee, and he was interviewed by a local radio station and admitted
: on
: : air that he was a Marxist.
:
: : You tell me, sport...
:
: The term sheepdipping comes to mind. I believe that LHO was set up by
: someone that wasn't privy to the fact that they themselves were assisting
: in a sheepdipping that was a bigger picture. LHO, not communist, but LHO
: assassin. Guy Banister was the guy who did the sheepdipping and was not
: aware exactly what it was for. Too bad whes was dead before the WR came
: out.

: well, you believe an awful lot of stuff with no proof whatsoever. Ironic
: since there are very tedious but common-sense theories to account for your
: scenarios that don't involve sweeping conspiracies.

The belief that LHO was a tool of intelligence being used as false
communist by one group and being groomed to look like an assassin by
another group is not at all farfetched. In fact, it fits perfectly with
things like no debreifing upon leaving the USSR to retrun to the US. Being
in New Orleans in the summer of 63. Being in Mexico City for a week in
early October. Moving him around as an agent would be
simple in fact. That is assuming he and others think that he's merely
trying to expose communists by pretending to be one.

: That all fits with the visit to Mexico City as well.

: why would a "sheep dipped" assassin take a Greyhound bus all the way across
: Mexico?

To look like he is trying to redefect, but this time to Cuba. There is no
proof that Oswald ever actually went. In fact, the only photo of someone
that was Oswald in MC looks more like Al Bundy that LHO. Surely you have
sen the photo?

: It fits with the shot
: a Walker and various other oddities of Oswald poppoing up in wierd places.

: but a much simpler explanation fits all the "facts" you mention as well.

No, nothing is simple in this case. Trying to do so misses a whole
bunch of evidence that cannot be explained simply. Did you see the photo
of Walker's house that had the car with the license plate physically
ripped out of the picture?

: : quote The fact that Oswald was never a member of the Communist party,
: : /quote
:
: : only because they didn't want him, he was Red as a firetruck. He *did*
: : defect and spent over a year in the USSR, however. And that *was* widely
: : reported starting the afternoon of the assassination.
:
: Where was he debriefed when he returned to the US? Who did it? The LNT
: would have us believe that LHO as a true defector and was not debriefed
: when he returned to the US with a Russian wife in tow at the height of the
: Cold War.

: I think you've been reading too many John LeCarre novels, sport. Governments
: don't work that way. Oswald was interviewed on several occasions by US
: Embassy staff, both when he renounced his American citizenship upon reaching
: Moscow and a year later when he wanted to return to the States. He came back
: home not only with a Russian wife as you mention, but also with an infant
: daughter. Was that a result of getting his sheep dipped?

No, but where is the evidence of his being debriefed. No doubt that he
was. Why can't we see it?

: People emigrated from WarPac nations all throughout the Cold War. The ones
: that were allowed to leave the country were the ones that were useless to
: their former country *and* were seen as harmless and not a security threat
: by their new country.

I am not buying that. We simply don't accept people back like that.

: Oswald was a former Marine who had been on routine duty stations. He didn't
: have a high security clearance as a Marine, he just happened to be stationed
: for routine duty at an Air Force base in Japan where they staged U2 flights,
: but teh Sovs quickly learned that he knew nothing useful about the U2
: program. His stay in the USSR was the epitome of proletarianism, he worked
: at a tractor plant in Minsk IIRC. There was nothing to suggest to anyone
: that he or Marina would be a security threat if they were allowed back into
: the US. In short, there was no reason *not* to let them in. (I'd imagine
: that the embassy pukes for the US and USSR used to swap stories about all
: the riffraff like LHO that both sides had to deal with on a daily basis, it
: was probably a running joke among the FSO types).

But his showing up (supposedly) in Mexico City was no joke. It scared the
hell out of US officials. Can you say "compromised"? LHO goes down to MC
and sets off all kinds of alarms, yet we can't place him there. Who was
there? Well whoever it was all the sudden got the attention of the
intelligence community. In fact, that visit is the one where LBJ cited to
Warren that 40 million lives were at stake.

: Ah, no... LHO to return to the US in the manner in which he did
: MUST have cut a deal with the State Dept. and act in some official
: capacity upon return.

: sheesh.

No, a fact. They even gave him a loan to make the move. Why can't we see
his tax records of 1963 if he was such a loser nobody?

: : (Which brings up another point often made by the CTers: how did Oswald's
: : life story get so widely disseminated so fast? If you saw the movie
: "JFK"
: : you'll remember Donald Sutherland's character telling Kevin Costner that
: : They had a dossier on LHO all ready to be released to the press, more
: : evidence of a conspiracy. But the reality is a lot less exciting,
: though: an
: : AP reporter in teh Buenos Aires (IIRC) bureau saw a wire report that one
: Lee
: : Harvey Oswald had been arrested in Dallas, and she immediately thought
: "holy
: : ****, that's the American defector I interviewed a couple years ago in
: : Russia!", and basic journalistic competitiveness to get a scoop took it
: from
: : there).
:
: Again, LHO gets press coverage upon leaving the US, gets press coverage
: while he's in NO, but nothing upon his return to the US. Bunk!

: well, the press coverage that he got when he defected didn't amount to much,
: just a single story going across the AP wire if memory serves. His little
: escapades in N'arluns attracted a bit of local interest (got his picture in
: the paper and a local-events news show arranged a debate between Oswald and
: an anti-Castro exile, but that's about it). Nothing remotely resembling
: Celebrity, if that's what you were implying.

Mexico City was the bombshell. Get John Newman's book "Oswald and the
CIA". Read the chapter "Mexican Maze", then we'll talk.

: As far as him returning home goes, I'm a little surprised that nobody in the
: States picked up on the story, but at that point Oswald was probably just
: seen as a pathetic little boy who was slinking on back home, not as any kind
: of news.

Or, it was intentionally covered up based upon official reasons.

: : quote or the "Fair Play for Cuba" group was omitted from the news
: : reports./quote
:
: : no, he was a card-carrying FPfC member for awhile until the
: organization's
: : leaders got sick of all his bull**** about having an unbelievable number
: of
: : people signing up. IOW, a Marxist fringe group dumped him when it became
: : obvious that he was a loser, which is pretty sad if you think about it
: g
:
: The only card carrying member.

: the only one in New Orleans. There were chapters in several cities, and IIRC
: the headquarters (the people Oswald sent his "reports" to) were in DC. He
: didn't invent the FPfCC, he just tried to join it and ultimately got the
: brushoff.

: Explain Bannister and his address on LHO's flyers.

: I'd file that in with the Alek Hidell ID cards. Just Oswald being arch in
: his typical dip**** way.

Or Alek Hidell was his alias.

: : quote Buchanan explains why neither Soviet Russia or Cuba could
: benefit
: : from JFK's death (pp. 17-21). /quote
:
: : funny, ISTR the Warren report going into that as well g
:
: What part?

: in the introduction, actually. They go to some length to explain why there
: was no reason to suspect a conspiracy of *any* kind, foreign or domestic.

Yes, that was foremost. "Don't even think what you're thinking because
it's wrong!" America losing its innocence in a single day!

: We didn't know about how LBJ emotionally blackmailed Warren
: (40 million lives) to head the group until many years later.

: I'm trying to figure out what point you're trying to attach that one to, and
: coming up blank. Yes, Warren was reluctant to chair the commission. Who in
: their right minds would *want* that job?!? The fact that LBJ's utterly
: typical armtwisting of Earl Warren didn't get much (if any) publicity at the
: time is because back then the press didn't get too deep into the sordid
: little realities of politics. It was a more naive age, is all.

It all goes back to Mexico City and Oswald's alledged visit. Oswald
supposedly met with a fellow name Valeri Kostikoff (sp) who just happened
to be the head of assassinations in the western hemisphere. There are
several recordings that were intercepted that have the two meeting, Oswald
identifying himself my name, and not sounding anything like LHO! Now,
after the assassination of JFK guess
what comes out of the FBI by way of Mexico City? Those recordings from
early October 1963 of Oswald and Kostikoff! THAT is how LBJ convinced
Warren to head the commission.

: : quote Buchanan states that Oswald could only have been convicted if he
: was
: : innocent (p.24)! But if he knew how the crime had happened, he would be
: : silenced (p.26). /quote
:
: : that's another thing about CTers, they "state" a hell of a lot of stuff,
: but
: : never seem to get around to actually *proving* any of it.
:
: : quoteOswald's assassination by Jack Ruby proclaims that Oswald was not
: a
: : lone gunman, and powerful forces were threatened by Oswald's existence
: and
: : talking. Nothing over the last forty years has disproved this./quote
:
: : another hallmark of a CTer: they don't have to prove what they are
: saying,
: : it's *your* job to prove them wrong, and if you try you're part of the
: : coverup!
:
: So, why DID Ruby kill Oswald?

: I have no clue. It is *possible* that he was acting under orders from
: organized crime (whhich would imply a Mafia hit on JFK), but I've never seen
: compelling evidence of that. The best we can say is that Jacob Rubinstein
: was a seedy character who had lots of seedy acquaintances.

Yes, yes, one lone nut kills another lone nut that kills the president.
Right, THAT is the simple explanation!

: My own theory about Ruby's motive, for all it's worth, is that he realized
: that the transfer of Oswald to the county jail would be Ruby's last big
: chance to be in the spotlight. He had long been known as an attention-whore
: who hung around when there was something "big" going on in town. He had been
: in the Dallas PD headquarters a lot that weekend, offering to arrange
: interviews with police officers for the newsies, acting as a sort of "tour
: guide" if you will, gate-crashing the press conferences, and handing out
: free passes to his nightclubs. In general glomming as much attention as he
: could get.

Not convincing enough. It misses the really big picture in this.

: Then by Sunday morning Ruby is worn out (who wasn't) from all the constant
: chaos of that weekend. He's at his emotional and rational lowpoint, totally
: drained. He's down the block from HQ running an errand, so he stops by, and
: by sheer chance there's LHO obviously being led away for a transfer...and I
: think Ruby just suddenly lost it, he was totally ****ed that Oswald was
: getting away from him and going to a place where Ruby couldn't wander around
: acting like a bigshot anymore.

: Ruby said he shot Oswald to keep Jackie and the kids from having to come
: back to Dallas for the trial, and I'm sure that was one rationalization he
: used so his actions made some sort of altruistic sense in his own mind. But
: I doubt seriously that's the real "reason", I think it was just a twisted
: form of jealousy, that Ruby suddenly realized he was about to fade into the
: background again and Oswald would keep getting all the attention. Same basic
: reason Oswald shot Kennedy, now that I think of it.

Enter the double lone nut theory. Too convenient for the many people that
wanted Kennedy dead and Johnson in the White House. A coup makes more
sense than a double lone nut theory. Sorry...

It is said that conspiracy theorists can't handle the possibility that a
lone malcontent with a cheap rifle could snuff out the life of the
president. That that belief has us digging deeper to the point where a
conspiracy theory MUST make sense. It couldn't be just a senseless act of
violence by one loser.


To that I say:
The folks that state that the lone nut theory is true can't handle the
possibility that a coup d'etat happened in their great USA. Coups are
the byproducts of backward Banana Republic nations, not the greatest
country on Earth. Not only was it a coup but it was one that they got away
with as well.

: Again, that's just my own theory, nothing to back it up. So can I call
: myself a CTer too? g

You are entitled to your own opinion. CTers are accused of making this too
deep to make it make sense. On the same token, LNers analysis is so
shallow given the depth of the evidence that the simple solution CAN'T
right. The problem is trying to get everyone to agree on exactly which
complex solution makes the most sense.

: : quote Buchanan recalls the political circumstances of the
: assassinations
: : of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley./quote
:
: : ...and probably totally failed to mention the nutcase that tried to
: : assassinate Truman while the White House was being renovated. Not to
: mention
: : the nutcases that have taken shots at various presidents since the book
: was
: : written. Lots of different reasons why people get assassinated,
: capital-P
: : politics is just one of them. In LHO's case it was lowercase.
:
: Right, but according to Warren here in America assassinations are always
: by lone nuts and never conspiracies. How convenient!

: I don't remember the WCR going into much detail about other assassinations,
: care to provide a reference?

Surely, read "Lyndon" by Merle Miller, around page 321. I can get the
exact page if you like. The book is a biography about LBJ. There isn't a
lot about the JFK assassination but what is there is easy enough to find.

: : quote Page 72 explains why Oswald was not insane: he tried to escape,
: and
: : plead 'not guilty' when arrested./quote
:
: : couple points he first, I don't remember anybody on either side of
: the
: : debate *ever* claiming that LHO was insane. Jack Ruby, yes, but not
: Oswald.
:
: Right the term was "deranged". Posner spends way too much time on this in
: his book, "Case Closed". And WR spends lots, less than Posner, but the
: idea was to put a lot of focus on just one guy.

: erm, because the evidence points to one guy?

No, it doesn't. The preconceived solution points to one guy.

: "Case Closed" was the anti-CT. Posner wasn't trying to analyze every single
: conspiracy theory and rebut each one. First, that's impossible to do in a
: single volume. Second, he was strictly interested in explaining why all the
: CTers were wrong about the WCR, that's all he was trying to do. He wasn't
: trying to rebut the conspiracy theories' slaims about other gunmen and
: what-have-you.

No, he was trying to claim that the WC got it right for the most part. He
was echoing the "official" explanation 30 years after the fact.

: : Second, technically LHO never "plead" (sic) anything: he was never
: committed
: : to trial and therefore never had a chance to enter a plea. WHen he was
: : arrested in the Texas Theater he said something to the effect of "well,
: it's
: : all over now" while drawing his pistol. Then when he was being led
: outside
: : to a police car he just yelled about police brutality. (WHich brings up
: yet
: : another thing the CTers igno the reason why he was so quickly hustled
: : into a squad car was because the crowd that gathered was starting to
: make a
: : bunch of ugly comments about him having "killed our President!" and
: such:
: : the police officers were *protecting* Oswald from the flash crowd, not
: : brutalizing him. Same reason Reagan's secret service agents stufffed him
: : into his limo so rudely, they were just trying to get him the hell out
: of
: : there as quick as possible).
:
: : Anyway, LHO was *arraigned* for the murder of Tippet and Kennedy on the
: : night of 11/22, but that basically just means that he was officially
: : informed of the charges filed against him. Oswald did claim he was
: innocent
: : in all the press conferences in the Dallas police headquarters, but
: that's
: : not the same as a "plea".
:
: Right and he was interrogated for 12 hours without a lawyer and there is
: NO record about that interrogation. Explain that!!

: Easy. Under state law at the time, nothing of what a suspect said under
: interrogation could be used as evidence in a criminal trial anyway. That was
: a very rough-draft Texas version of protecting the rights of the accused.

No lawyer? That is unconstitutional.

Why has no one ever come forth with the summary of the 12 hour
interogation for the sake of history? Could it be that the truth
conflicted with the official version?

: The purpose of the interrogation was simply to focus the DPD's efforts at
: shaking down leads in the case. IOW, you ask the perp questions not to get
: usable answers for the trial, but to figure out which way you need to look
: for evidence that you collect independent of the interrogation.

Yet, to this day NOTHING has come out of it for the public. In a free
country we have a right to know what exactly was asked and was exactly was
told during that interrogation.

: Why no lawyer all that time? Probably because at the time a suspect's rights
: were much less clearly defined than they are today (wasn't the Miranda trial
: at roughly the same time as the assassination, and didn't the Supreme Court
: ruling that created the Miranda Rule happen *after* the assassination?).

No lawyer = unconstitutional.

I suspect the DPD was told that LHO was NOT to see a lawyer.

: Also because the DPD found themselves totally overwhelmed by an event they
: simply weren't prepared to handle. Every account of that weekend paints the
: police HQ building as an utter zoo, with reporters cramming the hallways all
: day and police officers running around all over the place. The simple fact
: is that there's almost nothing that the DPD did that weekend that would pass
: muster today. Not getting in a Public Defender for Oswald was just a part of
: the chaos and half-assedness.

No, simple incompetence doesn't explain this. Given that he was caught at
1:30pm Friday and killed 11:30am on Sunday; not having a lawyer for 46
hours while in custody smacks of something much deeper.

If this had happened in any other country on earth you would never for an
instant believe it as fact. Yet, here in America we are supposed to buy
that line of crap. Again, it is the "it (coup) can't happen here"
mentality.

: That same night the autopsy doctor burned his autopsy notes. Explain that!

: Dr. Finck (Humes?) burned his *original* notes when he realized they were
: bloodstained (here's a hint: autopsies aren't very tidy proceedings), but
: only *after* he had rewritten them on clean paper. He clearly states that he
: had no intention of having the public or the press get their hands on the
: bloody originals.

No doctor, bloodstains or not, destroys forensic evidence. It is NOT his
place to do so.

: Again: by today's CSI-phile standards that was a big no-no, but in November
: 1963 nobody really had a clue how to handle something like the assassination
: of a President, and they did what they thought was best, not what the
: procedure called for or what was legally required to preserve
: chain-of-evidence. There *were* no legal requirements before the
: assassination.

Too convenient. Again, we are supposed to believe incompetence rules the
day whereas something more sinister explains the events much clearer.

: Why was all the real fresh 11/22/63 evidence destroyed in a simple case
: where LHO was a lone assassin?

: for very mudane reasons, people trying to do the decent thing instead of
: smearing all the gory details all over the media. Again, it was a much more
: naive age, and people didn't see as much gore on TV as we're used to.

Naive, yes. But THAT event changed us in that regard.

: : (Which brings up another point about CTers: there are huge numbers of
: little
: : subtle distinctions like that one that they either ignore or totally
: : overlook. One or two is no big deal at all, but the cumulative effect is
: to
: : suggest an almost total lack of common sense and ability to read for
: : comprehension on the part of the CTers).
:
: Your beliefs have gotten in the way of your ability to critically think on
: this case.

: erm...nah, way too easy g

: : quote Page 91 says the official conclusion was based on the Bethesda
: : autopsy. (Decades later we learned that this 'best evidence' was based
: on
: : the body of JFK's double, sacrificed to provide proof of a lone gunman
: : firing from the rear. See "High Treason 2" for these pictures.) /quote
:
: : no, we didn't "learn" that, it's just another little hook somebody used
: to
: : publish their own book. **** like that is the equivalent of "Hemi" in
: the
: : wonderful world of marketing
:
: No one has ever explained why "surgery" was seen on the head of JFK by the
: doctors in Bethesda who thought that it MUST have been done by the doctors
: in Dallas who claim that they never altered the body.

: I think you're misremembering. The Bethesda doctors thought that the
: tracheostomy wound just under JFK's Adam's apple was simpy that, a surgical
: wound. They had to talk to the doctors at Parkland to learn that it was the
: exit wound of the "magic bullet". Tracheostomies being very inelegant
: procedures, there was no way of telling anymore that a bullet had passed
: through there.

No, there was surgery done to the head. The tracheodmy was another issue.
I'm talking surgery to the HEAD!

: That was the big confusion between the Parkland and Bethesda doctors, it had
: nothing to do with any supposed surgical procedures to Kennedy's head.

I know. I am tlaking about the head surgery as described by the two FBI
agents in their report. You see as thorough as those covering the
investigation were about letting out evidence, some actually did get out.
It is that evidence that you cannot simply explain away.

: Who performed surgery on a dead JFK between Dallas and Bethesda?

: simple: nobody did.

Well, then why did someone state that surgery was done to the head.

Nobody "officially" performed surgery on the head, yet evidence that
surgery was performed on the head exists.

: : quote Pages 93-97 discuss the number of shots, and the impossibility
: of
: : three shots in less than 6 seconds from a bolt-action rifle. /quote
:
: : except that it wasn't just six seconds, that was an *estimate* made in
: the
: : days after the shooting based on a flawed understanding of just one
: piece of
: : evidence: the Zapruder film. And that "understanding" that leads to the
: : six-second number so widely quoted hinges solely on what you see in teh
: film
: : that tells you "there was the first shot!"
:
: : The people making that judgement call and arriving at a six-second
: figure
: : were people who were stressed to the max at the time. They had gotten
: almost
: : no sleep for several days, they were having to pore over a grisly and
: : unthinkable act, and they were not trained forensics examiners, even by
: 1963
: : standards. They made their best guess, but later "cold light of morning"
: : analysis with modern technology has proved that six-second figure to be
: : mistaken.
:
: Except that the Zapruder Film has an 18.3 frames per second timing

: under ideal conditions. The speed varies quite a bit, as you can see from
: watching the film itself. It's not as jumpy as the old silent movies, but
: the camera's speed is nowhere near constant.

Or, the film has been doctored. Why aren't all copies of the Zfilm the
same?

: mechanism that the LN crowd MUST expalin away by stating that the first
: shot had to of occurred earlier when the evidence does not support it.

: The evidence clearly suggests that the first shot missed the limo entirely,
: causing JFK to stop waving for a second and Connally to get a funny look on
: his face and start to turn to his right. I forget which Z frame that was,
: but it's well before the limo disappears behind the Stemmons Freeway sign
: for a second.

Right, it hit a tree branch at z166 according to Posner.

: : quote A bullet that struck JFK at that angle could not have struck
: : Governor Connally's back only a few inches lower, and remained intact.
: : /quote
:
: : ah, the old Magic Bullet Theory again.
:
: No, Gerald Ford's Big Lie!

: again: you're going to have to come up with something better than
: name-calling, sport.

Ford constinues to lie about the neck/back wound to this day.

: : The interpretation that this Buchanan guy makes, and which was echoed in
: Jim
: : Garrison's trial and ever since, is based on an almost total ignorance
: of
: : (or ignoring of) the actual crime scene and of the photographic
: evidence,
: : incl. the Zapruder film.
:
: : Elm Street slopes down and away from the TSBD, and Kennedy's limo was
: : slanted down and with its back end to the right of LHO during the
: : assassination. Kennedy himself was sitting jammed up against the right
: wall
: : of the limo so he could rest his arm against the side of the car.
: Connally
: : was scrunched down in a little jump seat bolted to the floor of the
: limo, up
: : against the drive shaft. Even on a level surface he would have been much
: : lower and to the left of Kennedy. (In the "JFK" film and at the actual
: : Garrison trial, however, the trajectory was illustrated by having two
: men
: : sit in identical courtroom chairs, directly in tandem, on a level floor.
: : None of which remotely reesembles the actual crime scene).
:
: I see you have spent time at the alt.conspiracy.jfk newsgroup.

: Used to years ago, yes. For a while it was genuinely fun to be able to pick
: apart all the dip**** theories and actually be able to tell someone that
: they're a total moron (which you can't often do in RL), but after awhile
: that got old.

I see you haven't changed your position.

: Nice to be able to do it every now and then, though, thanks for the
: memories! g

: You quote Johm McAdams well. He would be proud.

: well, I'm not quoting him, lots of other sources to rebut the "magic bullet
: trqajectory" thing. I went to McAdams's website a couple of times, but I've
: never met the man and beyond his being a professor at Georgetown who all the

He's from Marquette U in Wisconsin.

: CTers think is a CIA mouthpiece, I know nothing about him. He did seem to
: make a lot of sense, although he was clearly doing the Posner thing of
: trying to make a buck debunking all the CTers.

He teaches a class about the assassination.

: : At the time of the "single bullet" shot, the trajectory through both
: men's
: : wounds points *directly* back at the upper southeast corner of the TSBD,
: : which is where Oswald's sniper nest was.
:
: The problem is the head shot from that angle would have exited through the
: left side of JFK's face instead of the right.

: No, the headshot occurred at precisely teh point where Elm is pointing the
: furthest from the TSBD. Oswald was at about the 7:30 position wrt the limo,
: with a steep downward angle. Kennedy's head was turned to the left a bit,
: with the result that the bullet entered his skull in the top right,
: fragmented, and blew out the upper right side of his skull (btw, if you
: watch the Zapruder film carefully you'll notice that a large chunk of skull
: is blasted straight *up*, not back-and-to-the-left, thereby proving that the
: head shot was fired from the floorboards of JFK's own limo g)

I have been to Dealey Plaza several times. The snipers nest was NEVER on
the other side of 6 oclock when the limo was on Elm St.

: You're obviously very interested in the assassination, so I would strongly
: urge you to make the trip to Dallas and actually go to Dealey Plaza. The

I have been to DP several times!!! I have ~20 linear feet of JFK
assassination material. And, unlike Posner, I have been to the National
Archives II Building in College Park, MD (my back yard!), and done actual
research on the assassination using the JFK Assassanation Collection
there.

: first thing that'll amaze you is how tiny it is, it's not really even a
: *place*, just a stretch of grass wedged in between a few ugly buildings and
: an ugly bridge. Then as you wander around you'll notice the geometry of the
: place, how much Elm Street curves away from the TSBD and what a downslope it
: is.

Right makes me think a entrance shot to the right rear could NOT exit the
right front.

: By all means buy the ticket to go to the Sixth Floor Museum. The TSBD has
: been yuppified, it's actually a pretty nice little building these days. The
: sniper's nest in the corner window is glassed off, but you can look out the
: window next to it and get a good idea of Oswald's vantage point (just bear
: in mind that the trees have been growing for forty years, so it's not
: identical to the way it was that Friday). There's a spot painted on the
: pavement where the headshot happened, so just wait until a car drives across
: that spot and visualize the angles. Oswald fired all the shots, sorry to
: disappoint you.

It isn't disappointing. It is simply false. The disappointing part is
first, that people can't believe that we could possibly have a coup in the
US, and second, that we actually did.

: : That's been a nonissue at least since the Nova special back in 1993,
: which
: : is the first computerized trajectory analysis. many people have done
: more
: : "realistic" CG recreations of the event in the meantime, and Peter
: Jennings
: : recently did the single best job of explaining it of anybody I've ever
: : heard, but the validity of the single bullet theory is old news.
:
: The problem is that Connally who was hit by the magic bullet doesn't agree
: with your analysis. He is/was quite sure he and JFK were hit by two
: separate bullets.

: again, you're misremembering. He was adamant that he was hit by *the second
: shot*, not by a separate shot from the one that struck JFK.

You are presuming that only two shots hit and three were fired. There is
nothing to validate that unless you believe the lone nut theory.

: But you folks explain that away by saying that be was
: mistaken since he was hit by the bullet. Fuuny how he would have looked
: back and seen a wounded JFK before he was himself was hit by the same
: bullet.

: He turned to look over his right shoulder (where the first shot came from),
: and when he didn't see Kennedy he turned around to look over his left
: shoulder, adn that's when he got hit. That's real easy to follow if you
: watch the Zapruder film in slo-mo.

I have. Connolly saying "no,no" is after JFK was holding his hands to his
throat. How could a man say "no,no" if he were hit by the same bullet?

: There's a DVD called "Images of an assassination" that's still widely
: available, you probably can get it at your local Best Buy or whatever. I
: would strongly urge you to get a copy, it's very helpful.

I have the Medio CD. It is pretty good.

: : quote Page 148 mentions Senator Kefauver's 1951 probe into criminal
: : activities in New York, where the police, judges, politicians, and
: gangsters
: : shared the loot. In the 1930s Senator LaFollette had a similar
: investigation
: : that showed underworld forces were used by corporations against labor
: : unions. Organized crime is often used to carry out tasks that can't be
: : handled by legal means. /quote
:
: : trying to find the relevance of any of this to the JFK assassination,
: other
: : than "this happened in the past to a wide variety of people, therefore
: it
: : explains the Kennedy assassination", which...won't get you onto the
: debate
: : team at school.
:
: The CIA comes to mind with its mob dealings and trying to kill Castro.
: Actually, it is quite relative to the JFK assassination.

: I think you meant "relevant" there...

Right, as one theory states that Castro got JFK before he could get
Castro. Another states that since those that were out to kill Castro were
told to stop, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, they stopped alright, by
simply changing the target.

: : quote The first Gallup poll had 52% believing Oswald represented an
: : extreme right-wing group, gangsters, or some "unknown" force (p.152).
: : /quote
:
: : Mr. France, paging Anatole France...
:
: It is more than 52% since then and even up to this day!

: Here's something I don't think I've ever seen but would be absolutely
: thrilled to read about: of all the people who believe that there was a
: conspiracy in the JFK assassination, how many of those people:

: - can find Cuba on a map
: - know when the Bay Of Pigs invasion occurred
: - know that it's the *Bay* of Pigs and the *Gulf* of Tonkin
: - know who teh CIA director was at the time, who he replaced and why
: - know the month and year of the assassination
: - know in which city the assassination occurred
: - know who JFK's VP was
: - know which President JFK succeeded, and in what year
: - know who JFK's Republican opponent in the 1960 election was
: - etc. etc.

I know that the serious CTers are much more well read and do more thorough
research than do their LNer counterparts. Of that, I am certain!

Your comments above are more in line with Jay Leno talking to people on
the street. And it says more about our lack of education than it does
about whether JFK was killed by a lone nut or a conspiracy.

: I would bet that the number of "conspiracy" believers who can answer more
: than one or two of those questions accurately is, oh...ten percent? That
: many?

Not the ones that right the books. Weisberg, Newman, Lane, Epstein,
Summers, Buchanan, Josiah Thompson, Peter
Dale Scott: read "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK". It is truely an
enlightning book.

I'm wondering if you come from the school that says:

liberal = dumb
conservative = smart

??

Well, let me put it this way:
We all start out as liberals. Then we learn a few things and we become
conservatives. Most stop right there. Others of us continue to grow and
become liberals again!

The stats back me up on this based upon post graduate degrees, undergard
degrees, high school education and dropouts.

: : quotePages 155-6 note the strange behavior of Oswald in the Marine
: Corps,
: : which implies he was being trained as a secret agent./quote
:
: : mainly, Oswald's strange behaviour consisted of being a loner, getting
: : picked on by all his platoon mates, getting into trouble, learning
: Russian
: : and openly reading Marxist literature. None of which were even enough to
: get
: : him thrown out of the Corps, everybody knew he was just a useless
: nut.What
:
: So don't even bother to debrief him when he comes back to the US, but let
: him back in and with a Russian wife at that, at the height of the Cold
: War? What planet are you from?!?!

: Earth. And you?

Earth as well, but probably someplace where the air hasn't fouled up my
ability for critical thought.

: : CTers seem to forget is that he had been doing all that since he was a
: : teenager, so he was just being Lee. Unless you think that he was already
: : being trained to be a secret agent when he was in high school, in which
: case
: : you're probably beyond any help I can give you g
:
: Yet he still gets accepted in the Marine Corps.

: have you ever met any Marines? I have, adn with the exception of a Canoe U.
: grad who decided to be a Marine logistics officer instead of a squid because
: he was afraid of getting seasick, every other Marine I've ever met...let's
: just say they're not the most functional of people, and not exactly the
: sharpest bulbs on the turnip truck, okay? g

A bunch of conservatives?

Oswald taught himslef Russian. Not too shabby really.

: : quote While they denied Oswald worked for the FBI or CIA, nobody
: mentioned
: : the obvious: Naval Intelligence. /quote
:
: : probably because Oswald was so obviously on the **** List in the Marine
: : Corps that nobody in their right minds would go near him unless they had
: to.
: : Mostly he got ignored and given the **** jobs until his enlistment was
: up.
:
: No debrief upon from USSR.

: yes, we've covered that already. It's no big mystery.

Or, he was debriefed and like his tax records, we are simply not allowed
to see the transcripts.

: : Oswald wasn't a plant and he wasn't an "operative". He was too unstable
: and
: : grabastic to be trusted with anything beyond a simple, garden-variety
: : security clearance and routine jobs. In short, he was a nobody.
:
: ...that managed to kill the president all by himself, if I'm to believe
: you.

: yep. Scary thought, innit?

Not as scarey as folks believing that a coup could not happen here.

: : quote Page 178 tells of the Dallas ruling class, the how the oil
: business
: : controls them. /quote
:
: : here this Buchanan guy is getting desperate. Kind of like "The men who
: : killed Kennedy"; if you watch a single episode and you don't know
: anything
: : about the subject it's compelling and convincing. Watch three or four
: : episodes and you begin to notice that so many people from so many
: different
: : organizations admit being the grassy knoll shooter, you wonder where
: they
: : all parked their cars! g
:
: : Now we say goodbye to Mr. Buchanan and get back to your post:
:
: No, Buchanan persists and still has one of the best books on the
: assassination.

: Well, I'll put it this way: I've done some pretty extensive reading on the
: JFK case, adn I'd never heard of the guy or his book until you mentioned
: him. He's long since faded into the background. Probably because he didn't
: have as big a mouth as Cyril Wecht g

Buchanan's book was huge in Europe. I suspect that it, like "Farewell
America" (ever read it?), was frowned upon and was difficult to get when
it came out.

: : In fact, how the Warren Report reflects the Warren Commission
: : Hearings is beyond me.
:
: : It's a couple thousand pages that try to distill the essence of about
: nine
: : months' (IIRC) work of investigation by dozens of investigators. It
: can't
: : possibly be a comprehensive account of every single piece of evidence
: and
: : every single activity of the Commission, and it was never meant to be.
: It's
: : a *report*, not a documentary.
:
: : The WR as a summary of the WCH is a bad joke.
:
: : well, the WCR is an unfunny joke at best, but that doesn't mean it's
: wrong
: : or that it's not an accurate summary of the Committee's activities and
: : findings. Unfortunately, the political staffers that made up the
: committee
: : didn't really have a clue what they were doing and simply botched the
: job.
:
: The WR was a whitewash job and any thinking person familiar with the case
: knows it.

: uh no, but nice try at a sweeping insult.

No insult intended. I still have hope for you and enlightenment. It is YOU
that has chosen to be closed minded and therefore insulted.

: : The WCH is one of the best references for a conspiracy in the case.
:
: : no, simple paranoia and fast-buck greed are the best references for a
: : conspiracy. That and the fact that some people **** their pants at the
: : thought that large events can have tiny, meaningless causes. Which
: happens
: : *all the time* in life, sport, there doesn't have to be a Reason.
:
: Right I simply can't accept that a lone malcontent did this as given the
: prsident being killed it MUST be a conspiracy.

: ah, there we go then. That's why.

Right, and you cannot accept that a coup happened in your country, so it
MUST be a lone nut.

: : The WR is a peice of fiction.
:
: : nope, it's a crime scene investigation made by men who were not trained
: : investigators, but mainly congressional staffers. They did the best they
: : could given the era and their own lack of formal training.
:
: They did what they were told: one man, 3 bullets, no conspiracy. Outside
: of that they can do anything that they want.

: the 3-bullet thing came about very late into the investigation, btw. That
: wasn't the working hypothesis for most of the investigation, they thought
: they were only dealing with two shots. Then they remembered, IIRC, that
: James Tague has gotten stung by a fragment and that one bullet had
: ricocheted off the curb. That's when the WC realized there was a third shot.

No, the Tague hit was a 4th bullet. That was trouble. Hence, the magic
bullet was born. The "miss" was the Tague hit.

Eric

: --
: Terrell Miller
:

: "It's one thing to burn down the **** house and another thing entirely to
: install plumbing"
: -PJ O'Rourke

Reed Snellenberger writes:

(Eric Chomko) wrote in
:


...for the oil.


Plonk! (shoulda done it before, I know...)

Of course, it's much easier to "Plonk" somebody, than to try to answer
his question about NK.


alex.

Eric Chomko wrote:

: People emigrated from WarPac nations all throughout the Cold
: War. The ones that were allowed to leave the country were the
: ones that were useless to their former country *and* were seen
: as harmless and not a security threat by their new country.

I am not buying that. We simply don't accept people back like
that.

Yes, we do. Indeed, we have to, unless there are special
circumstances (public health issues, for exaple) that don't apply
here. Oswald was a US citizen; he never renounced his citizenship.
As a citizen he is entitled to return to the US when he pleases.
The State Department is required to help citizens return to the US
even to the extent of lending money, as in Oswald's case, if means
are insufficient.

You may recall that a dozen or so American POWs refused
repatriation after the Korean War. Most returned over the next few
decades.

: Easy. Under state law at the time, nothing of what a suspect
: said under interrogation could be used as evidence in a
: criminal trial anyway. That was a very rough-draft Texas
: version of protecting the rights of the accused.

No lawyer? That is unconstitutional.

But Oswald was not refused a lawyer. He wanted the services of one
lawyer in particular, John Abt (sp?), who was famous for
representing left wing organizations and defendants. He was allowed
to call Mrs. Paine more than once to have her try to arrange for
Abt to take his case. He was also allowed visits by a
representative of the ACLU and the President of the Dallas Bar
association, both of whom offered help in securing the services of
local attorneys. Oswald refused because he wanted Abt. Abt was
taking a long weekend away from home and office and no one was able
to reach him before Oswald was murdered.

Why has no one ever come forth with the summary of the 12 hour
interogation for the sake of history?

Everyone present agrees that Oswald, who seem to be enjoying
himself immensly, admitted nothing and denied everything.

Could it be that the truth
conflicted with the official version?

Well, certainly Oswald's denials conflicted with the official
version!

But the fact of no record being kept of Oswald's interrogation has
no relevance to the question of conspiracy. The lack of a record is
just as curious whether Kennedy was killed by conspiracy or Oswald
alone and can't be used to support either position.

For the sake of argument, suppose Kennedy was killed by conspiracy.

Firstly, it's very hard to imagine that any conspiracy would
actually have as part of its plan Oswald being in police custody
for the better part of two days being interrogated by police, FBI,
postal inspectors, etc and visited by the ACLU, Bar Association,
etc. But supposing that *was* part of the plan, the conspiracy must
have been confident that Oswald either couldn't or wouldn't tell
anything so there was no need to make arrangements for no records
to be kept, even if that could have been done, which is very
doubtful.

Secondly, if as seems more likely, it was *no* part of the plan to
have Oswald in police custody, arrangements for no records to be
kept would not have been necessary.

Therefore, one can't infer anything about the likelyhood or
otherwise of a conspiracy from the fact that no records were kept
of Oswald's interregation.

Jim Davis

On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 18:18:07 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: Only to people who pay no attention and think it's all about the
: oooiiiillll.

Well, the wells are pumping and Halliburton IS there and the war effort is
using the oil. Tell me why we shouldn't think it is about the oil.

Because we could have had Halliburton there and oil pumping without
removing Saddam.

h (Rand Simberg) wrote in message . ..
On Thu, 26 Feb 2004 18:18:07 +0000 (UTC), in a place far, far away,
(Eric Chomko) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

: Only to people who pay no attention and think it's all about the
: oooiiiillll.

Well, the wells are pumping and Halliburton IS there and the war effort is
using the oil. Tell me why we shouldn't think it is about the oil.

Because we could have had Halliburton there and oil pumping without
removing Saddam.

If we had a time machine to undo all the stupid (short-sighted)
mistakes from the Cold War?

Arthur Hansen

Reed Snellenberger ) wrote:
: (Eric Chomko) wrote in
: :

:
: ...for the oil.
:

: Plonk! (shoulda done it before, I know...)

Damn wuss!

: --
: Reed