Posted on 11/22/2006 8:19:47 AM PST by don-o
I was in eighth grade in Mrs. Bledsoe's Algebra class, 6th period. She told us. We were sent home. The flag was already at half staff in fron of the school.
I walked home and my younger sisters were already there. Linda was in my mama's arms, weeping. Being the smart-ass, I made some cruel remark. (I must ask he tomorrow of her recollection of that.)
I turned on the television and watched all I could for the next four days. I was just beginning be become interested in our government. In fact, we had Civics class, which was my favorite.
On Sunday (Saturday?), we had to go out of town for a funeral. We were preparing to eat dinner (we call the noon meal dinner) and I was still glued to the TV, when Oswald shot Jack Ruby.
I remember the next week when Life Magazine came - the Zapruder pictures and all. I remember the ensuing months. Warren Commission, and in the ensuing years, more investigations and findings.
My mom remembers being in a shopping center with a friend of hers and thier younger children when they announced that the President had been shot and then later died.
I was sent home from school early that day but didn't realize why till I got home.
I'm no expert on the assasination.
I've been to Dealey Plaza a few times, visited the 6th Floor Museum and over the years, have read a number of books.
I can't tell you who ordered the assasination or why it was ordered - but one thing seems pretty sure to me.
There was more than one shooter in Dealey Plaza.
Looking at the various testimonies of those present and the Zapruder film, it certainly does seem as though there were multiple shooters.
How many? I'd say 3 or 4. Triangulated fire. Guaranteed to make sure that Kennedy didn't leave Dealey Plaza alive.
So you say, and you argue based on the Zapruder film and eyewitness testimony.
Eyewitness testimony is famously unreliable - especially when it comes to things like the discharge of bullets or automobile crashes.
No human being can see a bullet in flight, let alone definitively witness where it came from and where it ended up. The more so when multiple bullets have been fired in rapid succession.
The Zapruder film is quite rudimentary and grainy and does not itself capture the bullets' trajectories.
I am vague on the facts, but did not a Congressional investigation conclude that very thing?
You have eliminated any eyewitness testimony as "unreliable" even though there were many witnesses who said the same thing in separate (uncorroborated) interviews.
At least one or two bullet marks were located on the pavement from where shots missed the presidential limousine.
The Zapruder does not capture bullets in flight but it's safe to make reasonable deductions based on that film. Those deductions would be how both Connolley and Kennedy reacted in the second prior to and when they were both struck.
The "Magic Bullet Theory" is notoriously unreliable as it projects the path of a single bullet that any reasonable person would say couldn't happen. The Magic Bullet Theory insinuates that a single shooter was present.
A recently identified recording of the Dalls Police's radio (recorded because an unidentified officer keyed his mike) was reasonably determined to have reflected multiple shots. The recording did not determine whether the multiple shots came from multiple shooters though.
Will we ever know for sure how many shooters were in Dealey Plaza? Probably not. As I said in my previous post, there were probably 3-4. But the evidence out there points to multiple shooters.
We may have to agree to disagree on this one.
Ballistics and trajectory analysis conclude conclusively the shots were fired from the 6th floor of the Book Depository. I've visited Dealey Plaza at different times, the first time within a decade of the assassination. At that time Dallas was very sensitive to what had happened and still appalled that it occurred in their city. The years went by and Dallas eventually reconciled itself to the fact and, more recently, the Museum in the old Book Depository was built ... which I visited in the early 1990's and again a few years ago.
I was nowhere near Dallas that day.
I was in third grade myself. We were all getting ready for the Thanksgiving vacation; it was near the end of the school day and we were putting our chairs upside down on top of our desks (anyone remember doing that?) when another teacher stuck her head inside the door, looked at our teacher, and over the hubbub in the room said "It's official". That's all she said. Our teacher then told all of us what had happened. A frightening thing for young kids.
In sunlight most can see a 22 short. It looks like a pencil line in the air. Also a shot from a battleship's 16 inchers can be seen. It looks like a Volkswagen in flight.
Horse pelosi
What we have is not witnesses saying: "I was there and I distinctly noticed that bullets were fired from multiple locations."
What we do have is witness 1 saying: "It sounded to me like the bullet came from behind where I was standing." And witness 2 saying: "I'm certain that at least one bullet was fired to the nearby left of where I was standing." And witness 3 saying: "I saw a suspicious looking man running away from this location right after the shot was fired." (Imagine that! Soemone running away when bullets are being fired!)
Etc.
People, unless they have significant sniping experience, are generally quite wrong about where exactly a bullet was fired from.
This is precisely the thing that makes sniping an effective tactic.
If the average person could automatically tell where a bullet was being fired from, it would be impossible to get more than one kill from a position as a sniper - yet snipers often rack up multiple kills of experienced military personnel from a single position.
At least one or two bullet marks were located on the pavement from where shots missed the presidential limousine.
Is it 1 or is it 2? Or is it 0?
Or do experts disagree on whether we have a toolmark or a bulletmark or a surface deformation or whathaveyou?
it's safe to make reasonable deductions based on that film
Yet different experts have "deduced" quite different things from that snippet of film.
Deduce all you want, but nothing from the Zapruder clip is definitive.
The "Magic Bullet Theory" is notoriously unreliable as it projects the path of a single bullet that any reasonable person would say couldn't happen.
The so-called "magic bullet theory" is not an actual theory, but a derogative fiction that conspiracists put in the mouths of the non-paranoid assessors of the JFK assassination.
was reasonably determined to have reflected multiple shots
No one maintains that only one bullet was fired.
The recording did not determine whether the multiple shots came from multiple shooters though.
That's precisely the point at issue, and the tape (itself ravaged by age) can provide absolutely no insight into the question.
But the evidence out there points to multiple shooters.
Not really. As I've shown, the supposed evidence for "multiple shooters" is flimsy at the very best.
Thanks for sharing. I was 13 years old and lived the generation that sought the overthrow of traditional and venerable values.
We watched JFK's inagural when I was in 6th grade and I recall his declaration (surely addressed to the USSR), that this nation would be the champion of liberty and the opposer of tyranny for the people of the world.
I was not mature enough then to understand all of what that meant. But, as I lived through the 60's and 70's, I watched the confidence and unity of purpose that I took for granted, swiftly erode. It's all gone now.
It came back for a few days after 9/11; but, I think it's gone, gone gone.
I track it to that day in Dallas. TOu are of course to tell me why I am wrong.
I've never bought into the JFK (and RFK) myth. I think it's just a hugely successful PR campaign.
I had spent most of my childhood in Texas and although I lived in Kansas at the time of the assasignation, I knew of that hatred there. In retrospect, some of it was justified although obviously, not to the level expressed on Nov. 22nd.
Of course, here we're discussing a 6.5x52 round with 2300 velocity.
And even a .22 short is visible only if you're looking for it.
A bunch of hot air.
JFK had the chance to face down world Communism twice (Bay Of Pigs, Missile Crisis) and failed in both opportunities just as Eisenhower failed the Hungarians and LBJ failed the Czechs.
No onions.
And the RFK myth is even more farfetched - he would never have won the Democratic nomination in '68.
Had he lived, he have the exact same status in NY that his fatter, drunker, more homicidal brother has in MA.
I'm trying to figure out where I heard or saw that.
The late 60's and early 70's were cataclysmic and paradigm shifting days. I would be interested any something besides one liner responses to my thoughts.
Initially, a bunch of stuff was put under seal - there was some released under a FOIA request some years ago. I am not certain what is left.
2017 Sealed government documents surrounding John F. Kennedy's assassination to be released.
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