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Experts Now Say JFK Bullet Analysis Was Wrong
Spy Handler writes "Researchers analyzing bullet fragments from the 1963 Kennedy assassination using new techniques say that the government's 1976 conclusion that the bullets came from only one gun (Oswald's) is wrong. 'Using new guidelines set forth by the National Academy of Sciences for proper bullet analysis, Tobin and his colleagues at Texas A&M re-analyzed the bullet evidence used by the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations, which concluded that only one shooter, Oswald, fired the shots that killed Kennedy in Dallas. The committee's finding was based in part on the research of now-deceased University of California at Irvine chemist Vincent P. Guinn. He used bullet lead analysis to conclude that the five bullet fragments recovered from the Kennedy assassination scene came from just two bullets, which were traced to the same batch of bullets Oswald owned.'"
It's about damn time. Maybe in another 44 years we'll also learn the truth about 9/11?
Why are people still deeply researching this? JFK is dead, so is Princess Diana, so is Elvis; the world is still spinning and everyone else has moved on. I don't understand, why are people concerned with this?
So, unnamed, so-called "Experts" are here to stoke conspiracy theory bullshit and maybe sell a book. What else is new?
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
It's worth noting that they did not prove that they were lying. Rather, they simply proved that they were wrong in their original analysis.
This reminds me of a particular xkcd comic.
-dave
http://millionnumbers.com/ - own the number of your dreams
"They reached no conclusion about whether more than one gunman was involved"
They only have shown that it is not statistically certain that all bullet fragments were of similar make-up of to those of Oswald's.
The only way in which I agree with you is that it is highly unlikely that we will uncover the other shooter. (Assuming there's only one other.) There was an eye witness to an individual on the grassy knoll, but too much time has passed.
If we could possibly uncover the identity of one or more additional shooters and gain some insight into who was behind the entire operation, that would be beautiful.
In closing, I will say just one thing about the whole affair - there is no proof that Harvey even shot JFK once, let alone twice. He was killed before we got to hear his testimony. But we know beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Make of that what you will.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Wait, meaning he could have loaded his gun with bullets from different batches of rounds?
Am I misreading this? It just says that some of the fragments had different chemical profiles, meaning they come from different sources. So, why couldn't he have used different sources for his bullets? How does this make a conspiracy, still?
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Misleading summary on Slashdot? Who would have thought? They didn't say it was wrong (meaning that there was more than one gunmen), they said the analysis was not correct. This means it could have been one gun, it could have been several - the analysis that supposedly proved one gunman actually did not. But, it didn't disprove one gunman either. Of course, "analysis not statistically significant" is a far cry from "multiple gunman proven", but which gets more clicks?
I used to believe a bunch of the conspiracy bs until I actually visited the site of the shooting in person. Once you've been to the Book Repository and seen the location in person, it becomes painfully obvious that it was almost trivially easy for Oswald to have done the shooting. Quite frankly, the conditions make it very easy (almost convenient) for Oswald to kill Kennedy.
In a nutshell, the location is **small**. Everything is very close together, distances are modest and the shooting was very, very easy from the window to the traveling automobile. The angle was just about ideal for Oswald. The "grassy knoll" is a joke, and the angle from the "knoll" was much less favorable for an assassination attempt.
Seriously folks, go visit the Book Repository yourself. All the conspiracy FUD is just anger and disappointment that something exciting and pretty was destroyed by something ugly and small.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
Well, I don't give any particular credence to any of the individual theories (I'm not an expert on the subject, or any related subject) but some have speculated that it was a faction within our government that assassinated JFK, that Ruby would have suffered even worse had he not executed Harvey and so on. If it's true, then those people are probably still profiting from the assassination and they should be found and imprisoned, and their ill-gotten goods taken away. (Most would say they should be executed; for the record, I am anti-death penalty for any reason save if it is physically impossible to imprison someone who will otherwise do people harm. And I'm having a hard time imagining such a situation barring the fall of civilization or similar.)
It's not about changing history, it's about understanding history, and its implications for both the present and future.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
If you have watched or read any recent documentary you will know that the "magic bullet theory" isn't magical at all. You would also know that JFK being shot from anywhere besides the book depository is basically an impossibility.
This revelation is interesting only because there is a possibility of a second gunmen. Most of the places where people claim a second gunmen to be have been heavily debunked in recent documentaries. I would speculate that the bullets are from the same gun (and are actually two bullets). Just because the methodology of the test isn't correct doesn't mean that the results of the test were completely false.
There is no need for a second gunmen to prove that there was a conspiracy or that Lee acted alone, it is just the easiest way to do so. Lee had such a weird life and there are plenty of holes in his life, especially after he joined the Marines.
I really don't see any other tests coming up with anything other than the fragments are from two bullets that came from Lee's gun. It would be much more correct to say that "Experts Now Say JFK Bullet Analysis MIGHT Be Wrong." And it is still a very big MIGHT.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
"I have this feeling that whoever's elected president, like Clinton was, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll.... And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'"
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
What I want to know is, if they're so good at maintaining the cover story for all these years, how come they're so frickin' incompetent at everything else?
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
They didn't say it was wrong (meaning that there was more than one gunmen), they said the analysis was not correct.
I guess you could say it was misleading, but it's not the way I took it. I took it to mean the analysis was wrong, as in not correct.
If any step in a proof is wrong, then the entire proof is wrong, even if the conclusion is actually a true statement.
Of course it's all the other problems with the official story that naturally push my mind in the direction of there being multiple shooters upon finding out that the proof of the single shooter was incorrect. But I still didn't take the summary as implying that this was now proven.
The enemies of Democracy are
The Federal Bureau of Investigation was deficient in its sharing of information with other agencies and departments.
Shock! Dismay! How so little has changed in nearly 50 years. My grandpa has told me a few times that ever since JFK he never felt he could trust the world he thought he knew. He's no conspiracy nut, but it definitely realigned his opinion of politicians and made him realize "Big Brother's" presence even back then.
The citizens of the US haven't become disenfranchised because of G.W.. That started decades ago and is simply accelerating rapidly these days.
No sig for you!!
They don't always leave larger exit holes, but it's a general rule, especially for larger caliber weapons. Velocity, slug material, slug design, trajectory, impacts inside the body etc, all have a factor. Obviously if a bullet hits a bone and carries the bone matter with it, it's going to do more damage than just passing through soft tissue. However, if a bullet passes through soft tissue on entry and only hits bone on exit (say being shot at the base of the skull with exit through forehead) it's a possibility that the exit wound isn't particularly large, especially with high velocity rounds. Lots of factors will affect the final result.
"Growing old is inevitable; growing up is optional."
I'm no conspiracy theorist either, but I think that the JFK assassination conspiracy theory is probably the juiciest of them all. That's because it's plausible, there were plenty of people with motivation to do it, and it's just shooting one man in a convertible car, something that could easily be pulled off with a handful of skilled people in the 1960s. Not to mention that there is just so much about the assassination and the strange or suspicious events around it that make it seem like we haven't heard the entire story yet. Yep, the JFK assassination conspiracy theory wins the grand prize of conspiracy theories. Notice that the 9/11 theories are the opposite - completely far-fetched, easily debunked stuff.
You guys are total nut jobs.
The united states government can't cover up a blow job from a 21 year old intern in the privacy of the oval office. What makes you think they can cover up an assassination on a crowded street at noon?
Ever heard of a Colt 45 peacemaker?
Granted they fired different cartridges and the peacemaker was originally a black powder round (lower velocity).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
From what I understand, it was because the voters of Texas outright hated him and not even Johnson's voting fraud buddies could be counted on to keep things in line. He was there to try to gin up some good will.
Of course, his assasination was the biggest boon to his legacy ever.
He was actually a horrible president with a self-centered high school mentality, put in place by the political mechanations of his father and the Daley's in Chicago. Lyndon and Kennedy actually hated each other, and he was only brought onto the ticket to deliver Texas- fraudulently. JFK's only real gift was charisma, and that's all he needed to win given his father, the Daleys, and Johnson.
If he wasn't assisinated his presidency would have been nothing more than a painful, distant memory by now.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
The government couldn't cover up the blow job because Monica talked and half the government wanted it blown up(pun intended) all over the media. It's when the whole government wants to cover something up that we should be scared.
First, there never was a "proof", at least not in the way you are thinking. Such proofs only exist in the world of mathematics, and there they are only possible because mathematics is a completely abstract field that does not involve perceptions of the real world (which always have some degree of intrinsic doubt). You cannot mathematically prove that Oswald did or did not do it, because Oswald is not a mathematical construct. Its been said many times before, but it bears repeating because people still for some reason try to do it; NEVER interpret real world arguments as mathematical proofs.
Second, here is the exact quote from the article summary:
The summary is clearly saying that the conclusion was shown to be false (meaning Oswald didn't do it), not the argument itself. Which of course is not what the article says at all. If you read it differently, you need to work on your reading comprehension skills.
Third, how the hell is this news anyways? Experts (or rather, people calling themselves experts) have been disagreeing with the lone gunman theory since the day Kennedy was shot. This can only be considered "news" if mainstream scientists can back up the lone research team.
Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
The first is how to find the suspect the Murder She Wrote way. You walk around investigating the suspects and then tell all of them that you know who did it and are going to reveal it tomorrow. The one who turns up that night to kill you, is the murderer. For the JFK assasination we need to go to the twist on that plot. Namely that the person who turns up is the one who wants to protect the person they think really did it.
How does this relate? What is most intresting about the whole JFK thing is NOT who actually pulled the trigger, but the sheer number of people that turned up at night to kill Angela Lansbury. An awfull lot of people/groups/institutions reacted as if they feared that "they" had done it. Not they themselves but perhaps some over ambitious underling, some group they supported and could be traced back.
Since plotting to kill the president of US of A is not what organisations like the FBI and CIA should be doing, just having them react guiltily is enough condemnation.
Think of it like this. I am thinking of killing CowboyNeal and have talked about this with various people. Then all of a sudden CowboyNeal turns up death. I will then offcourse panic, what if someone I talked too actually did it, it could be traced back to me and so I start covering my tracks even though in reality there may be nothing to cover up.
But for me to plot to kill CowboyNeal is not a crime in itself. If it was, millions of lovers of the english language would be in jail right now. It is not quite the same if a security agency plots to kill the president. It does not matter if Oswald worked for them, or even if he was the actuall shooter, that fact that they reacted as if they thought he might have is enough.
The SECOND thing I learned from TV is that conspiracy people are dreamers. They like to believe that the world is run by someone with some degree of competence. Not someone they agree with offcourse but at least that someone is in control.
Sorry. Nope. Unless someone out there is a truly amazing human with skill far beyond any know living being in all of history it just doesn't seem that likely that anyone could pull a shadow goverment type thing off for so long.
People just ain't clever enough. If you look for instance at the 9/11 conspiracies you get the idea that these people desperately wish for a world in wich someone is in control. To set all this up would require a lot of skill that I have never seen displayed before.
In a way conspiracy theorists HELP the powers that be. By looking for order they allow chaos to thrive.
Again the JFK shooting and the Murder She Wrote method. By focusing on trying to find out who DID it, the conspiracy theorists are leaving in the clear everyone who THOUGHT they did it. Who has there been no investigation of the known facts that goverments officials had formed plans to kill the president? These are not disputed, they are know and well documented. BUT because they did not actually do it they get off because everyone wants to find some non-existant secret organisation.
Same with 9/11 by wishing to find that the US goverment planned it all they are ignoring the facts that someone in the US goverment made some really bad choices. Those bad choices did NOT plan the attack but also did nothing to stop it. For some people, charged with the protection of the US, this is a crime itself. Just as plotting to kill the president is.
In my darkest hours I fear that conspiracy theorists are the wetdream of every conspirator. By focussing on the outlandish they are letting the mundane go unnoticed.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Dude, don't argue with conspiracy theorists. You'd have more luck debating pork consumption with a Islamic extremist or abortion rights with an evangelical.
Cpnspiracy theories are, in all important aspects, religions.
(meaning Oswald didn't do it alone )
There, fixed that for ya.