JFK’s Disobedience to the Powers That Be

[Time for change]

I walked into El Presidente’s office two days after he was elected and congratulated him… I said “Mr. President, in here I got a couple hundred million dollars for you and your family, if you play the game – you know, be kind to my friends who run the oil companies, treat your Uncle Sam good.” Then I stepped closer, reached my right hand into the other pocket, bent down next to his face, and whispered, “In here I got a gun and a bullet with your name on it – in case you decide to keep your campaign promises.” I stepped back, sat down, and recited a little list for him, of presidents who were assassinated or overthrown because they defied their Uncle Sam: from Diem to Torrijos – you know the routine. He got the message. – John Perkins, quoting an anonymous source in his new book, “The Secret History of the American Empire – Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth about Global Corruption”.

No matter what promises you make on the campaign trail, blah blah blah, when you win (the U.S. Presidency), you go into this smoky room with the 12 industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down...and its a shot of the JFK assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously like the grassy knoll, and then the screen comes up and the lights go on, and they ask the new president "any questions? – Comedian Bill Hicks, telling a joke (or NOT).


JFK’S DISOBEDIENCE TO THE POWERS THAT BE

In past posts I’ve speculated about the “Powers That Be” (PTB), the unelected but powerful and shadowy elite who seem to exercise influence over national and world events far more than a lot of people realize. Though most DUers – if not most Americans – seem to recognize their existence, because of their shadowy nature they are very difficult to talk about with much confidence.

In my most recent post I talked about excessive obedience to authority as one of the greatest sources of evil in the world. Of course, the most important “authority” of relevance to a political discussion of obedience would be the PTB.

Despite their minimal visibility, they seem to have their fingerprints over much of our nation’s history. Their ultimate purpose and motives can only be guessed at, but two aspects of our nation’s current condition seem to stand out above most others: 1) Rampant militarism manifested by a military budget almost equal to that of the rest of the world combined, a philosophy of perpetual war, more than 700 military bases scattered throughout all parts of the world, and imperialistic behavior and attitudes in relation to the other nations of the world; and 2) Obscenely unequal distribution of wealth.

Clearly, an understanding of this issue is of great importance to our attempts to understand how the world operates. Yet, the shadowy nature of the PTB greatly hampers our attempts to understand it. James Douglass’s book, “JFK and the Unspeakable – Why he Died and Why it Matters”, goes farther than any book I’ve previously read in concretely describing the conflict between the PTB and a U.S. President. Consequently, I find it to be one of the most enlightening books I’ve ever read:


Show down with the steel industry

Concerned about the rising price of steel, President John F. Kennedy brokered an agreement] between the United Steelworkers union and the United States Steel Company, signed on April 6, 1962, with the understanding that U.S. Steel would not raise steel prices. Four days later the president of U.S. Steel, Roger Blough, asked to meet with Kennedy. At their meeting he handed Kennedy a copy of a press release announcing that U.S. Steel would be raising steel prices.

In response to Blough’s double-cross, JFK told Blough “You’ve made a terrible mistake”, began immediately to shift Defense Department contracts from U.S. Steel to smaller companies that had not raised the price of steel, and had his Attorney General convene a grand jury to investigate price fixing among the largest steel companies. He then gave a press conference to the nation on April 11th, in which he said:

Simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steel corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest… The American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans…

Some time ago I asked each American to consider what he would do for his country and I asked the steel companies. In the last 24 hours we had their answer.

Under attack by the President, and facing massive public resentment, the steel companies then tried to negotiate a compromise with Kennedy, but he refused to compromise. On April 13, 1962, the six largest steel countries in the country surrendered, reducing their steel prices to their previous levels. Douglass explains the upshot of JFK’s actions against the steel companies:

John and Robert Kennedy had become notorious in the ranks of big business. JFK’s strategy of withdrawing defense contracts and RFK’s aggressive investigating tactics toward men of power were seen as unforgivable sins by the corporate world. As a result of the president’s uncompromising stand against the steel industry – and implicitly any corporation that chose to defy his authority – a bitter gap opened up between Kennedy and big business, whose most powerful elements coincided with the MIC…

When Roger Blough handed U.S. Steel’s provocative press release to the president, he did so on behalf of not only U.S. steel but also these other financial giants… The president was acting too much like a president, rather than just another officeholder beholden to the powers that be… His unswerving response served to confirm the worst fears of corporate America… The steel crisis defined John and Robert Kennedy as Wall Street enemies…

JFK’s four refusals to invade Cuba

In a previous post I discussed JFK’s four refusals to let his military and CIA draw him into war with Cuba. So I won’t repeat that here. But to summarize:

Following the April 15-19, 1961, CIA-sponsored invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by a Cuban Expeditionary Force, Kennedy’s military and CIA attempted to pressure him into committing to a full-scale invasion, in order to avoid the imminent defeat of the Cuban Expeditionary Force. Kennedy refused.

On March 16, 1962, Kennedy’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by their Chief, Lyman Lemnitzer, presented a plan called “Operation Northwoods” to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. The plan involved a false flag terrorist operation that was meant to draw the United States into a war against Cuba. The idea was shot down. Kennedy told Lemnitzer that “there was virtually no possibility that the U.S. would ever use overt military force in Cuba.”

In his handling of the Cuban Missile crisis, Kennedy repeatedly resisted advice from his military advisors to escalate the situation by invading Cuba. On October 19th, 1962, Air Force Chief of Staff, General Curtis LeMay, contemptuously said of the President, “This is almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.... I just don't see any other solution except direct military intervention right now.” But Kennedy instead decided upon a naval blockade, paired with intense back-channel diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. On October 22, despite the urging of Senate leaders for air strikes, he addressed the American public to announce his resolve to implement the naval blockade only.

On March 19, 1963, the CIA-sponsored Cuban exile group Alpha 66 announced at a press conference that it had raided a Soviet “fortress” and ship in Cuba, causing a dozen casualties. Kennedy eventually had to undertake vigorous action in order to stop the continuing attacks, as described in a April 6, 1963 article in the New York Times, which stated that the U.S. government intended to ‘take every step necessary’ to halt the raids.


Refusal to go to war in Laos

As Kennedy took office in January 1961, he was confronted with advice from outgoing President Eisenhower and from his military that he should intervene militarily in Laos against Communist forces seeking control of the government. Kennedy preferred a non-military solution if possible – negotiating a coalition Communist and non-Communist government in Laos. He made that policy official at a March 23 news conference, stating that he supported:

strongly and unreservedly… the goal of a neutral and independent Laos, tied to no outside power or group of powers, threatening no one, and free from any domination.

His military was adamantly against that solution. Admiral Burke told him “We should go in to win, and that means bombing Hanoi, China, and maybe even using nuclear weapons.” Air Force General Curtis LeMay stated in front of a room full of national security advisors that “The military had been unable to back up the President’s statements.” And General Lemnitzer told him “If we are given the right to use nuclear weapons, we can guarantee victory.”

But Kennedy persisted in trying to devise a non-military solution. Douglass describes how that turned out:

On July 23, 1962, the United States joins thirteen other nations at Geneva in signing the “Declaration on the Neutrality of Laos.” CIA and Pentagon opponents regard Kennedy’s negotiation of the Laotian agreement as surrender to the Communists. They undermine it by supporting General Phoumi’s violations of the cease-fire.

Plans for withdrawal from Vietnam

Early in his presidency Kennedy encountered strong determination from his military to get more deeply involved in the Vietnam War by sending in combat troops. Kennedy repeated refused to do that, though in November 1961 he compromised by sending in support units and “advisors” – though some of them did participate in combat.

After that he repeatedly requested a plan from his military for withdrawal from Vietnam. Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers and partially wrote them, discussed the reason for JFK's desire to withdraw from Vietnam against the unanimous advice of his military, with JFK’s brother Bobby. Douglass relates the following conversation on this issue:

Robert Kennedy answered that his brother was absolutely determined never to send ground combat units to Vietnam, because if he did, the U.S. would be in the same spot as the French -- whites against Asians, in a war against nationalism and self-determination.

Ellsberg pressed the question: Was JFK willing to accept defeat rather than send troops?

RFK said that if the president reached the point where the only alternative to defeat was sending ground troops or withdrawing, he intended to withdraw. "We would have handled it like Laos," his brother said.

Douglass describes the eventual outcome of JFK’s withdrawal plans

On May 6, 1963, the Pacific Command finally presents President Kennedy’s long-sought plan for withdrawal from Vietnam. However, McNamara has to reject the military’s overextended time line. He orders that concrete plans be drawn up for withdrawing one thousand U.S. military personnel from South Vietnam by the end of 1963.

Several reliable sources explain that Kennedy’s intentions to withdraw from Vietnam were firm and would have been carried out had he lived much longer.


Aspiring to an independent Congo

Again, against the advice of his military, Kennedy aspired to an independent Congo. Douglass explains Kennedy’s intentions and the friction that caused with his military and CIA:

Kennedy and (Edmund) Gullion promoted (UN Secretary-General) Hammarskjold’s vision of a united, independent Congo, to the dismay of multinational corporations working ceaselessly to carve up the country and control its rich resources. After Kennedy’s death, the corporations would succeed in controlling the Congo with the complicity of local kingpins. While JFK was alive, a Kennedy-Hammarskjold-UN vision kept the Congo together and independent.

Seventeen years after JFK’s death, Gullion said, “Kennedy, I think, risked a great deal in backing this operation (of UN forces in the Congo)…” The risk came from within his own government. Kennedy rejected his State Department’s and Joint Chiefs’ proposals for “direct U.S. military intervention in the Congo in September 1961 and December 1962.”… His Congo policy was also being subverted by the CIA, which had been arming the Congo’s secessionist regime in Katanga in order to promote Belgian mining interests… Kennedy’s policy, carried out by Gullion, was to support the UN peacekeeping operation. The President often quoted the statement his UN ambassador Adlai Stevenson made to the Security Council, that the only way to keep the Cold War out of the Congo was to keep the UN in the Congo. But the CIA wanted the Cold War in the Congo.

Plans to end the Cold War

Douglass presents a great deal of evidence on Kennedy’s intentions to end the Cold War, accompanied by frequent communication with Nikita Khrushchev towards the attainment of that goal. Perhaps the best evidence of Kennedy’s intention is provided by his peace speech at American University on June 10th 1963 (which I discuss in more detail in this post), just a little more than four months before he died. He began:

… I have, therefore, chose this time and this place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth is too rarely perceived – yet it is the most important topic on earth: world peace. What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war… I am talking about genuine peace – the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living – the kind that enables man and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children – not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women – not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

He talked about how the presence of nuclear weapons meant that that we MUST make peace a priority:

I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all of the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by the wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations unborn.

In marked contrast to the prevailing tough anti-Communist rhetoric of the day, Kennedy spoke of the need for Americans to examine their own attitudes:

Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament -- and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must re-examine our own attitude – as individuals and as a Nation – for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward – by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace… Too many of us think it is impossible… But that is dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable – that mankind is doomed – that we are gripped by forces we cannot control…

Six weeks later, Kennedy announced to the American people the first nuclear test ban treaty between the United States and the Soviet Union. With an extensive public campaign and help from his Secretary of Defense… Kennedy prevailed upon the Senate to ratify the treaty. Kennedy then undertook secret negotiations with Fidel Castro in an attempt to come to an accommodation with him.


Implication for today’s World

Could the circumstances of JFK’s death have created a chilling effect on future U.S. presidents with otherwise independent or liberal tendencies? Could these considerations explain some of President Obama’s right turns? My tendency is to answer yes to both questions, though I have no way of knowing for sure.

Most important is the question of how to reduce the influence of the PTB on the world, our country, and our own lives. The key to that question lies in the fact that they are vastly outnumbered. Because they are vastly outnumbered, their success depends upon securing the allegiance and obedience of vast numbers of people. Because their violent and depraved methods and selfish goals are so out of synch with the good majority of Americans, the key to securing their allegiance and obedience is to create an alternate reality that people can believe in. That alternate reality hides much of the violence and depravity from our awareness, as it creates an elaborate system of rationalizations for what it cannot hide. Thus it is that we’re told that the purpose of our wars is to protect us against terrorists or to bring freedom and democracy to the poor uncivilized peoples who can’t carry on without our help.

That is why the PTB could not tolerate, for example, prosecuting the Bush administration for war crimes, and why it gets apoplectic at the mention of releasing pictures that depict those war crimes. A thorough investigation of those crimes could go a long way towards destroying the foundation for belief in their alternate reality. It could force Americans to confront some very inconvenient and unpleasant truths. In short, it could undermine the whole basis for their power.

Let me be more specific about this. The power of the PTB in the United States depends above all else on maintaining the widespread belief that the United States is – as “super-patriots” are so fond of claiming – “the greatest force for good in the world”. What kind of person would be willing to volunteer to risk his life fighting in his country’s war if he didn’t have great confidence in the benevolence and motives of his country? Convicting the highest leaders of the U.S. government for war crimes would shatter that confidence to hell and would therefore go a long way towards undermining the power of the PTB. And that would radically change the fabric of American society.

[RandomThoughts]

1. Fear is a terrible thing. n/t

[Octafish]

55. Ignorance is worse.

The country has not been the same since the assassination of President Kennedy.
JFK stood for idealism -- the idea that we could build a better world by working together;
that the power of government should be used to make life better for ALL Americans, not just the rich and powerful;
that peaceful cooperation yields lasting friendships better than extorting resources through military might.

He also transformed his idealism into action, helping achieve what had been considered only months earlier to be impossible --
landing men on the moon and returning them safely to the earth.
If we could do that, We the People could do anything on earth -- like ending war, hunger, poverty, preventable disease.

Instead, we got the War Party. They're the ones spreading fear.

[mikelewis]

110. Cowardice is a terrible thing...

Fear just gets your blood pumping.

[anonymous171]

2. JFK was not a dove.

He was killed by the Federal Reserve because he tried to screw with them (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_11110.) The PTB only care about one thing: wealth. If you threaten their wealth, you die. It's that simple really.

[Time for change]

8. Do you think I was making up the stuff in the OP?

You don't think that Eisenhower's warning about the MIC concerned an issue that was highly related to wealth?

[DaLittle Kitty]

208. EXCELLENT! Likely The Truth!

:puke:

[stopbush]

209. Two JFK CTists die and go to heaven where they meet their maker.

"So tell us, god," says the one, "who really killed JFK?"

"Oh, that old thing?" replies god. "It was Oswald. He acted entirely on his own. Didn't you ever read the Warren Commission Report when you were on Earth? It's all in there."

"Man," whispers the one stunned CTist to the other, "this thing goes much higher than we ever imagined!"

[jakeXT]

26. I have heard that, I haven't read enough on it and I'm too young to have been there

People claim that because his father was a "Nazi" the PTB thought his son would be one of their own.
They claim JFK was their boy and they gave him the election.

"You gotta swallow this one," says a Republican hack in Oliver Stone's Nixon, referring to the 1960 election, in which John F. Kennedy prevailed. "They stole it fair and square."
http://www.slate.com/id/91350/


I don't know if it's true or not, but they say JFK ran on a hawkish platform and sometime he changed, I don't know why.

Pepper for example says he didn't like Robert Kennedy, when he was campaigning for him, but he also says he changed later.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIIDyaG648


I really don't know what changed his mind, maybe it came with time and good advice, I don't know.

"President Kennedy first began to have doubts about our military effort in Vietnam in 1961 when both General Douglas MacArthur and General Charles de Gaulle warned him that the Asian mainland was no place to be fighting a non-nuclear land war. There was no end to Asian manpower, MacArthur told the President, and even if we poured a million American infantry soldiers into that continent, we would still find ourselves outnumbered on every side. De Gaulle said the same thing in Paris that spring, pointing out that the French had shown us the hopelessness of trying to fight in that country."

...

There is no document or transcript of the talks between de Gaulle and JFK because their discussions were private, with only the translators present. But, as evidenced in the above excerpts, the reporters, aides and historians have passed on what JFK said they discussed.

It's an historical fact that France completely withdrew from Vietnam and it is also an historical fact that JFK was planning to completely withdraw the United States from Vietnam. It is also an historical fact that within days of JFK's assassination on November 22nd, 1963, his successor, Lyndon Johnson, reversed JFK's order to remove all American soldiers from Vietnam. This set the stage for American's entry, nine months later, into the 'Vietnam Fiasco' which resulted in the deaths (for Communist benefit) of thousands upon thousands of American soldiers, something that JFK, MacArthur and de Gaulle warned would happen.

..
http://www.orwelltoday.com/readerjfkdegaulle.shtml

[Time for change]

31. It is true that there were some elements of hawkishness in his campaign for the presidency

In particular, he warned of a "missile gap" between us and the Soviet Union, which it turns out didn't actually exist.

Anyhow, read his "peace speech" that he gave 4 months before his death (which I link to in the OP). It's very hard to believe that that came from a hawk.

And consider his repeated refusals to let his military push him into war. I don't believe that we've ever seen a U.S. president resist his military that much on that subject.

[droidamus2]

41. Seems to me

Maybe President Kennedy went from a more hawkish position to a more reasoned position because prior to gaining the presidency he had bought into the PTBs alternate reality and when he gained the power of the presidency and was able to get closer to the truth he realized it was all a bunch of self serving bullshit.

[Time for change]

77. That may have been part of it

But also, there was evidence prior to his becoming president that he was a lot less hawkish on a lot of issues than most of Congress. For example, he had doubts about our role in Vietnam that few other Americans had, while he was in Congress. The fact that he let his military talk him into sending at least advisors and support units there was a calculated compromise. He felt that he couldn't buck them on everything.

Also, part of it was pure politics. For example, though he intended a complete withdrawal from Vietnam, he also told his closest advisors that he would not attempt a complete withdrawal until after the 1964 election. That's because he believed that efforts in that direction prior to the election could cause him to lose, in which case we would have a real war hawk for president. Can't say that I blame him for that.

[rucognizant]

112. No he didn't run on a hawkish platform................

I wouldn't have voted for him! ( Nixon didn't seem too bad, after all he WAS a QUaker, & a flaming liberal compared to today's RW!)
I was just 5 years out from having spent a summer in Germany courtesy of the Quakers. ( non-violent),
I spent a week in the Hague, sitting in the square in front of the newly formed Peace Palace, ( UN headquarters)with an International group of teens, all of whom had endured WWII in some form. The United Nations ( doctrine largely written by ELeanor Roosevelt, as she was the only woman on the committee they let her do most of the work) was a WONDROUS IDEA THAT WOULD BRING EVERLASTING PEACE TO THE WORLD, Weary of major war! WHo knew these greedy evil deadheads PTB, were lurking in the shadows?
JFK's platform brought, HOPE, ASPIRATION, " we can reach the moon" idealism! In a way I haven't heard since! After Bobby was murdered, all bets were off..............and DON"T FORGET TED"S SMALL PLANE CRASH WHERE HE BROKE HIS BACK!He survived that, however he DIDN"T survive Chappaquidick, politically! I am firmly convinced that was rigged! ANd indead have gotten cofirmation from an eye witness.......2nd hand!
Back in those days the majority was LIBERAL! Don't believe the propaganda that old people are crotchity cranky conservatives.
Guess where that story came from! ............

[droidamus2]

151. Thanks for the info

I was only 6 at the time so wasn't up on what platform JFK ran on.

[stopbush]

171. JFK ran on the platform that there was a "missle gap" between the USA & the USSR.

That probably wasn't true, but it helped get him elected.

[anonymous171]

54. I agree. JFK was not a hawk.

He was a moderate.

[Time for change]

73. So what parts of the OP don't you believe?

[bigtree]

135. AH! the peace speech at AU

I recommend that to anyone who wants to understand what kind of president Kennedy would have been had he survived. That is probably the best American political speech by a president, ever. I've stood at the spot of the address, several times, and dreamed for hours of that peace Kennedy spoke of:

"Peace need not be impracticable - - and war need not be inevitable . . ."

nice post btw . . . k&r!

[JDPriestly]

107. And Halliburton got the contracts to pave the airstrips in Viet Nam.

Prior to the time that Johnson got them those contracts, they were not such an important company as I understand it. No bid contracts. That's how Halliburton, then the Brown & Root part of it, became so rich and powerful.

[Larry Ogg]

39. The Federal Reserve is not at the top of the pyramid,

Or let me put it this way; the PTB has a banking system that is used to enslave the world in debt, and their branch office is in the United States, it is called the “Federal Reserve”.

[NorthCarolina]

59. It seems likely to me that EO 11110 was what did JFK in nt

[SammyWinstonJack]

131. Probably was. nt.

[patrice]

3. The Big Lie: We are a free autonomous nation.

Cheney is under NO legal threat; WHAT is he doing in our face so much???

Think about it: Sen. Reid says Torture Investigations would interfere with "our" Legislative goals; what would he say if the opposite were true? What if the political pressure from a Torture Investigation put things on the table that would not be there otherwise? Q. What would they say about that? A. "Torture Investigation will interfere with Legislation."

Regarding the pictures that have not been released because they will enflame Muslims: Does anyone think the IRAQIS have forgotten what's in those pictures? Have told no one? Maybe OUR Troops are being killed MORE because the Iraqi people see no Justice for what they KNOW to be true.

The trans-national corporations who HIRED BushCo and Wars 'r' Us have made their wishes about all of this known to Our President. They HIRED Obama and let us play along, because they are hoping that he can control Us.

[FrenchieCat]

4. Barack Obama is not owned. The days of slavery have long been over!

If they wanted to Buy someone, they would have elected Hillary Clinton. Afterall, her husband was just there. Doh! :eyes:

[midnight]

12. Slavery is alive and hidden.

Slave labour that shames America

Migrant workers chained beaten and forced into debt, exposing the human cost of producing cheap food

By Leonard Doyle in Immokalee, Floride


Wednesday, 19 December 2007



Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom.


Related articles
The exploited: 'You work so hard to end up earning hardly anything'

[paparush]

27. My Wife was directly involved in a case like this in NC.

She worked for an agency that provided services for the homeless. One day three men stagger into her office and tell a tale of being held prisoners on a farm in eastern, NC. Two years later, after the Dept of Labor and the FBI investigated, the farm owner was charged with what amounts to Slavery and sentenced to 3 years.

[TheWatcher]

25. .....

:eyes:

[proteus_lives]

66. Great Movie!

:-)

[Echo In Light]

30. Wrong. Corporate America decides who we "elect." Our elections are sham, and always have been.

[Larry Ogg]

43. I don’t know if I should just agree with you or say what I believe. For instance;

Yup… The voter fraud on Election Day is a one day event.
But what happens between Election Days is what really helps us decide, so the PTB’s corporately owned conservative biased hypnotic fraud and propaganda machine, aka the M$M, helps us decide what true reality is and what leaders are best able to protect us from the evil terrorist and other uncontrollable acts of GOD such as bank failures, wall street crashes, skyrocketing health care, bridge collapses, gays and lesbians, illegal aliens, homeless people, starving children, pirates, and Solar System Warming… Sorry if I left anyone or thing out, but isn’t that kind of what happens when we have pretend fair and free elections…

[bvar22]

47. Agree.

In this case, they sponsored TWO Corporate Approved candidates.

Must keep the illusion of Choice alive to keep the peasants passive.
Bread & Circuses.

[Echo In Light]

53. Divide and rule

[truedelphi]

5. Excellent debunking of the Big Lie that is underway. n/t

[flyarm]

17. Patrice..you hit the nail on the head! You are 100% correct! Think Pepsi

Pepsi was one of the top companies that Castro took over when he became the dictator in Cuba..Castro was "our " black opps guy to start with..

Pepsi was in on the black opps and our black opps attacks on Cuba..it wasn't just the casino folks.. ..and who was one of the big corps behind our new boss???????

may i suggest people read barry and the Boys..it is out of print until sometime this sumer..but it is must reading!

Daniel Hopsicker..Barry and the Boys..read it! if you haven't already!

[leftstreet]

18. Bravo!

Well said.

[rjwin]

22. Obama has a Master

and its not the truth or constitution...

[dflprincess]

6. If we have suspicions about the dangers of crossing the PTB

then surely anyone who has reached the point of running for president must know what goes on. This might explan some of Obama's right turns, but if it does, he knew he would be making those turns before he was elected and it does not excuse it.

[Time for change]

97. I believe that they do know

I'm not excusing Obama for his right turns. I've criticized his decisions in several other posts. But I don't want to judge him.

[keep_it_real]

7. "In every time line visited JFK was assassinated."

In a fictional story (of which I don't remember but I remember this line for the story) the character who was a time traveler said that in all the time lines he had visited JFK was always assassinated.

Which means to me that in real life he had po'ed so many powerful people on so many issues, trying to DO GOOD, that at a point in any time the evil deed was done.

[midnight]

9. You make a good point. Time to let the facts speak for themselves.

[undergroundpanther]

10. The fabric of society needs changing

And TPTB must be dug out of the shadows, if necessary by force, fully investigated by all,prosecuted, regardless of threats,politics and money. For ANYTHING to change for the better People need to develop inner consciences and an inner locus of control.TPTB MUST put on trial before this whole world be made to account for all the crimes they did and do,and everything names scams,criminal acts,torture you name it , it all must be revealed, to all,and these monsters need to be destroyed for being tyrants against not only America but humanity itself,The Earth itself and the future.
As long as TPTB are left to hide the evidence and these pigs left to fester, profit will trump humanity,war will be killing us all, generation after generation.
TPTB are half the problem the other is rampant narcissism and a personal unwillingness to question authority and society,and be responsible.Remember wall street and TPTB are terrified if people have time to introspect,tr 'loiter with each other, time to commiserate and get to know each other for solidarity of the masses is what TPTB fear most. This is why Americans work more hours and less vacation than other industrialized countries.And why prices are kept just so,to prevent enough security so a worker can have time to introspect or build a richer more varied life of their own outside of working.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/26/077.html

[villager]

13. "if necessary by force...."

That's the real elephant in the room, ain't it?

[uberblonde]

72. Yeah, I've been thinking about that lately.

How much is Obama ALLOWED to do?

[flyarm]

19. United we stand, divided we fall..they have deliberately split this nation..

they split us with the red and blue bullshit for a reason..they did it in this election..youth against the elders..they are doing it right here at Du..and all can see it..it is very plain to see.

We all need to sit with our families and neighbors and girlfriends and buddies and we need heart to heart talsk..like our folks used to do during Sunday dinners..( of which there is very little these days)..we need to sit during summer vacations and talk..

Of course the powers that be are scared shitless of that..but we have to do it..we have to educate those around us to what is going on.

United we stand..divided we fall..remember that ..reach out to those who are not as educated to so many facts we discuss here..people are busy..raising kids and working to barely make it through the days and weeks..many do not know where to get the info..reach out to them..start internet groups..but we must talk to those around us.

"they" want us divided.

take it back..and don't let the bully pulpit silence you..they are trying even here to silence us...don't let them.

[DemReadingDU]

35. As the economy falters, and slides into depression

There will come a new kind of division...us vs. them

us being the paupers, them being the elites


The filing of GM today for bankruptcy is another leg downward. Think of the ramifications. More factories closing, dealers closing, suppliers closing. Many more thousands (millions?) will be unemployed. What if unemployment runs out before new jobs are created? Then there will be more people with even less money and probably little if any savings nor insurance. So more people become homeless. How do homeless jobless people eat and shop and go to the doctor?

When companies go bankrupt, they don't care if you are Democrat or Republican. After some time, we will unite, to take back what was stolen from us by the elites. Probably won't happen in my lifetime though.

[Larry Ogg]

48. You have summarized the problem and solution very well flyarm,

no doubt that tons of factual evidence exist that substantiate the true intentions of the PTB. The real question is whether or not We the People can achieve the solution you suggest by letting go of our narcissistic egos, and then by uniting, learning and discussing the facts objectively. But the PTB has certainly placed enough obstacles in our way so as to prevent us from doing just that, they have ingrained false perceptions in the psyche of great multitudes; and yes I believe that the prospect of large groups discovering the truth about what they have done scares the hell out of them and they will do everything in their power to prevent that from happening, but if we don’t at least try mankind might very well return to a state of monarchs, feudal lords and serfs or even worse, it may forfeit its future altogether. But if people believe that technology and the modernity of our times will prevent us from regressing to the horrific past from which ancestors came they believe such things at the peril of all…

[sarah553807]

70. The whole "they" thing is starting to sound a little bit

glen beckish

[tkmorris]

75. "It's a big club, and you ain't in it"

Since you seem fond of Carlin. There is most definitely a they, the only thing most people disagree on is who "they" are.

[madfloridian]

11. Thoughtful well documented post.

Recommended.

[tomreedtoon]

14. Ever hear of "Gabriel Over the White House"?

It's a genuine movie:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024044/

In it, a President (possibly crazy or "inspired" by an auto accident) solves the problem of the man with the gun in his pocket: he summarily arrests and executes all gangsters and gang members. He creates jobs to end unemployment. He shows the world that warships (the main form of international force in those days, before Hitler) are obsolete because an airplane can bomb them.

Seems to me that there are people further down on the left that are hoping for just this kind of action from Obama. It sounds pretty good to them, as long as it's CEO's and bank officers that are rounded up and executed without trial - not Jews.

Of course, it's the same thing; fascism under a new name.

[patrice]

33. I know a lot of Lefties and not one of them wants what you say.

Anyone who wants to kill corporatists is not a real member of the Left. They are sociopaths who happened to assume the persona of the Left by chance.

What the Left wants is for there to be alternatives to the god-almighty, holy-christian, Rat Race. We want co-operative and collaborating alternatives that would allow individuals to develop not only economically, but also personally and socially in ways that meet their own unique needs and motivations. What the Left wants is for the future of this country NOT to be crushed to DEATH under the weight of UN-ENDING WAR. The Left wants something called America to recognize its responsibilities to ALL of its members. That doesn't mean that we want the State to hand everything to us, but that there be a basic set of agreements amongst ourselves as to what constitutes real value exchanged for real value, not this bullshit phony value called money. We want America to be what America wants to be, not just what the wealthy think it should be.

[Time for change]

99. I don't know of any DUer suggesting that we should

summarily arrest and execute Bush administration people who may have committed war crimes.

Everything I've seen from the left here on that subject wants them to be prosecuted for their crimes, not summarily executed without trial.

[JDPriestly]

109. I am one of the loudest voices for trials. I am not asking for

any particular sentence. I think it is important to have court decisions with regard to what kind of treatment our government must afford to prisoners and detainees. Criminals should be punished, but sentence mitigation would be acceptable to me so long as there is some punishment after conviction. Personally, I don't think the punishment is so important although the victims of the torture would probably disagree with me. I think the trials and the court opinions are extremely important. As a nation, we need the courts to tell future leaders what they can and cannot do.

[Time for change]

117. One of the most important reason for prosecuting the Bush administration criminals is to

let the American people know what happened. I'm not adamant about severe punishment, but for the kinds of crimes that the Bush administration committed, I think the punishment at least needs to be severe enough substantially reduce the likelihood of its happening again.

[roamer65]

15. The system is a wild beast.

Kennedy tried to control it and it turned on him.

[Sinistrous]

16. I am sure that President Obama got a similar visit from the PTB.

Such a visit would explain some of the hesitancy/backpedaling we have observed since January 20.

[IthinkThereforeIAM]

116. Yep...

...that plus the fact that politics is compromise, you need to consider yourself lucky if you get HALF of what you originally asked for.

[flyarm]

20. Thank you Time for a Change..excellent essay and well thought out post! K&R

[snot]

21. k&r'd -- great post.

[jakeXT]

23. The PTB always wanted a weak president with no real powers, who can be controlled.

JFK himself said


“Now I know there are some people who say that this isn’t the business of the President of the United States, who believe that the President of the United States should be an honorary chairman of a great fraternal organization and confine himself to ceremonial functions. But that is not what the Constitution says. And I did not run for President of the United States to fulfill that Office in that way.”


...

I believe it is the business of the President of the United States to concern himself with the general welfare and the public interest. And if the people feel that it is not, then they should secure the services of a new President of the United States
http://thekennedys.wordpress.com/2008/04/25/a-few-words-from-jfk-on-presidential-leadership/

Evidence of Revision (2 of 5):The "Why" of it all referenced to Viet Nam and LBJ (at around 10 minutes 30 seconds)
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5335724479269105967&ei=7JgjSpr6OJug2ALt5qCFCA&q=evidence+of+revision+2+of+5

[Imagevision]

24. Big business founded this country and big business will remain running it, apparently

the oil industry is considerably more powerful then... Detroit?

[Psychic Consortium]

28. This is exactly why Obama goes slowly, carefully, and circuitously.

He is up against a terrible power.
But he will prevail.

[Waiting For Everyman]

56. +1

[peace frog]

57. He *may* prevail

but there is no certainty he *will* prevail however slowly, carefully and circuitously he acts. As noted, he is up against a terrible power that does not hesitate to strike down an offending POTUS.

[Psychic Consortium]

67. Yes but he is going to be OK. nt

[peace frog]

88. Are you psychic or something?

;-)

Hope you're right about that.

[Psychic Consortium]

89. Yes. PC tends to be correct in their predictions.

Been predicting things about Obama since last summer.
Accurately.

[peace frog]

96. Well then, I hope PC is correct about this prediction

My faith would be completely destroyed if Obama suffered a fate similar to JFK's.

[Psychic Consortium]

104. There is no doubt at all.

He will remain safe.

PC last summer correctly predicted the outcome of the election,
safety, win with a mandate, etc. Also many other events
related to the campaign and presidency.

Many doubted PC at the time. But time has proven
the accuracy.

Do not doubt now.
Obama will remain safe and unharmed.

[peace frog]

127. Such serenity

to be so certain as you are. The only prediction I am comfortable making is: We shall see.

[Psychic Consortium]

128. Yes we shall. :) nt

[tkmorris]

76. You offer no facts or evidence of any kind

Your argument, made in that fashion, sounds more like faith than analysis. I would LOVE to believe that Obama both desires to, and will eventually succeed at, pushing back against these people. So far though I have no reason to think that is true. I withhold judgment, it's the best I can do.

[Psychic Consortium]

80. There is evidence if you look.

Why else would Cheney be squawking so loudly and frequently
at this late date, a man who never left his undisclosed location?
His power is being taken away and he knows it.....

Obama has taken on many in the financial and corporate world
and this will continue. Ins companies are next in line....

Most of Obama's work is behind the scenes and it is obvious why
this must be the case.

[stopbush]

132. Amazing what some people regard to be "evidence."

[Psychic Consortium]

155. Evidence stares us in the face everyday. Look carefully and you will see it. nt

[Raksha]

169. PC, I remember your prediction about Obama's win last summer,

and it was very comforting at a time of immense doubt and fear. And you were correct, and I give you credit for that.

Still, the way Obama has been backtracking on so many of his campaign promises in such a short time is absolutely terrifying. There are only two possibilities that I can see: Either he was a Trojan horse candidate all along or he's being threatened by the PTB. Every time I read DU I can see their muddy fingerprints in yet another of Obama's sudden mysterious reversals. They are becoming more visible, but is it because they are losing their power? I would like to think so, but Obama gives every appearance of having sold out completely. But then maybe that's exactly what he wants "them" to think, and in order for that to happen we have to think so too.

Re Why else would Cheney be squawking so loudly and frequently
at this late date, a man who never left his undisclosed location?
His power is being taken away and he knows it.....

Yes, there is that. It's hard to believe Cheney would crawl out of his hole and be in our faces 24/7 claiming "torture saved American lives" if he didn't have to. Especially when nobody believes him, and he provokes another insider into refuting him every time he opens his pie hole. Seems kind of self-destructive on the face of it.

[Psychic Consortium]

185. Doubt and fear is still the norm, but Obama will prevail.

PC knew with certainty the outcome of the election.
It is with the same certainty that PC sees success for Obama.

We still are recovering from many decades of evil and corrupt leadership. We cannot believe goodness and competence when we see it.

We also do not understand what Obama is up against, and how real power should be used.

This is seen: Obama swimming from shore to an island far out in the ocean. On the surface, the water looks calm and peaceful. Underneath the currents are fierce, the water is shark invested. OBama swims to and fro, back and forth, avoiding danger. He will get to the island but not in a straight line.

[conspirator]

82. Nope. He will be just another Bill Clinton

Lots of promises to attack the lobbies, but in the end the status quo wins.

[Psychic Consortium]

86. Obama will be one of the greatest American presidents.

He will do more for the US than any other president in many generations.

Give him some time and space to do the job the right way.
He is up against very powerful enemies here in the US.
He must do things right.

[Time for change]

118. I sure do hope you're right about him prevailing --

assuming that he prevails in the way that JFK didn't.

[Psychic Consortium]

129. Obama works a great deal behind the scenes....

that is his style. And it is the safest course of action as well.
He also goes slow to make sure his changes are long lasting
and not easily undone in the future.

Notice how his opponents go on self-destruct and can do nothing right.

Notice how his allies succeed greatly.

Notice how he will often obtain court, congressional, etc
buy in and approval of his plans.....

Notice how he will tackle a problem through the back door...
not have a head on battle, but solve the problem in a low key way.

This style may not satisfy those impatient and eager for a fight,
but the job will be done at the end of the day. Obama will keep his promises and move us into the 21st century.

[Time for change]

130. You may be right. However,

I have been disappointed by many of his decisions, including:

-- Maintaining 50 thousand "non-combat" troops in Iraq for an apparently indefinite period of time -- which seems to me to constitute an indefinite extension of the occupation.

-- Escalation of the Afghanistan War (I know, that was part of his campaign).

-- His several trillion dollar bailout of Wall St.

-- His continuation of withholding the right of habeas corpus from our prisoners

-- His lack of interest in prosecuting Bush administration crimes

-- His backtracking on the public option that he promised during the campaign for health care insurance.

All of these things are very disappointing to me. You are right that Obama was under great pressure to do these things. Maybe his only choice was to do them or to risk a fate similar to JFK's. Maybe he has some grand political strategy for giving in on some issues in order to raise his political capital, so that he can do what needs to be done during his second term and defeat the PTB. Maybe he's doing the best that can be done under the circumstances. But if surrendering to the PTB is the only alternative to risking JFK's fate, then I expect our president to do that latter. I know that sounds cold, but I think it comes with the responsibility of having 60 million people elect you to represent them.

[Psychic Consortium]

154. Comments

This is what is seen:

The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is far more dangerous than most people realize.
There is danger to the US in those areas. Obama will be as strategic and short term as possible. But he must fight for good reason.

He was held hostage and threatened by Wall Street. The economy is in much worse shape than known. Basically insolvent. Obama had no other choice. However he will regulate the banking industry and never be put in this situation again.

Justice will be served on the Bush crimes. It is not Obama's battle to fight alone.
The will must come from the American people.

Insurance companies are ruthless and dangerous. Obama makes headway there carefully.
But he will prevail in the end.

In many areas Obama waits to obtain collaboration from the courts and congress.
He is not so foolish as to walk the tightrope without a net.

He will not suffer JFK's fate, nor will he capitulate.

[Time for change]

164. Again, I sure do hope you're right, though I don't share your degree of optimism

:hi:

[Echo In Light]

29. When one examines the US from the phony democracy angle, EVERYTHING then makes complete sense

...which is why those who resist acknowledging the obvious do so with such fervor: the most effective propaganda appeals to the emotions.

Thanks for posting

Recommended

[spooked911]

32. the nature of the ultimate PTB are discussed here

http://anonymous-physicist.blogspot.com/

[snooper2]

188. wonder when you would show up in this thread

The "Anonymous Physicist" again

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[Fiendish Thingy]

34. I still have the audacity to hope for a leader who will someday...

openly and forcefully oppose the PTB.

[Psychic Consortium]

37. You now have one. But he must be cautious and smart. nt

[Echo In Light]

42. Never happen within the current power structure. "Electable" means just that, plus much more

Double plus un-good, indeed

[Time for change]

44. Probably not, but

The current power structure can be changed. What it would take is enough people having a better understanding of what is going on. A president can be of great help in that regard, by explaining it to us -- as JFK did.

Of course, it's dangerous to do that.

[Echo In Light]

45. For starters, changing the current structure would require ending the National $ecurity State ruse

And since so much of that hinges on deeply seated propaganda within the public mind, reinforced by decades of fear based unreality, you'll never see it happen in this country.

It's not that people can't take such steps to help bring about the betterment of humanity, it's that due to 'perception management' you'd never find nearly enough support in this country for REAL change since the majority either doesn't understand or care one way or the other. I'm thinking of parting company w/DU, as I have before, but it may be interesting to come back in a few yrs and see all the same defenders of the status quo still making lame excuses for the lack of substantive change.

[omega minimo]

182. Perception Management

Time For Change

"Though most DUers – if not most Americans – seem to recognize their existence, because of their shadowy nature they are very difficult to talk about with much confidence."

"Clearly, an understanding of this issue is of great importance to our attempts to understand how the world operates. Yet, the shadowy nature of the PTB greatly hampers our attempts to understand it."

It's difficult to talk about because it's difficult to think about and easier not to. Add "perception management" and the high art it has become in our Orwellian times, the discussion/action is less likely.

Yet, that event and the subsequent, related ones, are etched in all our memories/hearts. JFK's assassination WAS perception management.

[Psychic Consortium]

68. This is a job best done behind the scenes......

Obama is taking away power as we speak from some of the
thugs running the rogue govt.

[Selatius]

78. I hope for it but am afraid of it at the same time. I don't want to see another Zapruder film.

Don't want to live to see a hero turned into a martyr. The 1960s were a deadly time for visionary leaders.

[DS1]

36. Oh great, another thread about to turn into a call for armed revolution

Freepers

[hedgehog]

38. I was in the fourth grade when JFK was shot, and in my naivete

I asked if he was going to be canonized. Years later, the stories of his private life emerged. along with somber assessment that he really hadn't done anything and that he'd started the VietNam War. Once again, new information is emerging and we are faced with what might have been, with what really was stolen from the world that day in Dallas. How many people in agony in the Congo today would be living a different life if JFK had live?

So, maybe that naive 4th grader was right. JFK was no more perfect than say, Oscar Schindler. But he may well have been the 20th century's most prominent martyr.

[Time for change]

100. I think you summed it up very well

[bagrman]

40. It's ammazing how long this has been going on, it's not a resent development,

Google Conversations with the Crow. There are about 60+ interviews with and old company guy before he dies.

[Raksha]

201. Thanks for the heads-up on "Conversations With the Crow."

I did Google it, and I'm reading one of the transcripts now. Very interesting reading to say the least!

[Greyhound]

46. Auto K&R.

I happy to see the play this has received.

But, you left off the punchline(?) of Bill's joke, "...the screen comes up and the lights go on, and they ask the new president "any questions?"

"What's my agenda?"
:rofl:

[BeFree]

65. Me too

Thanks again TFC.

It would be easy to just give up, but that would be no fun. Can only hope your fine writings convince more folks of the gravity of the PTB. That way, when we take them down we can have a really big, fun party.

[Time for change]

102. Thank you BeFree

All we can do is hope and keep on trying.

[Time for change]

101. I hadn't heard the punch line

I'd love to be a fly on the wall in that room when the lights go on and the president asks his question -- whatever that might be.

[Greyhound]

125. I know I've seen it on Google video or maybe YouTube.

It from 1992 or 1993, I think, right after Clinton's election.

A variation is, "Just one, what's my agenda?"

[bvar22]

49. Sobering and Depressing.

My wife and I came to much the same conclusion during the '90s.
We had high hopes that Clinton would right the wrongs of Reagan & Bush.....but nothing happened.
We were troubled when the stolen election of 2000 was NOT opposed by the Democratic Party, but what could WE do? :shrug:

When the Democratic Platform of 2004 was "Win the WAR" and "More Free Trade" we made a decision:
Just let them have it.


We started making plans.
We did extensive research, and found property in a very rural, still pristine part of the country with low property taxes, on-site abundant clean water, surrounded by National Forest, and a long growing season.
In 2006, we cashed out, sold everything, packed up, and left "the City". We moved to our new place, planted a BIG veggie garden, started raising chickens and honey bees, and planted a bunch of fruit trees.

Our taxable income is now almost poverty levels, but we eat and live well.
WE buy almost nothing NEW. What we can't make ourselves, we buy or barter 2nd Hand or Salvage directly from previous owners to avoid all taxes.
If they are going to Bailout Billionaires and expand WARS, they will do so without our help.

We are no longer "Good American Consumers".
Next year, we will consume even less.

Our interest has shifted from National Politics (rigged game) to local Humanitarian interests and Community service.

We realize we are fortunate to be able to do this.
We have no dependent children, are in good health (no Health Insurance), and have accumulated the skills necessary to live as we do.
We don't want to "Make War on the Rich".
We just want to be left alone.

We were hoping that the Democratic Party would be able to institute Single Payer because we are vulnerable there, but they are too beholding to the Health Insurance Industry to institute any REAL change. WE are still registered Democrats and active in the local Party, but that may soon change (as will my addiction to DU).

If some vehicle emerges to challenge the PTB, we will help, but I don't see that happening in our lifetime.

[Time for change]

103. My hat off to you and your wife

And best wishes.

[inna]

50. bravo!! rec #52

:applause:

[pretzel4gore]

51. Cheer up! They (the pig) fukked itself...

hahaha. See, the game is only a game if there's a winner, and the problem is, what with 8 years of a gibbering 1/2 wit in the Whouse, running the country into the ground, and with $50 TRILLION missing from the economic till....plus doubts about everything the pig media has been selling for generations, meaning ANYTHING can be thought true (for example, it's widely known that the Fascist States of America nrever really sent men to the moon- they even joke about that on 'Simpsons' etc) then controlling the people needs to be done via brute force (democracy obviously is as dead as capitalism is gone!) and that means POLICE STATE which mean most of the creative element of the human race will be crushed along with the mobs....but the pig needs creativity to get planet outta apocalype type mess we're in, and chaos, and disaster, which doom humanity (maybe even life itself?) must follow; which might piss off dear God, who knows the truth, and the PIG is terrified, has to be, cuz he must HIDE THE TRUTH or else WE killem off, just like THEY killed off JFK, only we do it in openly, out in public, unlike them!
lol
go bush!

[Greyhound]

52. You've mixed up your livestock. The ''pig" is the corporations for whom the government

worked. The Pig is doing just fine and the future is very bright indeed, it's just the government (us) that is "fukked".

[bvar22]

58. The "Pig" is doing well indeed.

The "Democrats" just handed several $TRILLION dollars to the Wall Street "Pig", no strings attached.
And just wait and see what they are going to hand to the Health Insurance Industry Execs.

[Greyhound]

126. Absolutely, and because it will be a "Democrat" doing it, it will all be just fine.

It's so easy to win the game when you own both teams.

[pretzel4gore]

157. the difference is...

in order to stimulate a grassroots movement to redress any economic/enviro or social problems which, obviously, are already in motion- in order to get the 'people' to react as they did formerly during wars such as ww numbers one and two- and granted this is only a theory, but again it seems that up until reagan era there was potentially a worldwide grassroot energy devoted to solving global problems and overcoming our goddam universal venality/hatreds etc. This energy, which the rightwing political philosophy has devoted itself to destroying, is no longer available! Unless MISTER pig has some notion of running off into outre space kids in tow, seeking another globe similar to urth blah blah blah, then he's pretty well stuck with chaos if/when it comes, just like the written off poor (ie 'we the people') are. We are a doomed species living on a dying planet, and mister pig fixed it that way, because, well, because he's a fukking pig, i guess(?) Somehow the old message that 'selfishness is just stupidity in thoughtless action' has gotten lost as modern understood morality. Aristotle/Plato and all those old 'white guys' the upper class twits always condescendingly evoke, knew about that; Jesus based his teaching on it, yet, yet....GW BUSH ferchrissake! And that was AFTER ronald madonald regan! And the rightwingies dare call themselves Christians!

[Waiting For Everyman]

60. Exactly spot on... which brings us to the black ops of the CIA et al.

Kicked, rec'ed, and bookmarked. It's funny TFC, just last night I was wondering what your thoughts on all of this were at this point. Your OP conclusion was just about as perfect as I could imagine it being said. (And the supporting points too.)

Thank you for all of your work and thought on this. As someone who was around at the time, to watch it all unfold on continuous tv coverage (never done before then) over that horrible Thanksgiving weekend in 1963... I have always said and known ever since (of course I'm not alone on this) that the Kennedy assassination was a coup d'etat - and it was never rectified. In fact, the takeover only continued farther and farther since then. You show very clearly why.

I would only add that the recent war crimes tie in very closely with the current global economic crime ( but "crime" seems much too small a word for it), which we should investigate in tandem at the same time... and yes, ultimately resulting in a true investigation of the coup d'etat itself, as a coup d'etat. (Including JFK, RFK, MLK.)

It's interesting too that just today, I received an email from 911Truth, detailing how the torture revelations are entirely relevant to 9/11 itself. The logic for the whole thing was based on "facts" obtained through torture, which we now know are admittedly false. Of course that shatters the accepted story. (Or what's left of it, that is.)

You have zeroed in on the hub of the beast. All roads lead back to JFK.

[Time for change]

105. Thank you

I received that same e-mail recently, though I can't find it now. The thing that strikes me as the big similarity between our torture program and 9/11 is that both are shrouded in fog and cover-up. And I guess that anyone who participated in the one would also be capable of participating in the other.

[Wednesdays]

61. K&R

:kick:

[Larry Ogg]

62. I heard that one of the biggest reasons Kennedy was elected

was that he was the first to use the new television medium most effectively as a campaign tool, and that it was the first time that voters could actually see who they voting for, although I don’t know how true it is. But I also heard that he was a system outsider and that, thanks to his fathers help and money, he was able to use and beat the system to get into the White House where he planed to be a President for the people, I have also heard that, not only did big business hate him; he didn’t have many allies from Washington insiders of whom many were millionaires that couldn’t legitimately account as to where their fortunes came from.

But still I think it’s safe to say that the PTB or many of the Washington insiders did not support or want him to be President, he just somehow beat them and their system at their own game so they got rid of him in typical gangster type fashion which included taking out and executing a bunch of witnesses…

Another great OP Dr. Dale, keep up the good work…
Larry

[Time for change]

106. Thank you Larry -- Your discussion reminds me that

I know a lot less about the early career of JFK than I do about his presidency or death. TV wasn't exactly new in 1960, but JFK's predecessor was elected the first time in 1952, and maybe not many people owned TVs then. I'm not sure. And I'm really not sure if JFK changed greatly during his presidency. I have read that his career in Congress was mostly undistinguished, but I'm not sure how true that is. I do know that we have had some presidents who seemed to grow into their job -- as if awareness of the great responsibilities that they held caused them to take things a lot more seriously than they had previously.

A book I'm reading now may fill me in on some of the gaps -- "The Kennedys -- America's Emerald Kings". It was recommended by H2O Man.

[Octafish]

63. Excellent essay and analysis.

DUer MinM recommended Douglass' book before publication last year. For those interested in this subject, his journal is a must-read.

Yours, too, Time for Change. Thank you for another outstanding essay. The record shows who stood where.

JFK stood up to the PTB. So must we all.

[Time for change]

113. Thank you Octafish -- MinM was right on target in recommending this book

It's right up there near the top of the best books I've ever read -- and I'm not done yet. And I understand that this is his first book of a trilogy, with the later ones covering Malcolm X, MLK and RFK.

[Dystopian]

64. KandR.

Thank you for yet another brilliant piece.


peace~

[Uncle Joe]

69. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Time for change.:thumbsup:

[uberblonde]

71. Read Russ Baker's "Family of Secrets."

More shocking info about the Kennedy assassination and Watergate in there. A real eye opener!

[conscious evolution]

74. K&R for

speaking truth to power.

[stopbush]

79. Fact: 4,000 US military advisers in Vietnam when JFK took office.

Fact: 16,000 military advisers in Nam when JFK died.

So much for de-escalation.

Fact: Oswald shot JFK and acted alone (at least, if we're to believe ALL THE EVIDENCE in the case - which clearly establishes Oswald's guilt beyond ALL doubt - rather than paranoid speculation).

As this OP confirms, there is no end to the unfounded and unprovable paranoia and tinfoil that some people choose to believe, said paranoia offered without a scintilla of what would constitute proof outside of an elementary school playground.

Why be forced to prove what you can simply assert when so many are gullible enough to follow your lead and heap praise upon your "truth telling" lunacy?

[Time for change]

81. You mean like the 9 doctors who saw JFK at the hospital and said that he was shot from the front?

Or are you referring to the House Select Committee on Assassinations who determined from the acoustical evidence that at least one bullet came from the front?

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/odell/

What evidence are you talking about?

[stopbush]

83. Let's talk evidence:

The 9 doctors at Parkland weren't pathologists. They were emergency doctors attempting to save the man's life. Their descriptions of what happened varied. Fact: JFK's body WAS NEVER TURNED OVER at Parkland. Further, all of the doctors at Parkland that day were junior members of the staff as the senior staff was all at a conference in (IIRC) Gavelston. There was no autopsy done at Parkland, so at best, you're talking about the impressions Parkland's junior staff took away from a life-saving operation that lasted less than 30 minutes and who never examined the full body of JFK. Hardly a thorough VISUAL examination, let alone an autopsy/investigation.

That's why autopsies are done - to establish facts, facts that trump hearsay and opinion.

As far as the HSCA acoustical evidence - that "evidence" was totally discredited by later scientific testing. In fact, the sound identified as the supposed 4th shot on the Dictabelt tape was recorded a FULL MINUTE AFTER JFK's limo sped off to Parkland.

Them's the facts. It's all researched, it's all documented, and I have no doubt that you don't give a flying f*ck as to what the truth is in the JFK killing.

BTW - if a bullet entered the front of JFK's throat, where did it exit? Into Jackie, as the laws of physics would hold? Or did it magically evaporate into thin air? And if the bullet shot from behind didn't exit JFK and hit Connally, how was Connally hit? By a separate bullet shot from the back? His entrance wound was in his back. Yet JFK was positioned in the line of any shot that would have hit Connally from the rear (his body blocked Connally's body when seen from the rear). In short, a bullet from the rear couldn't have hit Connally where it did unless it first went through JFK. Final question: why would the bullet that hit Connally be tumbling if it hadn't already gone through JFK?

[Time for change]

85. The autopsy was faked -- There's a ton of evidence for that

I discuss that in detail in this post:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5372734

Your comments are ignorant in the extreme, but you're good at using cuss words, so I guess that makes up for it. Why do you think that an autopsy wasn't done at Parkland? Are you aware that the Secret Service demanded the body at gunpoint?

And as far as the doctors at Parkland all being "junior staff", that's just plain stupid. Do you think that they'd have inexperienced staff trying to save the life of a U.S. president? They were all licenced physicians who could tell the difference between an exit wound and an entrance wound.

And I'd like to see a reference for what you claim is the discrediting of the House Select Committee's report.

[stopbush]

87. Now, you're off the reservation.

Yes, there was an argument over where the autopsy would be performed. All of that is documented in the WCR. There was no demand "at gunpoint" for the SS to take the body and do the autopsy elsewhere, just belligerence and a "try to stop us" attitude that the Texas authorities let slide.

Licensed physicians can NOT automatically tell an exit wound from an entrance wound. That's why there's forensics and autopsies. And why are you ignoring the statements from Parkland doctors who speculated the wound in JFK's front throat could have been an exit wound of a bone fragment from the head wound? Could it be because it doesn't support your paranoia?

If you REALLY want to see the reference for anything I've said above, you'll need to read Vincent Bugliosi's book on the subject where the evidence is laid out with indisputable clarity.

Of course, I doubt you've read "Reclaiming History" and that you're going to tell me you won't ever read it "on principle" or something ridiculous along those lines (that "principle" being that Bugliosi dismantles every CT out there and shows them to be the lunacy that they are, and the CTers don't have the guts to stand up and admit that they've been had for the past 40+ years by the Mark Lanes of this world).

"Ton of evidence" that autopsy was faked? Absolute bullshit.

BTW - you do realize, do you not, that for the autopsy to have been faked, the "conspirators" would have to have autopsy teams at Parkland, Bethesda and Walter Reed in on the "plot" to pull off a faked autopsy? JFK's body was scheduled to go to Walter Reed for autopsy, but Jackie decided ON THE PLANE to have the autopsy done at Bethesda because JFK was a Navy man. So, the staff at Walter Reed (already in on the plot to fake the autopsy) was out, and the staff at Bethesda (also ready and willing to fake an autopsy report) got the call. Of course, both staffs were pissed that the staff of Parkland didn't get to fake the autopsy in the first place. The Bethesda staff was up all night. Or, perhaps Jackie was in on the plot and that's why the autopsy was switched to Bethesda and put into the nefarious hands of the "evil conspiracy doctors" who were ready to fake the autopsy? How does any conspirator plan for all these contingencies?

Here's an idea: apply the principle of Occam's Razor to your crazy CTs and see if you can't reject most of your looniness out of hand. Nefarious government agents+the Mob+ the Russians+ the Cubans+ faked autopsies + stolen presidential brains + multiple shooters + multiple autopsy teams at different hospitals in on the plot + all the other CT craziness. Yep, that sounds logical.

BTW, you didn't bother answering my question - if a bullet entered the front of JFK's throat, where did it exit? Into Jackie, as the laws of physics would hold? Or did it magically evaporate into thin air? And if the bullet shot from behind didn't exit JFK and hit Connally, how was Connally hit? By a separate bullet shot from the back? His entrance wound was in his back. Yet JFK was positioned in the line of any shot that would have hit Connally from the rear (his body blocked Connally's body when seen from the rear). In short, a bullet from the rear couldn't have hit Connally where it did unless it first went through JFK. Final question: why would the bullet that hit Connally be tumbling if it hadn't already gone through JFK? Bullets may yaw in flight, but they don't tumble onto their sides just from flying through the air unobstructed.

I look forward to your logical and evidence-laden response.

[Time for change]

91. Your only response to my evidence for the faked autopsy is

"absolute bullshit", instead of trying to explain any of the evidence that I presented. That's just brilliant. You must be very proud of such a comeback!

Here is an account of the “argument” between the Secret Service and Dr. Earl Rose, by Aubrey Rike, a Dallas official who was responsible for staying with the casket:

I was scared to death... I was scared all the time I was there... You know, we'd start pushing, and somebody would grab us, and push us back, and pull the casket back. You'd have to see it to believe it... it was the most unorganized, scary type situation I have ever been in in my life. I'm a policeman now, and I've been up against all kinds of stuff.

And as far as your magic bullet theory is concerned, I'm tired of arguing with arrogant idiots whose only way of arguing is to hurl insults and cuss.

[stopbush]

92. Sorry, but you present no evidence whatsoever in your posts.

"This person said..that person said." That's called hearsay. That's called BS. That's not evidence.

Where does Dr Earl Rose say a gun was pulled and the SS took control of JFK's remains "at gunpoint?"

Final BTW - you're the one advocating magic bullets, and multiple magic bullets at that. You won't answer my questions about bullets, entrance wounds and exit wounds because there are no answers for such illogical and unscientific stupidities as the ilk you spew on this blog on a regular basis.

Why not just admit you will never read Bugliosi's book because you don't want your fantasy world upset by the truth? You get a lot of props from the equally uninformed and woefully gullible on this board for your "truth seeking," and it would be a shame if reality were to stick its head in here and ruin the little adulation society you've built up for yourself.

No, it's easier to spout conspiracy and faked autopsy than to confront the FACTS that support that which the WCR determined long ago. You may not be a liar, but you push the lies and omissions that are the stock-in-trade of the Mark Lane's and other CT-ists out there, and that is hardly a search for truth.

BTW - ever heard of beveling in entrance wounds to bone? Look it up.

[Time for change]

94. I don't have any more time to deal with arrogant people

whose main means of arguing is to hurl insults and swear words, and refuse to address my points while insisting that I address theirs, and dismiss the testimony of 9 doctors by saying that they're "junior" -- everything explained.

You believe what you want.

[stopbush]

108. "Testimony" of 9 doctors?

You don't even know what testimony is.

As to what I believe - I believe what the overwhelming evidence leads any rational person to believe. You - on the other hand - aren't even familiar with the evidence, or you would be embarrassed to post the idiotic CT garbage you apparently believe.

What's next, Time for Change? The earth is 6,000 years old? Werewolves and vampires exist? Of course, no evidence for that, but millions of people believe it so it must be true, right?

And, yes, there is a certain "arrogance" about the actual evidence in the JFK murder. I can see where someone enamored of fantasy would find the facts in the case to be harsh and unremitting.

You wrote: "The autopsy findings, which grossly contradicted the findings of the doctors at Parkland Hospital, were what the Warren Commission relied on to conclude that the bullets all entered from the back. What that means is that if the Parkland doctors were correct, the body would have had to have been altered prior to the autopsy."

Here's the simple answer that evades you and the CT crowd: THE PARKLAND DOCTORS WERE INCORRECT. See how simple that is? The autopsy FINDINGS contradict not the "findings" of the Parkland doctors, but the OPINIONS the Parkland doctors formed under great stress while trying their best, not to examine JFK and determine where the shots came from or where he was shot, but to save his life.

You also wrote: "The fatal head wound -Nine physicians and a nurse who treated the President at Parkland Hospital in Dallas are quoted (in Warren Commission testimony, official medical reports, or contemporary newspaper accounts) as saying that the fatal wound produced a large hole in the back right side of the head. The skull at the back of the head was noted to have “exploded outwards”. All of the physicians characterized this wound as an exit wound."

What's wrong with those statements? Simple. They said this even though they never turned JFK's body over where they could actually see "the back of his head." At best, the doctors and nurses saw the right SIDE of JFK's head while his face was positioned fully forward. The back of his head was on the operating table for the entire time they were trying to save his life.

But that's OK. I understand the hoops the JFK CTers jump through to keep their far-fetched tales alive. It's so much easier - and, I guess, satisfying - to concoct a multi-layered, Rube Goldberg-esque conspiracy theory that requires that each and every crazy turn be true or the whole things crashes under the weight of its own improbability, than to accept the ultimately simple and tragic conclusions that the evidence present in the JFK case as determined by the WCR and even the later House investigation.

[stopbush]

138. You asked:

"Do you think that they'd have inexperienced staff trying to save the life of a U.S. president?"

They used the staff that was on site at the time. The president got to Parkland and was declared dead 40 minutes later. Circumstances dictated who was in the ER when JFK arrived and who ended up trying to save his life.

What was the alternative? Not doing anything? Waiting for the senior staff to return from Gavelston? Waiting for more-experienced staff to come over from another local hospital? Once the decision was made to go to Parkland, the die was cast.

Is that so hard to understand?

[MrMickeysMom]

121. How'd you like those doctors?

They all changed their story!

I wonder what made that happen? :scared:

[stopbush]

153. In fact, what's interesting to learn is how many witnesses cited by

the CTers changed their stories years and even decades after they had given sworn testimony to the WCR and not-sworn testimony to law enforcement officials who were in Dallas that fateful weekend and who took their statements at that time.

What made that happen? Most often, reading the wacky ideas postulated by the CTers, that's what.

[Greyhound]

181. For someone purporting to know "the truth", you spend a lot of time

being purposely obnoxious and offensive, while citing only one source that nobody is likely to ever read to defend your position.

Seems like a bridge dwelling tactic, and is more likely to cause others to question your points.

[stopbush]

189. What a telling statement:

"citing only one source that nobody is likely to ever read to defend your position."

That "one source" I keep citing is Vincent Bugliosi. The problem with your thinking he's only "one source" is that his book cites evidence gathered for his book from multiple sources: The WCR, the HSCA, the Rockefeller Committee, the Church Committee, etc. Anybody questioning "my points" is, in fact, questioning the scientific evidence that has been developed, examined and reexamined over the course of 45 years and that has not only stood the test of time, but gained in depth and nuance over that period.

That none of the CTers is ever likely to read Bugliosi's book is, sadly, a given. That they cannot offer an evidence-based defense of their fantasies is also a given. That their theories become more ridiculous and far-fetched as their earlier theories are battered on the shoals of scientific advances is to be expected.

At this point, the CTers have as much "truth" on their side as does a religious person arguing for the existence of Zeus.

[Greyhound]

205. Those that believe in a larger scenario regarding the Kennedy assassination can produce just as

many sources, facts, and first-hand experiences as Bugliosi's assembly.

Doesn't the secrecy and obvious fraud, the bullet for example, just make it more likely that the controversy will continue. We're headed into exactly the same place with the 9/11 attacks. Why all the seemingly pointless evasions if what appears to have happened is the truth?

We live in a much darker world than most Americans want to believe, this I know for a fact from first-hand experience, and that knowledge makes many of the theories you so casually dismiss that much more plausible.

I know that I don't know The Truth, but I do know of many instances where the official story is a flat-out lie, which makes me think that many so-called "conspiracy theories" likely have at least some element of truth in them.

[stopbush]

210. "Facts?" Which "facts" are you talking about.

And "first-hand experiences?"

Let me ask you a question: I assume you voted for Obama for president. What would it take for you to decide to turn against Obama, to betray him and to even participate in a conspiracy to see him eliminated?

I'm going to go ahead and assume that you could never conceive of yourself reaching such a position in your life. I'm going to assume that you can't conceive of ever reaching such a position simply based on the fact that you're a Democrat, that you watch the guy on TV and that you voted for him.

Looking through that prism, let's consider what the CTists are proposing:

* That JFK's closest confidants, people who were with him throughout his political life and his run for president, people who he brought into his administration to advance his agenda, people who were helping him advance his agenda were at the same time secretly conspiring to have him killed.

* That JFK's family - including his wife, his brothers and even (at a later date) his children - openly, publicly and consistently supported the findings of the Warren Commission, and that they did so even though they either knew or at least had grave doubts that the Report was truthful and accurate.

* That the men assigned to protect JFK (the Secret Service) to a man turned against him and helped to both plan and facilitate the murder of the person that their entire job revolved around protecting, a man who they saw face to face every day of the week, a man who they had a personal relationship with, a man that most of them considered to be a personal friend.

* That the Warren Commission - a seven-man panel made up of 5 Rs and 2 Ds, one of whom - Earl Warren - was the Chief Justice of the SCOTUS and who was adamantly supporting JFK's call for civil rights decided amongst themselves that they would cover-up the complicity of any and all people involved in the assassination.

* That every president since JFK has been taken into a small room and shown what happens to presidents who get out of line, and that all of these presidents - D & R alike - go through the rest of their lives aiding and abetting the cover-up of the conspiracy that killed JFK, making themselves accessories after the fact to the most-famous murder in history, a crime for which there is no statute of limitations? That even D presidents - LBJ, Carter, Clinton and Obama - are now co-conspirators in covering up for the guilty in this heinous crime?

Are you going to tell me that people who were much closer to JFK than you are to Obama, who were instrumental in devising and advancing his agenda, who saw him every day and had a personal relationship with him, even including D presidents who have succeeded JFK in the office, that these people all turned on him and conspired to have him killed and/or to cover up for the guilty, when you with at best a superficial attachment to Obama could never see yourself contemplating such a betrayal?

And we're to take you and other CTists seriously?

Please.

[Greyhound]

213. In the first place, you completely evaded the point,which is typical.

Secondly, I am not of any belief one way or the other. I am not an expert or even very interested in this issue, the public has decided that they really don't care and don't want to know, so I see no point in pursuing it.

That is what interests me, why so many people simply don't care about what is happening in their own country or what is done by those entrusted with the power to act in their name.

If you want to speak to the point, I'm all for it, if you want to argue over the minutiae of this case, there are many others better qualified to do so.

[stopbush]

216. How do you make a point without providing facts to back up the point?

Please supply the facts. It is not enough to say they exist. It's not up to me to provide the facts, it's up to you to provide them as you are the person making the allegation.

Unfortunately, you are the one acting "typically" by evading the question.

[Greyhound]

217. See, you have to read more than the subject line.

I made no allegation, but asked a question accompanied by an observation.

[stopbush]

220. OK, let's go through your post:

"Those that believe in a larger scenario regarding the Kennedy assassination can produce just as
many sources, facts, and first-hand experiences as Bugliosi's assembly."

I asked you to provide facts to back up this assertion. You haven't.

"Doesn't the secrecy and obvious fraud, the bullet for example, just make it more likely that the controversy will continue."

I provided pictorial evidence that the bullet (CE399) was not "a fraud," including demonstrating the correct seating position of the men in the limo, ballistics results and the bullet fragment results from Connally.

"We're headed into exactly the same place with the 9/11 attacks."

That's an opinion, not a fact.

"Why all the seemingly pointless evasions if what appears to have happened is the truth?"

Who is evading? I've provided evidence.

The remainder of your post is pure opinion and speculation on your part:

"We live in a much darker world than most Americans want to believe, this I know for a fact from first-hand experience, and that knowledge makes many of the theories you so casually dismiss that much more plausible." (please, enlighten us.)

"I know that I don't know The Truth, but I do know of many instances where the official story is a flat-out lie, which makes me think that many so-called "conspiracy theories" likely have at least some element of truth in them." (could be, but that's not the case as it pertains to the JFK assassination where there is no doubt as to what happened on that tragic day in 1963).

[Greyhound]

222. So, it is a reading comprehension issue, OK I'll go slow and use small words.

I asked you to provide facts to back up this assertion. You haven't.
There are shelves of books and hundreds of sites using the same stuff you do to make the opposite point. If you are interested, I suggest you read/visit them. I have little interest in this case.

I provided pictorial evidence that the bullet (CE399) was not "a fraud," including demonstrating the correct seating position of the men in the limo, ballistics results and the bullet fragment results from Connally.
You totally missed the point on that one, It is the secrecy, the resistance to releasing information, and of course I made a punctuation error by using a period instead of a question mark, but the first words of the sentence are "Doesn't it" so I believe you could have deduced the intent (Oops, I said I'd use small words) guessed what I meant. BTW, I addressed wrote about the perceived problem with the bullet, as I see it, in the other reply in the other sub-thread you are pursuing, please read that one.

That's an opinion, not a fact.
It is a fact that DU has created an entire forum for 9/11, now please try to keep up.

Who is evading? I've provided evidence.
The evasions of the assassination are not yours, they are the government's. Again I assumed some common sense that is apparently lacking.

As for the darker world sentence, you have made it apparent you have no interest in learning anything but feel that you know The Truth precluding any making enlightenment impossible, so I will not waste my time and possibly cause problems for other people who are still vulnerable (Sibel Edmonds).

Now, you have spent 8 replies proving my original point and helped to keep this thread on the first page of GD. Thanks.

[stopbush]

223. Great response. Thanks. let's look.

"There are shelves of books and hundreds of sites using the same stuff you do to make the opposite point. If you are interested, I suggest you read/visit them."

I read all of the major JFK conspiracy books, back in my days when I believed there was a conspiracy. None of them provide hard evidence or facts. it's all speculation. As the years pass, the speculations become more ridiculous. I wonder which of the books you've read? Obviously, not Bugliosi's or Posner's.

"I have little interest in this case."

And even less knowledge, that's clear. Too bad you can't seem to funnel what little interest you have in becoming appraised of the evidence in the case, rather than blindly parroting the CT crowd.


"You totally missed the point on that one, It is the secrecy, the resistance to releasing information,"

What secrecy and resistance would that be? Perhaps you're unaware of the fact that almost every shred of evidence from the WCR is now in the public domain or will be by 2017. Ever heard of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992? I guess not. Check out Wikipedia. But then, you have no interest in the case, so how would you know that?


"It is a fact that DU has created an entire forum for 9/11, now please try to keep up."

Sometimes it's a good idea to separate the inmates from the general population.

"The evasions of the assassination are not yours, they are the government's. Again I assumed some common sense that is apparently lacking."

Au contraire, common sense would hold that one would be aware of the non-secretive mountains of evidence that have been released to date before making the assertions you're making in this thread. Nobody's evading here, except for the DU CT crowd who can't seem to respond to simple questions.

"As for the darker world sentence, you have made it apparent you have no interest in learning anything but feel that you know The Truth precluding any making enlightenment impossible, so I will not waste my time and possibly cause problems for other people who are still vulnerable (Sibel Edmonds)."

Oh, I agree totally that there are dark corners of the world and in this country, but if any corner is not a dark corner, it is the corner occupied by the JFK assassination. Think of how much energy could be put toward shining light on those actual dark corners - torture, the various crimes of bushco - were people's attention not diverted - and colored by! - the red herrings that the JFK CTists so cavalierly toss about.

"Now, you have spent 8 replies proving my original point and helped to keep this thread on the first page of GD. Thanks."

Works for me, too. It gives me more chances to debunk the JFK CT nonsense.

[stopbush]

212. What do you find "fradulent" about the bullet (CE399)?

I'd like to know.

[Greyhound]

214. I have no idea what (CE399) is but I will guess that it is the so-called pristine bullet.

I do know about rifles, ammunition, and what happens to a bullet when fired, and the round that was "found" on the gurney was likely never fired except possibly into a mass of ballistic gel, let alone passed through a body. That makes the whole scenario suspect.

[stopbush]

215. Of course, the bullet was not at all pristine.

Here's the bullet seen from the bottom with lead extruding from the base.



The bullet was also bent. It was not straight

Ballistics tests matched the bullet to Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to the exclusion of all other guns in the world.

Bullet fragments taken from Connally were matched to bullet CE399. The total amount of lead fragments in Connally's body including the volume of bullet fragments that remained in his body until the day he died were consistent with and did not exceed the amount of lead that was missing from the recovered bullet.

Anybody who wants to posit that CE 399 was faked and planted by conspirators needs to supply plausible answers to all of the following questions. Why did the conspirators:

1. Plant it in a location where it could easily have been lost?
2. Plant a bullet that was only "slightly" damaged if its role was to have passed through at least the President? Why not shoot up some livestock and get a bullet a bit more mangled?
3. Plant it before it could have been known how many other bullets would be recovered? How could they have known that CE 399 would not be the "one bullet too many" that would blow the whole plot?
4. Plant the bullet so it was found before it was known how much lead was in JFK's neck/upper back? What if a big chunk of lead was found in JFK's neck or upper back, a chunk too big to have come from CE 399?

As far as the bullet striking both men, the CT numbnuts falsely claim the men were positioned like this in the limo, averring that the bullet had to make a "magical" mid-air course change to strike Connally:


Implying that the bullet could not have hit both men.

But the truth is that JFK was seated in the back seat along the side of the car, while Connally was seated on a jump seat in front of JFK that was set in 6-inches from the side of the car and about 3 to 4-inches lower (IIRC)than JFK's seat:


This photograph clearly shows the correct seating positions of both men, and confirms that a bullet entering JFK's upper back and exiting his throat at a downward angle of 25-degrees had nowhere else to go BUT into Connally.


This photograph -taken after the limo was returned to DC - clearly shows the positions of the back seat and the jump seat, and how the jump seat was inset from the side of the limo:

.
.

Which begs the question: if the bullet didn't hit Connally, what did it do? Did it evaporate into thin air?

Now, THAT would be a magic bullet!

[stopbush]

218. BTW, you say that you know rifles and ammo, so answer me this:

why would any assassin who knew what he was up to use as his weapon of choice 1) a 20+-year-old surplus military rifle that 2) took only one kind of ammo, that ammo being full metal jacket military ammo, ammo designed to pass through a body, rather than breaking up inside a body and causing maximum damage?

If the idea was to kill JFK, and an experienced assassin was hired to do the job, why not use soft-tipped bullets that would break up even when encountering soft tissue, causing maximum damage to the target? Why use ammo that might pass right thru the victim? The doctors at Parkland speculated that had JFK only suffered the back/neck wound, he may well have lived. Yet, if he had been hit with a soft-nosed round, the damage would have been much greater in that wound. Why on earth would trained killers and conspirators plan so elaborate a plot and then fail miserably in choosing the weapon and the ammo used in that weapon to carry out the plot?

There is no evidence that any other weapon was used (no bullets of any other kind were recovered, only two bullets from Oswald's rifle; no other weapons were found, etc).

What's your personal knowledge of firearms tell you about the above?

[Greyhound]

219. Are you ADD? Is there some reading comprehension issue here?

The term "so-called" carries with it the understanding that it is not/may not be accurate. The only picture I've seen is a side view and it displays virtually no deformation of the tip. Even a FMJ rifle round is seriously deformed when it strikes solid materiel (like bone). Maybe it is true and maybe it is not, it is the secrecy that fuels this.

If you want to debate this case, there are entire sites devoted to it. Have fun.

[stopbush]

221. Another non-answer.

Where is "the secrecy?"

The WCR found that Oswald did the killing. So did the HSCA. So did the Rockefeller Commission. So have all of the other in-depth, scientific investigations. Nothing is secret. It's all in their reports which have been open to the public since about, oh, Day One.

And you've now seen another angle of CE399 to go with "the only picture I've seen is a side view." Why no comment on this picture now that you HAVE seen it? Doesn't it change your opinion at all? And, BTW, the bottom view of CE399 HAS NOT BEEN KEPT A SECRET by anyone. It's been out there for 45 years, yet you admit that YOU HAVE NEVER SEEN IT prior to today? How can that be?

BTW, there is no "secrecy" to the bone that CE399 hit in Connally. It passed through soft tissue in JFK, hitting no bone. It glanced off Connally's fifth rib upon entry and later shattered his wrist. The bullet fragments in his wrist matched CE399. There IS deformation at the tip of the bullet, though slight. The tip of the bullet ain't what hit Connally's wrist. We know this because the entry wound on Connally's back was oblong due to the bullet yawing as it exited JFK's neck, so to imagine that the bullet tip hit bone is wrong on the evidence as the bullet didn't enter Connally tip first. Sheesh!

I get that you're not interested in the facts. Would that that lack of interest precluded you from automatically siding with the CT crazies on this board.

[spin]

84. Newt Gingrich once said when asked a question...

"You don't mess with the big boys."

I remember sitting straight up in my seat in amazement.

Unfortunately, I can't find any reference on the net as this happened when he was the Speaker of the House many years ago. The internet was in its' infancy.

Who the hell are the big boys?

[MasonJar]

90. A Profile in Courage!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MrSlayer]

93. Well yeah. That's why he was assassinated.

He wasn't going to play the game and he saw the man behind the curtain and didn't like it at all. He was going to change things, so they killed him.

[chrisa]

119. Baseless conspiracy theory.

I guess the fact that a loser like Oswald could kill the President wasn't interesting enough.

[MrSlayer]

120. Oswald. Peh.

Kennedy was done by pros. But hey, believe what you want.

[stopbush]

141. Like Oliver Stone, you believe that professional killers shot JFK.

In Stone's JFK, he imagines that 6 shots were fired, with shots one and five MISSING the limo entirely, and with shots 3 and 4 hitting CONNALLY, rather than JFK.

Some expert shots - 4 out of 6 shots missed the target (JFK)! And - according to Stone - missing from a "gimme" distance of 35 yards.

Who needs experts to be so inaccurate?

[MrMickeysMom]

122. Hell....

Any loser is capable of killing a president. But, on a completely different note, you mentioned Oswald.

[pretzel4gore]

159. Do you know anything about Lee?

apparently, he defected from USeh to USSR after leaving the marines- he had served at the base that U2 pilot gary powers took off from when shot down (which derailed the Krushchev/Kennedy detente plans) and he somehow got a crappy min wage job in Dallas at TSBD in 1963 shortly prior to JFK visit thanks to a 'Ruth Paine' who was part of CIA establishment. Oswald would have retired in 2004 if he was a gov agent, an Office of Naval intelligence agent, and killed in line of duty etc

[stopbush]

170. Ruth Paine part of the CIA? Pure tinfoil.

Oswald's life is covered in great depth in Bugliosi's book. The Oswald bio runs to 275 pages. I've read it.

So, yeah, I know all about Oswald. I suggest you read Bugliosi's book as well. Then, you'll know everything about Lee you need to know - and I mean, everything.

[pretzel4gore]

207. the men who run the planet are crooks. period

cheap, petty crooks with nothing but their fat gutless cowardly appetites motivating them and the ruin they create- all the rest is debateable...imho
(btw mister pigs murdered Pope John Paul the 1st before installing a nazipooh 'saint' (JP2) who made the defrauding of the world go like a house on fire since 1978. I betcha no one believes this either!)
i mean, who REALLY cares anymore? The people are REACTIONARY by nature, it seems, and tolerate bush reagan hitlers and so on, no matter what it cost them....
and Mister Bugliosi. He went apeshit over OJ way back when defying the lying bastards who exploited a sordid domestic murder to create the air needed by junyer bush and fascism as we know it today might have made a difference, but NOOOO! Thanks Vincent

[stopbush]

224. You write:

"and Mister Bugliosi. He went apeshit over OJ way back when defying the lying bastards who exploited a sordid domestic murder to create the air needed by junyer bush and fascism as we know it today might have made a difference, but NOOOO! Thanks Vincent."

Perhaps you're unaware of Bugliosi's book, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder (Published by Vanguard Press; May 2008;$26.95US/$28.95CAN; 978-159315-481-3)? (excerpt here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vincent-bugliosi/the-prosecution-of-george_b_102427.html )

He released that one a year AFTER his JFK book was released.

I guess the CT crowd has mixed feeling about Vincent.

To suggest the Bugliosi "isn't on the case" is ludicrous.

BTW - Bugliosi is a life-long Democrat. I doubt that his being a D influenced him to go after bush in this book, anymore than it influenced him to "lie" about the facts in the JFK assassination.

[terrific]

95. Disgusting!

Fred Phelps must be laughing right now.

[Octafish]

98. Treason.

The country has not been the same since November 22, 1963.
We've been pretty much at war, something President Kennedy worked to avoid.
We've been pretty much in a rat race where it's a dog-eat-dog situation economically.
We've been pretty much a nation where might makes right, politically.

Websites for information on what is known about the assassination of President Kennedy:

JFKLancer.com
Education Forum
Mary Farrell Foundation
Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board


BTW: Welcome to DU. Good one! Fred Phelps is a wannabe piker for evil compared to the people Time for Change calls the Powers That Be.

[stopbush]

137. Treason? I didn't know the country was at war when JFK was killed.

Better check the definition of treason as outlined in the Constitution:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted."

God, you have SO much to learn, Octafish. Best be getting about it.

[Octafish]

166. Killing President Kennedy was an act of treason.

You arguing otherwise, as well as your arguments throughout this thread, make me believe your agenda is to weigh this important topic down with useless drivel.

Those interested in the subject, may want to get some background on the way the game is played.

THE BIG CON at DEALEY PLAZA

SNIP...

DAVID MAURER’S "THE BIG CON."

The movie the Sting is based in part on Professor David Maurer’s "The Big Con," a study of street slang of the American confidence men of the early part of the last century. Maurer’s "The Big Con" was first published in 1940 and updated and republished later as "The American Confidence Man." The book began as a linguistic text on the slang and lingo of the grifters and confidence men, but became a manual on how the big confidence scams are played.

SNIP...

When General Odom told Powers that counter-intelligence agents operate "like the Sting," he meant that the best covert operations are conducted very much like the Big Con confidence schemes, as Paul Linebarger taught them.

PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER

It’s not even that surprising that General Odom would use the Sting as an example of how the crafts of intelligence works best, mainly because the best black artists in the CIA during the Cold War were trained by Professor Paul M. A. Linebarger (July 1913-1966), whose book on Psychological Warfare and Propaganda (Combat Forces Press, 1948; 1954) is the classic textbook on the subject.

Besides being professor of Asiatic Studies at John Hopkins, Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger was also a part time professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a transparent front for a CIA think tank. It wasn’t until after his death that Linebarger was exposed as being science fiction writer Cordwainer Smith, and that he had worked with E. Howard Hunt in Mexico City.

Those CIA recruits who were invited to take Linebarger’s SAIS classes, which he taught at his home at night, were required to use trade-craft in avoiding detection to get there so as to avoid being followed.

Among Linebarger’s students were E. Howard Hunt, David Atlee Phillips and Ed Lansdale, three of the most prolific covert operators during the Cold War.

When Paul Linebarger gave his lectures to young CIA officers, he warned them that these techniques should never be used domestically, or it would totally destroy our form of democracy. Well those techniques were used in the assassination of President Kennedy, and are being used today, and democracy has never been the same.

CONTINUED...

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/big-con-at-dealey-plaza.html

Ignorant and crazy people can be helped. Traitors, like pederasts, are uncurable. Understand, stopbush?

[stopbush]

176. I've heard evidence called many things, but "useless drivel?" That's a new one.

As usual, you CTers are all hat and no cattle. You wouldn't know a fact if it up and bit you in the ass. It's so much easier to not answer questions that challenge your fantasies than to have the guts and the intellect to provide a cogent counter argument.

No problem. I'm used to it...and I find it just as unimpressive in this thread as I've found it in all the other threads the CTers slather about in.

[JDPriestly]

111. Thanks. I have always been suspicious of the official explanation for the Kennedy

assassination. I really don't understand the single bullet and autopsy disputes. It was always just a feeling I had, remembering the day clearly having been a college student at the time. In recent years, I saw the tape of the Secret Service agent being called away from Kennedy's car shortly before the assassination. He looked so puzzled? He gestured as if to say, "What are you calling me off the back of the car for?" If only I knew what he would have said about that day? Oh, well. That tape convinced me that there probably was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The Secret Service guys who rode on the back of his car would have taken any bullet aimed at him. That is what they were there for. And they were called off.

[stopbush]

136. Oh, really? You've "always been suspicious of the offical explanation?"

And how well do you know the evidence that backs up that explanation? I'm going to take Door #2 - "Doesn't know jack squat," for a million dollars, Alex.

I love this: "I saw the tape of the Secret Service agent being called away from Kennedy's car shortly before the assassination. He looked so puzzled? He gestured as if to say, "What are you calling me off the back of the car for?" If only I knew what he would have said about that day?"

Perhaps his SS buddies were saying, "Hey, George, your fly is down."

BTW - guess who "called off" the SS men riding on the rear bumper of JFK's limo. Would you believe - JFK himself? Yep, That's who did it.

Further BTW - did you know that on the morning of the assassination, JFK said something to the effect that anyone who wanted to kill him could do it, that they would use a high-powered rifle and fire from a tall building? It's all there in the record. That reveals an obvious "fact" that the JFK CTers seem to have missed: JFK himself was in on the plot to kill himself!!!

[JDPriestly]

139. What are the sources for your statements about the facts?

I would like more information. Thanks.

[stopbush]

142. As I mentioned before, my source is Vincent Bugliosi's

Reclaiming History- The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy.(WW Norton)

If you REALLY want to read about the evidence as gathered by the Warren Commission, the HSCA, the Rockefeller Commission and ALL of the other serious investigations (all that prove Oswald killed JFK and acted alone), then read this book. Warning - at over 1600 small-point-size-type pages, it is not a walk in the park (and that doesn't include the 984 pages of end notes that are contained on the CDR that comes with the book).

If you REALLY want to see every conspiracy theory imaginable addressed and evaluated against the EVIDENCE in the case, read this book.

OR - you can listen to the unsupported-by-evidence rantings of the conspiracy crowd, most of whom have already trashed Bugliosi's 20+ years of research without availing themselves of reading even the end flap copy of his magnum opus.

If you REALLY "would like more information," do yourself and history a favor and read this book. Anybody who wishes to honor the memory of JFK owes it to themselves to read history, rather than hysteria, as it pertains to this tragic event in our history.

[lovuian]

114. JFK was assasinated by the CIA as Gerald Ford confessed

on his dying bed

and Poppy Bush was head of the CIA

[Time for change]

115. I hadn't heard that.

Too bad that more people haven't heard.

[MrMickeysMom]

123. ...

:wtf: Gerald Ford?

[stopbush]

133. More bullshit. There's no end to it.

It takes nothing to make such assertions, does it? No evidence, no logic, just an utter disregard for the reputations of people like Gerald Ford who attained a certain standing in life, a standing that people like lovuian can never hope to match.

It's really pathetic. It also has the effect of discrediting DU as a place where intelligent and sane people meet to discuss REALITY.

[Octafish]

168. Gerald Ford Altered the Warren Commission Report to Advance the Big Lie

Ford changed the location of the wound in President Kennedy's back up to his "lower neck." That advanced the Single Bullet fantasy.

Gerald Ford's Terrible Fiction



President Kennedy's jacket.
Note the location of the bullet hole,
near the middle of his back,
between his shoulder blades,
not his neck.

Ford moved the wound location to the base of President Kennedy's neck.
That's not just bullshit.
That obstructs justice in regards to the assassination of President Kennedy.
That's also treason.

[stopbush]

173. These are lies. The autopsy pix show exactly where JFK's wounds were.

You're making a common CT mistake with your picture of the jacket and shirt removed from JFK's body.

In all pictures taken at the time of the killing - including the Zapruder film - JFK's jacket is bunched up around his neck, a typical result when one sits down in a suit jacket. The bullet that entered JFK's back first passed through his clothing. It entered through the area near his upper back where the material from the suit was bunched near the top of the jacket. When the jacket is laid out flat, the bullet hole naturally moves further down the back because the material is now flat, as if it was on a hanger. If one looked ONLY at the jacket and shirt in this way, it appears the bullet hit further down on JFK's back than it actually did.

I'm a guy. I wear suits all the time. You learn that when you go on TV or get a portrait taken you sit on the bottom of your jacket to get rid of the material bunching at the back of your neck line. When you're sitting at your desk or driving, you don't bother sitting on the tail of your jacket, and the material bunches around the top of the jacket, just like it did for JFK that day.

Is that so hard to understand?

[omega minimo]

177. What's "pathetic" is your attempt to shield your agenda with belligerence and to discredit

"DU as a place where intelligent and sane people meet to discuss REALITY."


:evilfrown: It's an ugly dance you're doing and you're fooling no one.

[caseymoz]

124. There's one huge problem with this . . .

Are you saying that JFK, the son of Joseph Kennedy, wasn't aware of such an organization? It's not impossible, I guess, but I can't believe it without some better evidence. I mean, there was any conspiracy among the wealthy, Joseph Kennedy would have been one to know about it.

A conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy would have been over something very simple. Like his sleeping with a Mafioso's daughter, or some of RFKs prosecutions of organized crime. Don't forget that Joseph Kennedy had some links to organized crime, and they'd probably see that as a betrayal. Jack Ruby's presence there would suggest that, so would the fact that RFK was shot. However, it's not the only possibility. It's also possible that it was totally an inside job, that the people closest to the President saw his behavior not as a threat to wealth, but actually as a threat of nuclear war. Maybe they agreed he was the wrong guy for the job, and Johnson did too and was in on it, which is why the Warren Commission swept it so successfully under the rug. The fact that they agreed it was the right thing would a major reason why more information has never leaked out from somebody who may have been involved. This would make it the most successful political coup in history.

I realize that this is not a sanguine view of JFK. For one reason at least:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB101/index.htm

[Time for change]

134. I'm pretty sure that JFK was mostly aware of the risks he faced

In his book Douglass goes into long discussions to show just how aware of this he was. But he was willing to take those risks.

Whereas it is possible that the assassination could have been over something simple and relatively minor, like who he was sleeping with, given the great dissatisfaction with him by the PTB, that seems highly unlikely to me. He posed a tremendous obstacle to some of the most powerful people in the world. To me, that is the most salient fact.

There is a great deal of evidence that it was in fact an "inside job". That is, that his Secret Service, or much of it, was complicit. So was the CIA, and possibly the FBI and Johnson, as you suggest.

I don't see how anyone could have seen his behavior as a threat to nuclear war. His military advisors on many occasions strongly advised him to use nuclear weapons or to take military actions that very well could have led to nuclear war, and he repeatedly refused. Also, there is the nuclear test ban treaty that he pursued, which I don't see how anyone could have reasonably seen as posing a threat to nuclear war.

As far as the conspirators agreeing that he was the wrong man for the job, well I'm sure that that was the case. I'm almost positive that in discussions amongst themselves they repeatedly said something to that effect, rather than saying something like "We need to get rid of him because he's costing us money". Almost everyone rationalizes their actions, no matter how heinous, even when talking amongst themselves, and I'm sure that these people were no exception. Whether they thought that he was "the wrong man for the job" because of the risk that he posed to their own wealth and power or because of a sincere concern for their country, I doubt that anyone will ever be able to prove, because I'm pretty sure that they never overtly stated it in terms of the former. But my opinion is that that was the reason, whether or not they ever stated it in those terms.

[stopbush]

140. Jeebus, the smears never end with you, do they?

You write: "There is a great deal of evidence that it was in fact an "inside job". That is, that his Secret Service, or much of it, was complicit. So was the CIA, and possibly the FBI and Johnson, as you suggest."

Have you ever read the evidence in the record? Do you know how devastated his SS men were by the killing? Do you know that to a man, they had a personal relationship with JFK and considered him to be a friend? Do you know how many men were in the SS at the time? I doubt it.

And the CIA was also involved? AND the FBI, too? Wow! And I imagine they were working with the Cubans and the KGB AND the Mob as well. Christ, wasn't there ANYBODY in the country who didn't want JFK dead?

And LBJ was involved as well? You're really going to go there? LBJ, the man who signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964? LBJ, the president who put country before Party with that signing, knowing he was ceding the racist Southern vote to the Rs by enacting equal rights for blacks? It's one thing to hear such shit from the dopes at Free Republic, but from supposed Dems writing on DU?

Do you EVER stop to contemplate what you're saying?

And it's all so unnecessary, because the MOUNTAINS of evidence that prove beyond any doubt that Oswald was the killer and that he acted alone began to be gathered within MINUTES of the shooting by an exemplary police force in Dallas, with the lone assassin apprehended within hours of the killing, with the murder weapons used on both JFK and Tippet in custody and their ownership to Oswald traced back to the companies from which he ordered them confirmed by day's end. You discredit the law enforcement people who went into super overdrive to run down this information. You ignore the great work by Oswald's interrogators who through their methods caught him in numerous lies and changes to his story, who got corroborating testimony from others, including eyewitnesses who saw him fire the third shot from the TBD 6th-floor window, enough real evidence that they were able to charge him with JFK's killing before midnight.

And all of that evidence has stood up for over 45 years. In fact, with each and every advance in scientific analysis, the evidence is confirmed and reconfirmed that the Warren Commission got it right.

Where is your scientific evidence that disputes the WCR? There is none, Absolutely ZERO. Yet, you feel free to smear the reputations of those who not only were closest to JFK but who were prepared to give their lives for him and whose service to their country investigating and solving this murder is to be commended.

Talk is cheap, and conspiracy theories are even cheaper. Evidence - now, that's worth something.

How do you sleep at night?

[GliderGuider]

143. This really matters a lot to you, doesn't it?

Lots of sturm und drang in your replies. It's important to you that nobody think about this line of inquiry, that it not only be discredited but that it evaporate from our consciousness. That makes me wonder.

[stopbush]

144. Yes, it does matter to me that after 45 years the JFK CTs

seem to be going strong when there's no evidence to support a single one of them.

Tell me - what books have you read on the subject? Have you read any of the WCR? Do you bother checking the veracity on any of the "facts" put forward by the CT crowd?

BTW - do you really think the CT crowd will ever be satisfied? If it was somehow proved that the CIA did the killing, the "KGB did it" crowd would say the CIA-did-it crowd was now part of the cover up and conspiracy. They would find support from the "Mob did it" idiots. And round and round it goes, all of it in direct conflict with the evidence that's just as plain as the nose on your face.

As far as the sturm und drang in my posts, that's just frustration rearing its head. What's important in my posts is the evidence presented, something not a single CT post or poster has on their side.

[GliderGuider]

146. Why the frustration?

Does it matter objectively what a bunch of internet avatars type? You're the one who is frustrated. We didn't do that to you, you did.

My interest in the Kennedy assassination is a minor curiosity, since I'm not American. I did read a very interesting book by PD Scott called "Deep Politics and the Death of JFK", but I'm still undecided. I will admit that I don't have much trouble believing that governmental agencies (of all nations) sometimes act secretly against the interests of their citizens, and in the process take their orders from people other than the electorate. That's not too much of a stretch, from what I've seen.

There are two abstract ideas that keep me open to the idea of conspiracies, whether in politics, statecraft or economics.

The first is that "Truth" is a very slippery, subjective, evanescent concept that seems to shift and shimmer depending on which direction you view a particular set of facts from. Because of that, the perception of truth is easily manipulated if the manipulator(s) can convince others to see the facts in a particular way. The job is even easier if the set of facts to be accepted as relevant to the issue can be defined and limited by the manipulators.

The second idea is that conspiracies didn't just cease with the fall of the Roman Empire. The more money and power that are at stake the harder people will fight for them, and the more likely it is they will try to conceal their moves from their adversaries. The fact that conspiracies are still in play is evidenced by their occasional unmasking, like happened with Iran-Contra.

I think that the thing that makes people so uncomfortable about considering the mere possibility of conspiracy around events like JFK, RFK and 9/11 is that they were so big that the possibility of conspiracy implies something so monstrous about American society as to call into question its fundamental validity. As a result a lot of emotional energy gets invested in closing off that avenue of inquiry. In effect trying to force people to take the blue pill instead of the red.

[stopbush]

147. Conspiracies do happen. The assassination of Lincoln was a conspiracy-enabled killing.

That's what the EVIDENCE shows in that case.

The EVIDENCE in the JFK killing shows otherwise.

There's an old saying in gathering evidence: a shadow is often mistaken for a mugger, but a mugger is never mistaken for a shadow. The CTers deal in shadows, and they're mistaken 99.999% of the time. Those who gather real evidence deal in reality, not shadows.

BTW - as you can see, I'm just about the only anti-CTer posting in this thread. The numbers are stacked against me, that's plain to see. However, the evidence to refute the CTers is so overwhelming that I could go on all day. And - as is normally the case - an assertion made without evidence that is but a few words in length often takes many more words to debunk. Sometimes I have the time to spend debunking, other times, not so much.

As a long-time DUer, I feel a sense of duty to respond to the kind of posts that discredit this site as a place for serious discussion. Oh, I know that the CTers will exist as long as there are blinders to be worn, but as I don't mind batting down the lunacies, what's the problem? Seems like job security to me.

[John Simkin]

230. The Assassination of JFK

A detailed look at the assassination of President John F. Kennedy can be found here.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKindex.htm

There are biographies of 328 people involved in the case: Major Figures (84), Important Witnesses (66), Investigators, Researchers and Journalists (112) and Possible Conspirators (132). Other sections include: Reports (4), Organizations and Operations (26) and Key Issues (4). The website also looks at the possibility that different organizations such as the Mafia, CIA, FBI, Secret Service, KGB and the John Birch Society might have been involved in the planning of the assassination. Other possibilities such as anti-Castro activists, Texas oil millionaires and the Warren Commission's lone-gunman theory are also looked at. The website has an activity section and a forum where students and teachers can enter into debate with the author of the material, other investigators and witnesses to the events of 1963.

[stopbush]

145. BTW, if you wish to "think about this line of inquiry," here's something to think about:

Let's assume there was a conspiracy. Let's assume there were multiple shooters in Dealey Plaza. Let's assume that these multiple shooters fired anywhere from 4 to 6 to 21 shots at JFK.

What would your inquiry say to the following:

* What were the weapons used to shoot at JFK? Was every assassin armed with a Manlicher-Carcano rifle, as was Oswald?

* If not, what bullets were recovered in Dealey Plaza or from JFK's corpse or Connally that did not come from a Manlicher-Carcano rifle?

* If all the shooters were armed with Manlicher-Carcano rifles, why did the two bullets recovered match only Oswald's rifle, rather than, say, a shooter on the grassy knoll? The Plaza was searched with a fine-toothed comb. Is it possible that no other bullets were recovered when 6 were fired? And how is it possible that the ballistics tests on the two recovered bullets matched Oswald's rifle to the exclusion of every other gun in the world?

* If the "magic bullet" was planted on the stretcher at Parkland, how did the conspirators know to plant a bullet fired from Oswald's gun? How did they know within an hour of the shooting that ONLY Oswald's shots had hit JFK and Connally to plant a bullet that made it look like he was the lone shooter? If, say, Oswald had missed and the shots that hit JFK & Connally had actually been fired by the "badgeman" on the grassy knoll, wouldn't they have had to plant a bullet from his rifle to fake the single-shooter scenario?

How did they know that all of the other shooters not only missed both JFK and Connally, but that the bullets they fired would never be recovered to be compared to the bullet (CE399) found on the stretcher at Parkland? How did they know that no bullets from a shooter other than Oswald weren't lodged in the bodies of JFK and/or Connally (not even the doctors at Parkland knew this. In fact, the Parkland doctors didn't even know there was a bullet wound in JFK's back because they never turned his body over to examine his back. The fact that there were no bullets lodged in JFK's corpse wasn't established until a full-body x-ray of JFK was done at Bethesda)?

After all, if even a single bullet was found in Dealey Plaza (or lodged in JFK or Connally) that came from either a different manufacturing lot as the ammo Oswald used, OR - more importantly - that was fired from any weapon other than Oswald's rifle (ie: ballistics tests would prove it was fired from a different weapon) a conspiracy would have been confirmed beyond any doubt whatsoever.

* How could any conspirator plan for all of these variables and contingencies and WITHIN AN HOUR OF THE SHOOTING plant fake evidence and suppress ALL contrary evidence to the Oswald/single gunman/single weapon scenario, and pull it all off to the degree that no evidence has surfaced in the intervening 45 years to dispute the findings of the WCR? How could they possibly know what evidence to fake or suppress to begin with?

I await your answers on this line of inquiry...

[GliderGuider]

148. Sorry, you're trying to argue with someone who doesn't care all that much about those details

Whether JFK was killed by a lone gunman, a Special Forces sniper team or jealous husband and his Mafia buddy makes little difference. American society is where it is now because of the resonance of that event and others like it. The important thing for me, if I were an American, would be what kind of culture I'm living as a result. If it turns out that the reasons for an event are different than I thought they were, it doesn't change the impact the event had on me.

I realize that if there wass an element so viciously rotten at the core of American governance that it would do something so evil, it would need to be rooted out in the interests of future generations. Is there? How would you tell?

[stopbush]

149. Intreresting that you would feel no differently if JFK was killed

by a lone nut or as the result of a far-ranging conspiracy involving multiple elements of the government.

I can't say the same.

At present, 75% of Americans believe the conspiracy meme. I think that contributes in large part to the unhealthy suspicion people feel about their government, and even how Ds feel about Obama. There's healthy suspicion, then, there's wackiness.

I would posit that if 75% of Americans accepted the findings of the WCR it would make a big difference, especially in how the event has "resonated" with the populace. We would have moved on in a sense, something we'll never do as long as the majority believes such CTs in spite of all the evidence.

But then, most Americans are religious, so we're pre-disposed to believe things for which there is no evidence.

[GliderGuider]

150. I think you have it backwards.

The willingness of Americans to take on conspiracy memes is a result of their loss of trust, not a cause of it. The ability to believe that one's government is monstrous speaks to a deep loss of faith in the institution. It may even be evidence of a loss of belief in the underlying, sustaining cultural narrative - the story you tell yourselves about what it means to be American, and the values that story upholds. When that narrative loses its hold the culture fractures, and the institutions that try to maintain it are open to easy suspicion. I get the feeling that such a loss of faith has been building momentum in America since, oh, late 1963 or so.

[stopbush]

152. I disagree. If you look at the historical record after the JFK killing

the country had come to terms with Oswald being the lone assassin. In fact, the CTers suffered a great set back with the embarrassing prosecution of Clay Shaw by Jim Garrison, an entirely unethical prosecutor who makes george bush look like a pantywaist when it comes to lying, duplicity and feeling as a law unto oneself. The "loss of trust" was in their government's ability to protect the president, not in a loss of trust that the government was suddenly against the people and against all that was good.

The HSCA in 1978 largely confirmed the findings of the WCR, and even their erroneously finding that a 4th shot was fired didn't exactly send the people into the streets.

No, it was Oliver Stone's shameless fantasy movie JFK that got Americans thinking that their government was peopled by anti-American factions, and to read most CT posts on DU, that's where most Americans chose to get their "history" as it pertains to JFK's killing. Indeed, the younger generation that had no knowledge of or interest in the JFK shooting got their history from this a-historic "counter myth" (as Stone himself called it) and many of them now fully embrace Stone's myth as if it were history. Millions who know instinctively that life's jigsaw puzzle never fits together so neatly embraced Stone's narrative of a conspiracy that was not only pulled off without a hitch, but was pulled off with the involvement and cooperation of entities who would normally be in a fight to the death with each other.

Yes, it seems that JFK had the ability to bring together the KGB, the CIA, the FBI AND The Mob in the common cause of killing a sitting American president.

Americans have lost faith in their cultural institutions, yet how sad is it that said loss of faith is based entirely on lies conceived by a bunch of third-rate authors looking to make a buck off of the death of a president and the gullibility of the American people.

[GliderGuider]

162. People from various sectors who see a common interest come together all the time.

It's not hard to see that there might be overlapping interests in the intelligence, plainclothes law enforcement and organized crime communities, is it? Given the fundamentally covert nature of these organizations, the secrecy required for extra-legal cooperation is already part of their mode of operation. Though there doesn't even need to be an overt conspiracy to drive common action, just a mutual recognition of shared interests. A nod and a wink will do. That's the territory that PD Scott explored in "Deep Politics".

Of course the recognition of mutual interests makes it much easier to buddy up with strange bedfellows. The persistent stories of CIA drug-smuggling speak to that convergence.

[omega minimo]

178. Rubbish. The loss of trust occurred with the assassination/s, not due to Stone's film.

:thumbsdown:

[stopbush]

156. BTW, as I recall, it was you who wanted to think about

"this line of inquiry."

Apparently, you don't really want to think about it at all. At best, you wish to think about it in the vacuum of the CT dimension.

[GliderGuider]

160. It was?

I said nothing about wanting to follow this line of inquiry one way or the other. I've repeatedly said I don't care much about the details of this particular event. It's not my country, it's not my zeitgeist. I'm interested in the more universal aspects of conspiracies and the theories about them. Just because my thoughts aren't filled with the details you find so engaging hardly qualifies them as a vacuum.

[stopbush]

161. Sorry. I misunderstood when you wrote in post # 143:

"It's important to you that nobody think about this line of inquiry, that it not only be discredited but that it evaporate from our (emphasis added) consciousness. That makes me wonder."

I took that to mean you were part of the "our consciousness" that thought about this "line of inquiry."

BTW - what you call the "details" of the JFK assassination, I and others would call the evidence. The truth about the JFK killing is in the evidence, and in the details of the evidence.

Of course, if one isn't concerned with actual evidence, then all bets are off. One may as well aver that Martians killed JFK as any of the usual conspiracies theories. Sans details/evidence, any fiction has an equal claim to being the "truth."

[GliderGuider]

163. I meant "us" in the sense of "anybody who is not you." Sorry that was unclear. nt

[omega minimo]

180. Speaking of tinfoil

:tinfoilhat:

"It's important to you that nobody think about this line of inquiry, that it not only be discredited but that it evaporate from our (emphasis added) consciousness. That makes me wonder."

"I took that to mean you were part of the "our consciousness" that thought about this "line of inquiry." "

**************
You're projecting your fantasy of "CT" on everyone "who isn't you," as the poster pointed out.

In fact, the meaning of the poster's comment was quite clear about your game. Your macho antics and obfuscation dirty up the place with belligerent BS while you kick sand at sane comments and then jig back with your "evidence" and more challenges.

That makes us wonder.

[stopbush]

187. And yet there hasn't been a single scrap of hard evidence put forward by

the CTers to support their claims.

If you feel that evidence is belligerent, that's your problem, not mine or the evidence's. And it's not "my" evidence. It's the evidence that was developed through traditional law enforcement methods, tested and proved through the scientific method and retested and reproved with every advance in said scientific method. I can't and don't take credit for inventing scientific proof out of my head. That's the MO of the CT crowd who create vast conspiracy scenarios out of the whole cloth that arises with blatant disregard and willing ignorance of the evidence.

I don't "wonder" about the agenda of the CTers on this blog. I don't think they necessarily have an agenda. I think they just like to hear themselves talk as they spin their ever more convoluted fantasies about what happened on that fateful day in 1963.

Q: have you read the WCR or Bugliosi's book? Have you read anything on the JFK killing that does not purport a conspiracy? How balanced has your approach been to the case?

BTW - I notice a pattern here: not a single CTer in this thread has bothered to address the simple questions I posed (#145), yet very one of you has picked up on the talking points that I'm belligerent, arrogant, etc etc. I find it telling that not one of you has the spine to take a different path and attempt to answer the questions. You don't answer, you pontificate, and pontificate defensively at that.

If I didn't know better, I'd think there was a conspiracy here to avoid confronting the sorry truth that is staring all of you in your CT faces.

[omega minimo]

191. "If you feel that evidence is belligerent, that's your problem, not mine or the evidence's".

:rofl: No, it's your problem and your game.

[Time for change]

165. A response to your bullshit would take a lot more time than it deserves n/t

[stopbush]

174. Cop out. Why am I not surprised?

You won't answer my questions in post 145 because you don't have an answer.

In fact, you've probably never bothered to think through your crazy conspiracy assertions to arrive at the logical and simple questions I posed in 145.

I'd be willing to place money on it.

But, hey, prove me wrong. Show us all how easy it is to provide answers to the questions I posed in #145. C'mon, you're a big boy. Show that you can answer questions with logic and evidence just as easily as the anti-CTers respond to you with logic and evidence.

Should I hold my breath?

[omega minimo]

179. Like TFC already said, there isn't enough time or interest to deal with

master baiters.

[stopbush]

186. Not enough time to answer simple and logical questions,

yet plenty of time for TFC to type up a bunch of crap the length of the OP in this thread.

You guys are cowards.

[omega minimo]

190. Too late to play innocent

of your own obnoxious style and then throw in another insult.


How's that working for ya?

[stopbush]

192. Name calling and still not a shred of evidence.

If the evidence was on your side, you'd be able to utterly destroy the position I'm advancing. It would be child's play. In fact, I could expect multiple posts form multiple posters citing facts and evidence to dispute my positions.

But that hasn't happened, has it?

Someday you'll outgrow the logic of the schoolyard...or maybe not.

[omega minimo]

193. That's right, someday you'll outgrow the logic of the schoolyard...or maybe not.

:boring:

[stopbush]

194. You consider that an answer?

Why bother posting? You add nothing at all to the conversation.

Still no evidence-based counter to the arguments.

At least other CTers make a half-assed effort. You can't even do that.

Pathetic.

[omega minimo]

195. No

Your behavior causes there to be no "conversation."

What part of IT'S YOUR BEHAVIOR don't you understand? :shrug:

[stopbush]

196. That's a cheap excuse for not presenting an answer.

Does the "behavior" of the Republicans keep you from voting? Did the "behavior" of your science teachers in school stop you from performing experiments?

Let's face it, if you were able to respond with hard evidence to dispute what I've written, you'd be all over this. But you have no evidence, so you believe that offering a series of increasingly lame excuses is the ticket. No one is fooled, except the fool who fools himself (and, yes, I realize that you were about to cut-and-paste that last line back to me as another of your "responses").

Like I said before, pathetic.

[omega minimo]

197. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5757851&mesg_id=5772739

[stopbush]

199. Yet you have the time to post multiple short and meanngless posts.

I'd settle for one cogent post of medium length from you that included a few facts to back up your opinions about the JFK killing.

I guess that isn't ever going to happen, is i?

[omega minimo]

200. .

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5757851&mesg_id=5774544

[caseymoz]

184. FBI and CIA? Your not understanding what I mean by "inside job." (long post)

I mean by "inside" the people closest to him. That would be, I allege: Clark Clifford, Dean Rusk, Robert S. McNamara, and Lyndon Johnson. Why? I hate to burst your bubble, but it might have been because they had clearest, closest look at how he was operating, and it frightened them.

I think those people probably would have seen somebody we wouldn't recognize as JFK. They would see a man who was physically broken down due to his back injury, who could hardly walk, and who in fact, had very little stamina or energy due to Addison's Disease. Worse, due to pain and the lack of stamina, he was usually drugged on painkillers, amphetamines, and some other more experimental things. Even in this condition, however, he found time and energy for his sexual forays, with women who included a known Soviet spy and a Mafioso's daughter. Those insiders also would have probably looked with concern on his handling of both the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, the latter where he surprise-blockaded Cuba (which was by International Conventions an act of war) before trying to negotiate, putting the world in high danger of nuclear war. They would have probably thought that Kennedy handled it that way trying to regain the dignity he lost after the depantsing he took in the Cuban Missile Crisis. They would have also seen a guy who jovially calls for coups in other countries in a manner of inviting people to a golf game on Saturday. (They have him on tape doing this, BTW.)

For some indication of this: on NPR Talk of the Nation years ago, I remember that Clark Clifford said that for about five days following the Bay of Pigs, the government of the US was actually paralyzed and, I swear I heard him say panicked. He said it felt like nobody was in charge of the country. What was Kennedy doing then? Where was he? Why would they feel that level of hysteria when the US itself had not been invaded?

So, I don't mean the CIA, the FBI and the Secret Service as an "inside job." It couldn't have been that big, because conspirators know that the larger the conspiracy, the more likely they'll be ratted , sooner or later. The larger ones also tend to leave a paper trail somewhere, as communication becomes more difficult.

No, all they would need is the head of the CIA (who would know the situation very well), and a few lieutenants. J. Edgar Hoover would have been happy to look the other way, (his role might have been more central with dirt he dug up on Kennedy) or to have his people find the evidence a CIA operative or two would have planted. Other people in on it would have included Earl Warren, and Jack Ruby's presence would indicate the Italian Mafia did clean up. Sam Giancana would be my wild guess.

So, I would say Clifford, Rusk, McNamara, Johnson, the head of the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover (maybe orchestrating it) and Earl Warren, a few CIA lieutenants (two or three), who knew the whole story and the whole reason, a Mafia head and maybe even Nikiita Kruschev, who after the Cuban Missile Crisis would have agreed, and lent a few KBG operatives to it. The reason why it hasn't been ratted out would not be wealth, it was not even remotely the motive; these people agreed that it had to be done and it was the right thing to do. The Secret Service head need not have been involved at all. They were probably totally blindsided.

My guess is that Oswald was involved. I think an operative convinced him he would be the gunman, but never gave him the go-ahead. Somebody else in the depository would have done it. Oswald wouldn't have been told anything, and what little he did know would have been erased by Jack Ruby. Probably they motivated Ruby to do the work by threats to his family. I do think Kennedy was shot from the depository, and that his path through Dallas was orchestrated just so his motorcade make that turn in front of it for a clear shot. No, I don't believe in the Grassy Knoll theory. Too many gunmen spoil the assassination, and have a higher chance of getting caught, and have too many stories to tell when they are. On a clear sunny day, a single sharp shooter would not have been able to miss from behind. Maybe somebody inside peaked over the wall to observe things, and left hurriedly after it had been done, but it doesn't make sense to shoot from there when you have that ideal sniper-nest in the depository.

Afterward, they would all laud Kennedy as a great President and create the Kennedy myth just to keep people from suspecting them. Actually, Kennedy was little like the myth that was created about him. The Warren Commission probably sealed the evidence with the idea that the real story could come out-- after those involved were dead and after it no longer mattered politically.

It was the most successful coup in history, IMHO. A lasting effect of it, however, is that Presidents could always be clandestinely threatened with assassination. I mean, as far as they know, anybody could have done it. Why not use it to intimidate and terrorize?

But I'm sorry, wealth couldn't have been the motive within the motive. Mercenaries don't do a job this way, and there's always envy, always somebody who doesn't feel they received enough. If they were that criminal, one of them wouldn't be able to help boasting about it in some way.

[stopbush]

198. Ho-hum. Another opinion piece offered without a scrap of evidence.

"I mean." "I allege." "I think." "My guess." "It might have." "These people agreed it had to be done (an outright smear of the reputations of JFK's closest confidants)." "If they were that criminal."

Opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one.

That's it? Wake me up when it's over.

[caseymoz]

202. Yes, it's just a yarn. I wish you would have enjoyed it more.

It's most likely Oswald was the lone killer. However, if there was a conspiracy, it would be the one I described. I qualified it by saying "I think," "my guess," for a reason. It was a counterpoint to his theory which made Kennedy into a political hero, when he really wasn't. I just wish you would have enjoyed it more.

Just think about how much our politics have been shaped by lone, crazed gunman. Always it was the most liberal politicians who were killed, JFK, RFK and MLK, but that is just bad luck. John Hinkley came about a half-inch from killing Reagan. Lynette Fromm had Gerald Ford point-blank with a .44, but hadn't properly loaded it.

The JFK assassination, especially, has so many intriguing facets around it, including that enigma Lee Harvey Oswald: a marine who defected to the USSR, and comes back because he gets bored? How believable is that? There is also the "fog" effect, where people are so in shock by a crisis that their memories become distorted. (Same thing happened on 9/11). There's that collection of blurry photos and shaky movies.

Even so, most likely it was just Oswald. Nevertheless, Kennedy was not the palladin that the myths make him out to be, and a conspiracy would have to be small and an inside job. Therefore, I like my yarn better than his.

I hope I'm alive when the Warren Commission evidence is finally unsealed. Just thirty years to go.

[stopbush]

203. The Warren Commission evidence has all been unsealed, IIRC.

People pour over it looking for the CT smoking gun and come up empty every time.

BTW - the WCR wasn't sealed as some grand plot to keep the info from the public. It was sealed because that was the process that was put in place and demanded at the National Archives. Since the Assassination Records Act was passed, thousands of documents have been made public.

Not all assassinations are carried out by lone nutcases, but a lone nutcase does have a much better chance of keeping his plans to himself than does a person involved in a conspiracy, wouldn't you say? There have been a number of conspiracy plots that have been foiled of late, usually because some conspirator opened their yap in the wrong place.

The Oswald story isn't quite as simple as you portray it. He wasn't "bored" with the USSR, he was disenchanted. Living his Marxist dream turned out to be a nightmare. He felt the USSR wasn't pure Marxism. He thought Cuba was. Oswald never called himself a communist. He called himself a Marxist, even though he didn't really understand what Marxism was (yes, he owned the books but could never say what they meant when asked in interviews). He felt the Russian oligarchy lived high off the hog while the working class suffered. That was his main beef with capitalism as well.

Oswald wrote that he despised the figureheads of both systems. His killing of JFK was an expression of this. In point of fact, Oswald liked and admired JFK. He had good things to say about him and was very pleased that JFK supported civil rights. When he killed JFK, he didn't kill JFK the man. He killed JFK the capitalist symbol. He also was clear that he wanted to be remembered in history "for 10,000 years," and his killing of JFK certainly made that a possibility.

Sorry I didn't enjoy your tale more. I've just re-read major areas of the Bugliosi book (I'm a glutton for punishment!) and with all of the facts in the case so clear in my mind right now, it's hard to restrain myself when the peanut gallery is out in their full ininformed force.

[caseymoz]

204. One can't know everything . . .

. . . but when I read an article that's so worshipful of JFK, I thought I would juxtapose it with a different possibility.

No, I didn't know it had been unsealed, I apparently heard it had been sealed from another inattentive source. I also didn't know Oswald wrote enough to assign him a motive.

I'm just a guy fooling around.

[wuvuj]

158. Obama is "in love" with the military...

...not a good start?





The correct expression is.... the - PTB = the - powers that be (stupid).



THE REAL STORY?

My impression is...that not only were the techniques recently used in US elections perfected previously in Central and South Am...but also since 9/11...the US has been under a form of martial law. In addition...the technology and techniques developed and used in the M. E. will soon come home to roost in the US...for patriotic reasons of course.

[Butch350]

167. When? Got a date or a year?

I wanna be prepared.

[wuvuj]

206. I'd say sometime after 2016.

They have the GPS coordinates for your home....when you read about people being taken out by UAVs and Hellfire missles...you'll know it's time. :wow:

[BlooInBloo]

172. Um... I like Kennedy and all, but he ESCALATED Vietnam.

[stopbush]

175. JFK upped the number of military advisors in Nam fourfold, but he didn't escalate

into a full war.

He did issue NASM 263 on 10/11/63 that proposed bringing 1,000 advisors out of Nam within a year. Contrary to Stone's ridiculous JFK, LBJ did not reverse this policy when he assumed office, he reaffirmed JFK's intentions (NSAM 273 - 11/26/63). NASM 273 issued by LBJ said, "the objectives of the US with respect to the withdrawal of US military personnel, remain as stated in the WH statement of 10/2/63."

LBJ would escalate into war...a year and a half after the assassination.

BTW - who said this?:

"In the final analysis, it is their (S Vietnam) war. They are the ones who have to win or lose it. But I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. This is a very important struggle even though it is far away. We took all this - made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate - we may not like it, in the defense of Asia."

Give up? Source: JFK speaking with CBS's Walter Cronkite, Sept. 2, 1963 (ie: roughly 2 months before he was assassinated)

[omega minimo]

183. "the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living...."

Thank you, TFC :hug:

[Raksha]

211. Upthread someone suggested that we google "Conversations With the Crow"

for more information about the PTB and their involvement with the Kennedy assassination. So I did that yesterday, and here's the link I found:

http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a2947.htm#006

Conversations with the Crow: Part 77

Editor’s note: When this series was prepared, a number of conversations were deliberately redacted because they were either very personal in nature or, more important, contained specific material which we felt might have considerable impact and present potential danger in publication. Now that all of the conversations are being readied for publication, along with illustrative specific notes, we are publishing many of the hitherto off-limits examples. Enjoy them!

On October 8th, 2000, Robert Trumbull Crowley, once a leader of the CIA's Clandestine Operations Division, died in a Washington hospital of heart failure and the end effects of Alzheimer's Disease. Before the late Assistant Director Crowley was cold, Joseph Trento, a writer of light-weight books on the CIA, descended on Crowley's widow at her town house on Cathedral Hill Drive in Washington and hauled away over fifty boxes of Crowley's CIA files.

Once Trento had his new find secure in his house in Front Royal , Virginia, he called a well-known Washington fix lawyer with the news of his success in securing what the CIA had always considered to be a potential major embarrassment. Three months before, July 20th of that year, retired Marine Corps colonel William R. Corson, and an associate of Crowley, died of emphysema and lung cancer at a hospital in Bethesda, Md.

After Corson's death, Trento and a well-known Washington fix-lawyer went to Corson's bank, got into his safe deposit box and removed a manuscript entitled 'Zipper.' This manuscript, which dealt with Crowley's involvement in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, vanished into a CIA burn-bag and the matter was considered to be closed forever.

The small group of CIA officials gathered at Trento's house to search through the Crowley papers, looking for documents that must not become public. A few were found but, to their consternation, a significant number of files Crowley was known to have had in his possession had simply vanished.

When published material concerning the CIA's actions against Kennedy became public in 2002, it was discovered to the CIA's horror, that the missing documents had been sent by an increasingly erratic Crowley to another person and these missing papers included devastating material on the CIA's activities in South East Asia to include drug running, money laundering and the maintenance of the notorious 'Regional Interrogation Centers' in Viet Nam and, worse still, the Zipper files proving the CIA’s active organization of the assassination of President John Kennedy..

<snip>

That's from the introduction to transcript #77. I have only had a chance to read a few of the transcripts (the whole series is archived at the site) but this does appear to be the real thing.

[stopbush]

225. Cue the theme from The Twilight Zone...

[John Simkin]

226. The Vietnam War and the Assassination of JFK

In his book, The Military-Industrial Complex, Sidney Lens argues: “It is no accident that Washington has been almost universally on the side of conservative forces in the developing areas – Syngman Rhee in Korea, Chiang Kai-shek in China, the Shah in Iran, the militarists throughout Latin America, the king in Jordan, the king in Saudia Arabia, the military regimes in Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam. These conservative elements, to secure their own “vested interests,” have been willing to accept American military and economic support in return for concessions to American “vested interests”. Nor is it an accident that by and large the same legislators – Stennis, Russell, Rivers, Mundt, Goldwater, Tower, McClellan, to name a few – who are the fiercest advocates of military spending and military ventures, are also the fiercest opponents of social programs such as medicare, higher minimum wages, antipoverty, social security, and favourable trade union legislation.” (1)

In 1960 Kennedy presented himself as someone who held conservative views on both domestic and foreign issues. As Richard D. Mahoney points out in his book, Sons and Brothers: “As senator, Kennedy had zigzagged through the long obstacle course of civil rights legislation, siding in most cases, as a Ted Sorensen memo to Bobby proudly explained in December 1959, ‘with our friends in the South.’ He meant white friends.” (2)

Mahoney goes on to argue: “The most entrenched and skilled leaders of that majority in the Senate – McClellan of Arkansas, Eastland of Mississippi, Ervin of North Carolina, and Fulbright of Arkansas – were all vehement opponents of civil rights as well as close friends of Bobby Kennedy.” Kennedy admits in several interviews that were recorded as part of the Oral History Project, that he had several conversations with people like McClellan and Eastland during the campaign to assure them that the Kennedy administration would not promote the “civil rights issue”. (3)

Harris Wofford, Kennedy’s special assistant for civil rights, supports this view in his memoirs, Of Kennedys and Kings. He points out that Kennedy was forced into taking a stand on the issue because of the activities of Martin Luther King and pressure groups like the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). For example, Kennedy did all he could to get the Freedom Riders to call off their activities in 1961. (4)

Once in power, Kennedy appeared to support the foreign policy established by Dwight Eisenhower. The historian, David Kaiser, argues that Eisenhower’s policies “called for a military response to Communist aggression almost anywhere that it might occur”. Kaiser provides evidence that this strategy was “adopted by the State and Defense Departments in 1954-1956 and approved secretly by President Eisenhower.” (5)

This policy began with the overthrow by the CIA of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán in Guatemala in the summer of 1954. According to one historian: “The Agency had learned a lesson from the Guatemalan revolution in the early 1950s, when a nationalist government expropriated the land and the public service enterprises of U.S. monopolies to the benefit of the peasants and the population in general. This experience gave rise to a program of infiltrating agents into countries convulsed by communist ideas.” (6)

In the final months of his administration, Eisenhower was mainly concerned with trying to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro in Cuba. He was also worried about events in Laos and Vietnam. However, Kaiser convincingly argues that Kennedy subtly changed foreign policy after he gained office. “Ironically, while Eisenhower’s supposedly cautious approach in foreign policy had frequently been contrasted with his successors’ apparent aggressiveness, Kennedy actually spent much of his term resisting policies developed and approved under Eisenhower, both in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. He also had to deal with the legacy of the Eisenhower administration’s disastrous attempts to create a pro-Western rather than a neutral government in Laos – a policy he quickly reversed, thereby avoiding the need for American military intervention there.” (7)

Kaiser admits that he the Kennedy administration did increase the number of American military personnel in South Vietnam from 600 in 1960 to 17,500 in 1963. However, although he sincerely wanted to help the South Vietnamese government cope with the Viet Cong he rejected war as a way to do so. Kennedy’s view of America’s involvement in Southeast Asia was expressed clearly at his first ever press conference. When asked about Laos he expressed his intentions to help create “a peaceful country – an independent country not dominated by either side but concerned with the life of the people within the country.” (8) This was a marked departure from Eisenhower’s policy of supporting anti-communist military dictatorships in Southeast Asia and the Americas.

This analysis of Kennedy’s foreign policy is supported by two of his most important aides, Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers. In their book, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, they describe how on 19th January, 1960, Eisenhower briefed Kennedy on “various important items of unfinished business”. This included news about “the rebel force that was being trained by the CIA in Guatemala to invade Cuba.” O’Donnell and Powers claimed that: “Eisenhower urged him to keep on supporting this plan to overthrow Castro. But Eisenhower talked mostly about Laos, which he then regarded as the most dangerous trouble spot in Southeast Asia. He mentioned South Vietnam only as one of the nations that would fall into the hands of the Communists if the United States failed to maintain the anti-Communist regime in Laos.” Kennedy was shocked by what Eisenhower told him. He later told his two aides: “There he sat, telling me to get ready to put ground forces into Asia, the thing he himself had been carefully avoiding for the last eight years.” (9)

According to David Kaiser, it was not only the CIA and the Pentagon who wanted him to send troops to Laos and Vietnam. Members of his own administration, including Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, Alexis Johnson, McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow and Roswell Gilpatric, were also strongly in favour of Eisenhower’s policy of “intervention in remote areas backed by nuclear weapons”. (10)

Kaiser suggests the reason for this was that “these civilians were all from the GI generation, and to varying degrees they saw themselves as continuing the struggle against aggression and tyranny that had dominated their youth.” However, it has to be remembered that Johnson, McNamara and Gilpatric had all played an important role in the ensuring that General Dynamics got the TFX contract. (11) Is it possible that they had other motives for involving the United States in a long-drawn out war?

Kennedy continued with his policy of trying to develop “independent” Third World countries. In September, 1962, Souvanna Phouma became head of a new coalition government in Laos. This included the appointment of a left-leaning Quinim Pholsema as Foreign Minister. However, Kennedy found it impossible to persuade Ngo Dinh Diem to broaden his government in South Vietnam.

Kennedy continued to resist all attempts to persuade him to send troops to Vietnam. His policy was reinforced by the Bay of Pigs operation. Kennedy told his assistant secretary of state, Roger Hilsman: “The Bay of Pigs has taught me a number of things. One is not to trust generals or the CIA, and the second is that if the American people do not want to use American troops to remove a Communist regime 90 miles away from our coast, how can I ask them to use troops to remove a Communist regime 9,000 miles away? (12)

In April, 1962, Kennedy told McGeorge Bundy to “seize upon any favourable moment to reduce our involvement” in Vietnam. (13) In September, 1963, Robert Kennedy expressed similar views at a meeting of the National Security Council: “The first question was whether a Communist takeover could be successfully resisted with any government. If it could not, now was the time to get out of Vietnam entirely, rather than waiting.” (14)

The decision by Kennedy to withdraw from Vietnam was confirmed by John McCone, the director of the CIA: “When Kennedy took office you will recall that he won the election because he claimed that the Eisenhower administration had been weak on communism and weak in the treatment of Castro and so forth. So the first thing Kennedy did was to send a couple of men to Vietnam to survey the situation. They came back with the recommendation that the military assistance group be increased from 800 to 25,000. That was the start of our involvement. Kennedy, I believe, realized he'd made a mistake because 25,000 US military in a country such as South Vietnam means that the responsibility for the war flows to (the US military) and out of the hands of the South Vietnamese. So Kennedy, in the weeks prior to his death, realized that we had gone overboard and actually was in the process of withdrawing when he was killed and Johnson took over.” (15)

On 1st April, 1963, the attempt by Kennedy to create a all-party coalition government in Laos suffered a terrible blow when Quinim Pholsema, the left-wing Foreign Minister, was assassinated. As David Kaiser has pointed out: “In light of subsequent revelations about CIA assassination plots, this episode inevitably arouses some suspicion.” (16)

It would seem that Laos was not the only country where Kennedy was trying to develop a coalition government. According to Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartman, in the early months of 1963, a plan was put into action that would result in a palace coup led by “one of Castro’s inner circle, himself a well-known revolutionary hero.” Waldron and Hartman argue that the “coup leader would be part of the new Provisional Government in Cuba, along with a select group of Cuban exiles – approved by the Kennedys – who ranged from conservative to progressive.” (17)

Kennedy told Mike Mansfield in the spring of 1963 that he now agreed with his thinking “on the need for a complete military withdrawal from Vietnam”. After the meeting with Mansfield, Kennedy told Kenneth O’Donnell that when he pulled out of Vietnam in 1965: “I’ll become one of the most unpopular Presidents in history. I’ll be damned everywhere as a communist appeaser. But I don’t care. If I tried to pull out completely now from Vietnam, we would have Joe McCarthy red scare on our hands, but I can do it after I’m re-elected. So we had better make damned sure that I am reelected.” (18)

In his book, Sons & Brothers, Richard D. Mahoney remarked: “Truman had lost his presidency over the “loss of China,” which in turn had touched off the anticommunist witch hunts by Senator Joseph McCarthy. Troubled as Kennedy was about slipping into the Asian land war, he temporized on the method of disengagement.” (19)

On 10th June, 1963, Kennedy made a commencement address at the American University. “In a speech written in the White House without Pentagon or State Department clearance, Kennedy called specifically, and for the first time, for a whole new attitude towards the soviet union and a greater effort for true peace.” (20)

Nine days later Kennedy discussed a new proposal by the State Department to take overt military action against North Vietnam. Kennedy was told that the Pentagon wanted to start bombing North Vietnam and the mining of North Vietnamese ports. (21)

As David Kaiser points out in American Tragedy, Kennedy refused to approve this plan: “Ever since assuming the Presidency, Kennedy had received a long series of proposals for war in Southeast Asia from the State and Defence Departments. Rejecting them all, he had established the goals of a neutral regime in Laos and an effort to assist the South Vietnamese against the Viet Cong.” (22)

Kennedy continued to have problems from the leaders of the military. On 9th July, 1963, General Maxwell Taylor explained to the National Security Council that individual Joint Chiefs did not believe that an atmospheric test ban would serve the nation well. Sixteen days later, Averell Harriman, Andrei Gromyko and Lord Hailsham signed the atmospheric test ban in Moscow.

On 14th August, Diem was informed that the U.S. government would be unable to continue their present relationship if Diem did not issue a statement reaffirming a conciliatory policy towards the Buddhists and other critics of his regime. Ten days later, Ted Szulc of the New York Times reported that “policy planners in Washington” had reached the stage where they would prefer a military junta in South Vietnam to a government ruled by Diem. (23)

Kennedy also gave the order for the withdrawal of 1,000 American personnel by the end of 1963. The plan involved taking the men out in four increments, in order to achieve maximum press coverage. General Maxwell Taylor spoke out against this policy and argued that the Joint Chiefs of Staff believed no withdrawal of troops should take place “until the political and religious tensions now confronting the government of South Vietnam have eased.” (24)

In an interview with Walter Cronkite on 2nd September, Kennedy clearly stated his policy on Vietnam: “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisers, but they have to win it.” Kennedy then went on to criticize Diem’s “repressions against the Buddhists”. (25)

On 9th September, Henry Cabot Lodge met with Diem and threatened him that aid would be cut-off unless Ngo Dinh Nhu left his government. Yet according to a New York Times story, the CIA continued to back Nhu. This included John Richardson, the Saigon CIA station chief disbursing a regular monthly payment of $250,000 to Nhu and his men. (26) Four days later, Lodge suggested that Richardson should be ordered back to Washington as “he symbolized long-standing American support for Nhu.” John McCone defended Richardson and objected to the idea that he should be replaced by someone like Edward Lansdale.

Kennedy met with Robert McNamara and General Maxwell Taylor on 2nd October, 1963. Kennedy told McNamara to announce to the press the immediate withdrawal of one thousand soldiers from Vietnam. Kennedy added that he would “probably withdraw all American forces from Vietnam by the end of 1965”. When McNamara was leaving the meeting to talk to the white house reporters, Kennedy called to him: “And tell them that means all of the helicopter pilots too.” In his statement to the press McNamara softened the President’s views by stating that in his judgment “the major part of the U.S. military task” in Vietnam could be “completed by the end of 1965.” (27)

Diem and Nhu were murdered on 1st November, 1963. The news reached Kennedy the following day. According to David Kaiser, Kennedy “left the room in shock”. (28) Despite this news, Kennedy made no move to change or cancel his troop reduction. As his aides, Kenneth P. O’Donnell and David F. Powers pointed out: “The collapse of the Diem government and the deaths of its dictatorial leaders made the President only more skeptical of our military advice from Saigon and more determined to pull out of the Vietnam War.” (29)

It has been suggested by William Colby, Frederick Nolting, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon that Kennedy had ordered Diem’s assassination. There is no evidence for this view. In fact, the behaviour of Diem was giving Kennedy a good excuse to withdraw support for his government. Kennedy knew that Diem was incapable of providing a coalition government that would gain the support of the South Vietnamese people. Robert Kennedy argued against the assassination of Diem as it would leave the government in the “hands of one man that we don’t know very well.” (30) The Kennedy brothers were aware that the man who took control in South Vietnam would probably be no better than Diem at establishing a coalition government. The assassination of Diem was therefore not part of Kennedy’s policy to withdraw from Vietnam.

Notes

1. Stanley Lens, The Military-Industrial Complex, 1970 (page 146)

2. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons and Brothers, 1999 (page 117)

3. Edwin Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman (ed.), Robert Kennedy in his Own Words, 1988

4. Harris Wofford, Of Kennedy and Kings, 1980 (pages 103-200)

5. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 2)

6. Fabian Escalante, CIA Covert Operations 1959-62: The Cuba Project, 2004 (page 12)

7. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 2)

8. Howard W. Chase and Allen H. Lerman, Kennedy and the Press: The News Conferences, 1965 (page 25)

9. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 281-282)

10. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 50)

11. I. F. Stone, The New York Review of Books, 1st January, 1969

12. Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy, 1989 (pages 306-307)

13. Memorandum written by McGeorge Bundy’s aide, Michael Y. Forrestal, dated 26th April, 1962. It was first published in The New York Times, 5th December, 1998.

14. Roger Hilsman, To Move a Nation, 1967 (page 501)

15. John McCone was interviewed by Harry Kreisler on 21st April, 1988.

16. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 198)

17. Lamar Waldron & Thom Hartmann, Ultimate Sacrifice, 2005 (page 4)

18. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 16)

19. Richard D. Mahoney, Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy, 1999 (page 279)

20. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 198)

21. William J. Rust, Kennedy and Vietnam, 1985 (page 119)

22. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 212)

23. Ted Szulc, The New York Times (24th August, 1963)

24. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 226)

25. Walter Cronkite, CBS News, 2nd September, 1963

26. The New York Times, 9th September, 1963

27. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 17)

28. David Kaiser, American Tragedy: Kennedy, Johnson and the Origins of the Vietnam War, 2000 (page 275)

29. Kenneth P. O’Donnell & David F. Powers, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1972 (page 17)

30. Edwin O. Guthman and Jeffrey Shulman, (eds.) Robert Kennedy: In His Own Words, 1988 (page 40)


http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyJ.htm

[Octafish]

227. Who changed the coup into the assassination of Diem?

Thank you for the information, Mr. Simkin.

What are your thoughts on Trento's revelations concerning the overthow of Diem?

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest?

From The Secret History of the CIA by Joseph Trento"

Who changed the coup into the murder of Diem, Nhu and a Catholic priest accompanying them? To this day, nothing has been found in government archives tying the killings to either John or Robert Kennedy. So how did the tools and talents developed by Bill Harvey for ZR/RIFLE and Operation MONGOOSE get exported to Vietnam? Kennedy immediately ordered (William R.) Corson to find out what had happened and who was responsible. The answer he came up with: “On instructions from Averell Harriman…. The orders that ended in the deaths of Diem and his brother originated with Harriman and were carried out by Henry Cabot Lodge’s own military assistant.”

Having served as ambassador to Moscow and governor of New York, W. Averell Harriman was in the middle of a long public career. In 1960, President-elect Kennedy appointed him ambassador-at-large, to operate “with the full confidence of the president and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of United States policy.” By 1963, according to Corson, Harriman was running “Vietnam without consulting the president or the attorney general.”

The president had begun to suspect that not everyone on his national security team was loyal. As Corson put it, “Kenny O’Donnell (JFK’s appointments secretary) was convinced that McGeorge Bundy, the national security advisor, was taking orders from Ambassador Averell Harriman and not the president. He was especially worried about Michael Forrestal, a young man on the White House staff who handled liaison on Vietnam with Harriman.”

At the heart of the murders was the sudden and strange recall of Saigon Station Chief Jocko Richardson and his replacement by a no-name team barely known to history. The key member was a Special Operations Army officer, John Michael Dunn, who took his orders, not from the normal CIA hierarchy but from Harriman and Forrestal.

According to Corson, “John Michael Dunn was known to be in touch with the coup plotters,” although Dunn’s role has never been made public. Corson believes that Richardson was removed so that Dunn, assigned to Ambassador Lodge for “special operations,” could act without hindrance.

SOURCE:

“The Secret History of the CIA.” Joseph Trento. 2001, Prima Publishing. pp. 334-335.

It appears to me that someone not named Kennedy was bossing the CIA.

PS: Your reply deserves its own thread.

[John Simkin]

229. JFK and the assassination of Diem

The idea that John Kennedy ordered the assassination of Diem is a lie that was first promoted by Lyndon Johnson and later by Richard Nixon. Kennedy never disguised the fact that he held some responsibility for the death of Diem. On 4th November he dictated his thoughts on the assassination. He made it clear that he was against the assassination. He pointed out that others, including his brother, were against the idea. He blames Lodge, Averell Harriman, George Ball, Roger Hilsman and Mike Forrestal for promoting the idea. However, he acknowledges that he should have made it clearer that the assassination of Diem was unacceptable.

The important thing to remember was that Kennedy’s foreign policy was consistent. It was a complete rejection of Eisenhower’s secret foreign policy where he was willing to use the CIA to overthrow government that appeared to be “soft” on communism. Kennedy’s view was the best way of saving countries from communism was to establish reforming coalition governments. That was his policy in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Cuba. As a result of this policy, he was unwilling to send combat forces into these countries. Nor was he willing to use the CIA in order to establish military dictatorships.

This policy brought him in conflict with the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence Complex. As Arthur Schlesinger pointed out in an interview he gave in 1978, in 1962-63, the CIA and others were attempting to subvert the foreign policy of the administration. Kennedy suspected that the CIA was behind the assassination on 1st April, 1963, of Quinim Pholsema, the left-wing Foreign Minister in Laos. This was a heavy blow to Kennedy’s foreign policy: an attempt to create neutral, democratic countries as a buffer to communism.

[Omar4Dems]

228. This is quite a read!

Thank you for posting it! :hi: