http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/11/jfk_truthers_finally_losing_gr.html
" Oswald left enough evidence behind to be convicted multiple
times"
American Thinker May 11 , 2008
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By John Huettner
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Before the 9/11 truthers came the JFK truthers. Fantasies about dark
machinations surrounding the death of President Kennedy laid the
spiritual groundwork for today's claims of bizarre plots behind the
events of 9/11. In both cases, the obviously guilty culprits are
ignored in favor of more desirable political targets.
It has been forty-four years since Lee Harvey Oswald killed President
Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Oswald was silenced two mornings later;
but only after a bizarre getaway, cop killing, capture and brief
notoriety, culminating in his televised shooting by Dallas strip club
owner Jack Ruby. Not until 9/11 did live television again witness
such an American tragedy.
In 1964, the Warren Commission correctly decided that Oswald was the
lone assassin. The "truthers" of the era who initially challenged the
Warren Commission's findings - a few having direct links to communist
organizations -- were hardly taken seriously at first. But mistrust
in the government's case grew as a cabal of fellow travelers, showmen,
ambitious coroners and other conspiracy mongers coalesced throughout
the late Sixties, taking advantage of the relatively few mistakes or
inconsistencies in the Warren Re****t's narrative.
Despite all of the scrutiny, absent a breakthrough piece of evidence,
we will never know whether Lee Oswald was (or believed he was) part of
some larger plot. His service in the Civil Air Patrol and the
Marines, defection to the Soviet Union, visits to the Soviet and Cuban
consulates in Mexico less than two months before the assassination,
and correspondence with the American Communist Party and the Socialist
Workers Party, will all raise the same unanswerable conspiracy
questions 100 years from now as they do today.
But there is no longer much doubt that Oswald was the lone assassin,
as the Warren Commission concluded in 1964. The answer to this
question should narrow the conspiracy inquiry, because the most
credible of those theories rest on the assertion that Oswald could not
have been the lone gunman in Dealey Plaza. Otherwise, there is scant
independent evidence of any plot.
The Warren Commission Re****t
The Warren Commission Re****t was discredited primarily by claims that
Oswald could not have been the lone gunman; hence, there may have been
two or three gunmen. This hyperbole came to fruition in the late
1960s with the bizarre Garrison investigation in New Orleans,
concluding there were gunmen all over Dealey Plaza. All of this
speculation was rooted in the basic notion that the same bullet could
not possibly have wounded President Kennedy and Governor Connally
seated in front of him, as the Commission found probably happened.
Added sup****t came from witnesses who honestly believed they heard
two, four or even six shots rather than three shots fired in Dealey
Plaza. In 1978, a congressional committee concluded (based upon an
audio recording analysis now itself thoroughly discredited) that four
shots were fired, more "proof" of a second gunman.
Then there is the claim that the fatal shot came from President
Kennedy's right, forcing his head back and to the left.
As far as another gunman is concerned, that is about the totality of
the evidence. There has never been any affirmative proof of more than
one gunman, only doubt about elements of the existing overwhelming
evidence pointing to Oswald as the lone assassin. Thanks to the work
of careful investigators over the years, however, previously
overlooked information along with modern technology have fundamentally
reinforced the lone gunman hypothesis; while debunking virtually all
of the conspiracy theories.
The Lone Assassin
The Rosetta Stone for conspiracy buffs has always been the Warren
Commission's "magic bullet" (a/k/a the "pristine" bullet) theory,
holding that the same bullet struck both President Kennedy and
Governor Connally.
Almost as soon as the Warren Commission Re****t was released making
this claim, conspiracy theorists pounced; arguing that a bullet fired
downward from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository
couldn't physically have struck both Kennedy in the neck and Connally
in the upper torso without changing directions. They also argued that
the bullet fired from Oswald's location to the right of the motorcade
couldn't have struck Kennedy in the throat and Connally forward of him
in the right shoulder. Allegations grew that the entire Warren Re****t
was erroneous or worse, faked.
The uncertainty was not entirely unjustified. Researchers starting
with the Warren Commission simply failed to take into account what
became obvious years later: Governor Connally was sitting in front of
the President on a floor-mounted "jump" seat, about seven inches lower
and several inches to the left of the President -- exactly in Oswald's
line of sight from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book
Depository.
Moreover, as the Warren Commission noted, the Presidential limousine
was moving downhill from Oswald's position, reducing the angle from
his point of view, and Connally had turned slightly right in reaction
to hearing the first shot. Computer reconstructions using virtual
reality techniques have since shown beyond any shred of doubt that,
with these facts accounted for, the "magic" bullet traveled in a
straight line directly from Oswald's rifle striking President Kennedy
in the neck and Governor Connally in the upper back and exiting the
lapel of his suit.
Accordingly, debunking has conclusively disproved the sine qua non of
the second gunman theory, the notion that the same bullet from
Oswald's rifle could not have hit both men. Yet, truthers still argue
about "evidence," while missing the essential point: if another gunman
took a shot that day, he missed, because all of the wounds to the
President and Governor Connally are accounted for by two shots from
Oswald's rifle. Just as the second gunman theory rose with doubt
about the single bullet theory, so it must fall, as the single bullet
scenario becomes accepted fact.
Seeing is Believing
Of course, simply because Oswald could have hit both Kennedy and
Connally with the same shot is not proof that it happened. However,
this evidence is freely available on the Internet. There, one will
find any number of enhanced, image-stabilized versions of the famous
Zapruder film on display. These show in grim detail that Kennedy and
Connally were indeed hit simultaneously by the "magic" bullet just as
they came into view past the Stemmons Freeway sign drawing abreast of
the infamous grassy knoll, a monument to World War II submariners.
There is no longer any doubt about this shot, as there was before
computer enhancement and image stabilization techniques became
available. Older versions of the Zapruder film were simply too
difficult even for experts to analyze. In recently enhanced versions
-- just as Governor Connally stated in 1964 -- one can see him glance
to the right after hearing the first shot, just as he and the
President are hit by the second. The simultaneous shock is obvious in
both men's faces at frame 224 of the film, along with the momentary
"pop" of Connally's jacket lapel -- less than 1/50th of a second -- as
the round exits above his right breast.
If the Warren Commission failed in any material respect, it was by not
pinpointing the exact moment this round wounded Kennedy and Connally.
The Commission even theorized that the first bullet could have struck
the President and the second only Governor Connally; though concluding
that the single bullet theory was the most likely given the weight of
the evidence.
The "magic" bullet was also allegedly "pristine" when it was later
found on Connally's stretcher at Parkland Hospital. Is it possible
someone planted the bullet there in the moments between Connally being
lifted off the stretcher and its discovery in the adjacent hallway, to
provide a ballistic link to Oswald's Mannlicher rifle? Given the
facts, especially the brief interval between the assassination and the
discovery of the "magic" bullet on Connally's stretcher, no conspiracy
theorist has ever explained how anyone could have acted so quickly and
with foreknowledge of the other ballistic evidence that would later be
gathered. In fact, the jacketed round itself was hardly "pristine."
Fragments of it were removed from the President and Governor
Connally.
The larger question is, why incriminate Oswald? By the time the
"magic" bullet was discovered, Oswald was doing a world-class job
implicating himself as the assassin. Within an hour of narrowly
escaping Dealey Plaza, Oswald had committed another murder in broad
daylight in front of nine witnesses, the Dallas Police were zeroed in
on his location, and he was cornered. Further, Oswald himself left
enough damning evidence behind him to be convicted multiple times.
The idea that he needed to be further implicated is as laughable now
as it was in 1964.
As further "proof" of a conspiracy, truthers have convinced themselves
that the fatal shot must have been fired from the President's front
and right, Dealey Plaza's grassy knoll, causing his head to snap "back
and to the left." The answer here lies not in conspiracy but in
Newton's third law. Again, the enhanced Zapruder film shows that the
President's cranium moved back and to the left because his brains and
cranial matter were literally expressed forward and to the right from
a massive exit wound on his right forehead.
There is no polite way to describe this. At least one witness
believed the President had stood up. Others described an umbrella
being opened or a pink plume. Abraham Zapruder said in an interview
the same day that the President's head "opened up," pointing to his
right forehead. Brain matter -- which must have weighed pounds --
hung prolapsed gruesomely over the lifeless President's right cheek as
the limousine sped away toward Parkland Hospital. The enhanced
Zapruder film should convince all but the purposely ignorant that the
fatal shot came from President Kennedy's rear, not from his right.
There was no second gunman on the grassy knoll. The roughly one third
of witnesses who claimed to have heard a shot from that direction or
elsewhere were mostly to the side of the Book Depository from which
Oswald was shooting, where echoes play games with perception. Those
witnesses who were in front of the Book Depository on Elm Street
overwhelmingly and correctly heard only three shots coming from the
Book Depository.
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