You and all the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats made the same "logical error" at the outset of the investigation, the ASSUMPTIONS that the streak of light seen by many witnesses was the ascending fiery exhaust of a missile in flight and that the Massive Fireball was the Initiating Event when "the missile" intercepted the airliner. Therefore, it became your duty as Patriots to prove you were right. Therefore, those who disagreed with your interpretation of the witness reports are government agent disinformationalists engaged in the felonious criminal coverup of a heinous crime, the missile shootdown of TWA Flight 800.
In short, you've brainwashed yourselves.
And in your clumsy efforts to pound square pegs into round holes to try to prove you're right, you've run off ALL members of congress, past and present, the press [with the exception of the green men from Mars branch] and the public has walked away.
Your efforts to try to explain the wacky "coverup" allegations are grotesque.
"In my view, it does not take thousands to cover up this... it takes only a few, properly placed. It is my viewpoint that it was a terrorist act. The cover-up may be the result of the US Navy's FAILURE to intercept and capture the occupants of the two missile firing boats or it may be because the administration did not want a failure on its record in the upcoming elections. Unlike you, I keep an open mind on this." [emphasis yours]
To support your allegation that at least some of the witnesses should have testified before the NTSB, you came up with the following.
"In a trial, best evidence is primary evidence. A witness deposition is not permited or admissable unless the deposed is NOT AVAILABLE and even if admitted, the jurors are told to give it less weight than actual testimony. A police officer's report of what a witness said is inadmissable as hearsay. In this case were the witnesses unavailable??? Were they dead? No? Then the NTSB did not have to "rely" on the flawed reports from the FBI."
"I suggest that there are witnesses with more probitive value than others. I would believe it would be prudent to call those with the most detailed and complete accounts. I do not need to name them. There is a world of difference between NO EYEWITNESSES and even ONE."
SOMEBODY would have to name them.
WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to make the selections? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?
SOMEBODY would have had to gather up the documentation on ALL of their prior interviews to see if their contentions about what they actually saw changed over time as the result of input from other sources aka tainting.
WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to do that? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?
SOMEBODY would have had to question them.
WHO would you and the rest of the "shootdown" tinfoil hats have trusted to do that? The NTSB? The FBI? The civil litigants' lawyers? Asmodeus? Ian Goddard? Bill Donaldson? Reed Irvine? James Sanders? Acehai? Swordmaker?
You say - "I would believe it would be prudent to call those with the most detailed and complete accounts."
For instance?
You say: "In his [Asmodeus'] world, the trial court is composed of experts, the judge and lawyers, who from their absolute unassailable expertise, decide what the jury will hear. The now perfectly untainted testimony and evidence (Just the facts, Ma'am!) is presented before a jury who will make an unbiased and totally objective evaluation of what happened, with no application of their life experiences, education, and knowledge from other sources, just like little machines." [emphasis yours]
In the real world the Trial Court is presided over by an expert, the Judge, and he alone decides what the jury will be allowed to hear and see and what the jury will not be allowed to hear and see after listening to the arguments and reviewing the case law presented by other experts [and in his own law library], the litigants' lawyers. Other experts, higher court Judges, may thereafter be asked to decide if the decisions of the Trial Court Judge were correct.
Juries are not supposed to let "their life experiences, education, and knowledge from other sources" influence their decision - but in the real world they often do. In that event, however, it may be grounds for a new trial.
You say: "The Ian Goddard excerpt is a Non Sequitur and means nothing. He has not changed his view that TWA-800 was shot down. He is questioning his conclusion that it was the US Navy's "friendly fire" that was responsible."
Goddard appears to have succumbed again to his Circular Logic. Is he now contending that his EMP Missile Theory, intended to explain both the CWT explosion and the lack of "missile" damage to the 747, was carried out by Ahab In A Dinghy? His animated EMP Theory graphic is included with some of the other mythical "shootdown" graphics HERE.
My, my, oh my, how you like to put words in people's mouths.
STRAWMAN ARGUMENT - an illegitimate debating technique in which one party restates the position of the opponents attributing provably false assumptions to opponents that they are NOT arguing so one can knock down the false assumption.
My one erroneous assumption was that you are an honest debater and can read.
You obviously CAN'T read and by posting a false statement of my position, you are not honest!
WHO told you that I assumed the "massive fireball" was the initiating event??? To assume that would be to ignore the evidence, the statements of the witnesses, and the science.
Anyone who reads the eyewitness testemony of those who saw the entire event and looked at the reports would find that the initiating event was one or two white flash, high explosive, high velocity ordnance like detonations... followed some seconds later (not an insignificant amount of time), by the ORANGE, deflagration of the fuel/air mix of the "massive fireball". Why don't you look at the handdrawn diagram Mike Wire made to show what he saw??? The "Massive Fireball" IS shown much lower in the sky than the intercept point of the ascending contrail and TWA-800.
"In the real world the Trial Court is presided over by an expert, the Judge..."
That's a good one. I can show you Superior Court judges whose only claim to expertise is the fact they were college mates of the Governor of a state... and Federal Court judges whose expertise is more political than judicial. Many judges are judges soley because they cannot make it in private practice and are willing to work for the $110,000 a judge makes! You were aware that judges are often reversed for ERRORS, aren't you?
"Juries are not supposed to let "their life experiences, education, and knowledge from other sources" influence their decision - but in the real world they often do. In that event, however, it may be grounds for a new trial."
Only in your world. I have served on four criminal juries and have been the foreman of our County's Criminal Grand Jury for a year. In EACH of those trial instances both the judge and the contending counsels TOLD the jury to apply their knowledge, experiences and common sense in weighing and evaluating the testimony and evidence. Your ideal jury would be made up of 26 year olds who had just come out of a 20 year coma!
The rest of your response is just more obfuscation and demands that I take on the role of prosecutor or investigator, and then denigrating me when I cannot take on those roles.