Thursday, March 31, 2005
JFK
Davin and I borrowed The Men Who Killed Kennedy from the library. It's an interesting miniseries, but like every other treatment of this or any conspiracy theory, it spends less than 10% of the time discussing anything relevant, provable or reproducible. The rest of the film is taken up by a parade of lunatics who do more harm than good to their case.
It did cause me to go looking for information, and I came up with some interesting websites. If you scroll down on this page, you'll find film footage of the "jet effect," or how objects react under gunfire. As my dad, who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after 32 years in the USMC and served in Viet Nam and Desert Storm, will point out, JFK's body movements after the head shot in the Zapruder film weren't impossible even given a single shooter in the Book Depository building. He says that any combat veteran will tell you that bullets and bodies don't act like you'd expect.
Here's a neat site called The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK. They have gone point by point through the movie and sought out the real facts. For instance, who was Col. X? (Answer: Apparently some kind of wide-ranging conspiracy loony who believes in alien autopsies and that US intelligence agents murdered the cult at Jonestown, as well as being a Holocaust revisionist, but I always like Donald Sutherland so I'll give him points anyway!)
I really do think there are some interesting questions about that day. And as my friend Cheryl (who is from Texas, so she ought to know!) points out, they sure acted in a manner as if they were covering something up, but it wasn't necessarily a conspiracy to assassinate the president. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more going on than we know. And after watching recent media portrayals of these events I have to suspect these directors are part of the cover-up. I mean, REALLY, how better to throw people off than to muddy up the waters with such grave ineptitude? Sigh.
I wish they would stick to the meat and bones of the case, and quit going off on tangents that are just ridiculous and easy to prove wrong. Here's a quote that I ran across that sums up my feelings:
My research has shown over 75% of all alleged facts in this case are false. Just take any book and compare the author’s conclusions to another author’s conclusions. Check each alleged fact in each book and see how many cancel or contradict each other. If all the alleged facts in all the conspiracy books were true, we could expect to have the following conclusions:
1. The Grassy Knoll was a very busy place with many gunmen who never saw each other.
2. There were at least 10 individuals depicted in the photos of the three tramps.
3. There were at least 30 gunmen firing from 4 different buildings, the overpass, the Grassy Knoll, the South Knoll, the Presidential limo, the Secret Service follow-up car, the curb on Elm Street and the sewer.
4. There were at least 100 conspirators in Dealey Plaza.
These "facts" seem absurd and ridiculous but this is exactly what we end up with if we believe all of the conspiracy books which have been published. (Source: Bill Adams, "The Enemy Within") From the page Bogus Evidence.
Anyway, back to reality...
It did cause me to go looking for information, and I came up with some interesting websites. If you scroll down on this page, you'll find film footage of the "jet effect," or how objects react under gunfire. As my dad, who retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after 32 years in the USMC and served in Viet Nam and Desert Storm, will point out, JFK's body movements after the head shot in the Zapruder film weren't impossible even given a single shooter in the Book Depository building. He says that any combat veteran will tell you that bullets and bodies don't act like you'd expect.
Here's a neat site called The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK. They have gone point by point through the movie and sought out the real facts. For instance, who was Col. X? (Answer: Apparently some kind of wide-ranging conspiracy loony who believes in alien autopsies and that US intelligence agents murdered the cult at Jonestown, as well as being a Holocaust revisionist, but I always like Donald Sutherland so I'll give him points anyway!)
I really do think there are some interesting questions about that day. And as my friend Cheryl (who is from Texas, so she ought to know!) points out, they sure acted in a manner as if they were covering something up, but it wasn't necessarily a conspiracy to assassinate the president. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more going on than we know. And after watching recent media portrayals of these events I have to suspect these directors are part of the cover-up. I mean, REALLY, how better to throw people off than to muddy up the waters with such grave ineptitude? Sigh.
I wish they would stick to the meat and bones of the case, and quit going off on tangents that are just ridiculous and easy to prove wrong. Here's a quote that I ran across that sums up my feelings:
My research has shown over 75% of all alleged facts in this case are false. Just take any book and compare the author’s conclusions to another author’s conclusions. Check each alleged fact in each book and see how many cancel or contradict each other. If all the alleged facts in all the conspiracy books were true, we could expect to have the following conclusions:
1. The Grassy Knoll was a very busy place with many gunmen who never saw each other.
2. There were at least 10 individuals depicted in the photos of the three tramps.
3. There were at least 30 gunmen firing from 4 different buildings, the overpass, the Grassy Knoll, the South Knoll, the Presidential limo, the Secret Service follow-up car, the curb on Elm Street and the sewer.
4. There were at least 100 conspirators in Dealey Plaza.
These "facts" seem absurd and ridiculous but this is exactly what we end up with if we believe all of the conspiracy books which have been published. (Source: Bill Adams, "The Enemy Within") From the page Bogus Evidence.
Anyway, back to reality...
