Historian explains the mind of Conspiracy Nuts - CBS 1967

[John Iacoletti]

That being said, you need to explain to the rest of the world as to what you would accept as proper analysis .

Were the characteristics of this alleged gouge in the CE 133* photos measured in any way? If so, the analysis is missing from any of the HSCA documents.  Kirk's analysis is nothing but hand waving.  There is nothing that actually shows that they are "identical in every respect".

And, Steve Galbraith is still right. The photo panel did determine that CE139 was the rifle in the BY photos and the rifle removed from the TSBD.

No, Cecil Kirk claimed that CE139 was the rifle in the BY photos -- there was no "determination" done.  In contrast, the panel report actually showed measurements and analysis for their claim that the rifle shown in the police station photos matches CE 139.

[John Iacoletti]

IIRC, Shaneyfeldt testified as to what he was using, and that was CE133A and B, but mainly CE133A. He never mentions CE134.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

[John Iacoletti]

You think all of your opinions are "obvious".  Now stop hijacking the thread.

[Jerry Freeman]

Commager was right: to the conspiracist believer nothing will dissuade them of their fixation.

That seems to work with any fixation. Yours included.
 

Iacoletti, You may have never said that you're trying to prove Oswald innocent, but it's obvious to everybody here that you are.

Tommy...You know that is not how it works. Technically, Oswald remains innocent of shooting people because he was never found guilty [beyond a reasonable doubt] That doubt is stated all over this forum.
 
 
 
 

[Thomas Graves]

You think all of your opinions are "obvious".  Now stop hijacking the thread.

Iacoletti,

This thread is about evidence, and how it is used properly, how it is used improperly, or is how it is improperly ignored (as you are all too often wont to do in your desperate attempt to cast Oswald in an innocent light) in JFK assassination "research" and argumentation.

--  MWT

[Steve M. Galbraith]

That seems to work with any fixation. Yours included.
  Tommy...You know that is not how it works. Technically, Oswald remains innocent of shooting people because he was never found guilty [beyond a reasonable doubt] That doubt is stated all over this forum.

I have no fixation. I don't post here day after day after day. I average about .5 posts a day. I go for numerous days without posting. I am not a member of a conspiracy group. I don't attend conspiracy conferences. I don't obsess over this event.

The evidence for me is that Lee Oswald took his rifle and shot the president. If you think he had curtain rods in his bag and that he left the building shortly after the shooting because he wanted to see a movie and believe there were two Oswalds and a double and all of the documents are faked and on and on then feel free to believe this absurdity. It's absurd. It didnt' happen.

All of the alternate explanations don't make sense. It's been more than half a century since the assassination. There have been multiple investigations - both public/government and private/news media. We can add the millions and millions of pages of documents that were released. Add in the investigations by reporters and journalists and historians like Caro and others. There's nothing there. But as Commager predicted: nothing will persuade the conspiracist that he's wrong. In fact, investigations that show no conspiracy are, for you people, further evidence of the conspiracy. It's conspiracy after conspiracy after conspiracy. Who is obsessed over this again?

People have doubts about all sorts of events. That the Holocaust happened. That 9/11 was done by Islamic terrorists. That the world is round. People expressing doubts is meaningless. Paranoid unstable people express doubts all of the time. That doesnt' mean we should take them seriously.

I certainly don't.

[John Iacoletti]

There have been multiple investigations - both public/government and private/news media. We can add the millions and millions of pages of documents that were released.

Doesn't it kinda matter whether or not these millions and millions of pages of documents contain evidence as to who killed Kennedy?

Add in the investigations by reporters and journalists and historians like Caro and others.

I'll bite:  exactly what investigation did Caro do to determine who killed Kennedy?  I thought he was LBJ's biographer.

People have doubts about all sorts of events. That the Holocaust happened. That 9/11 was done by Islamic terrorists. That the world is round. People expressing doubts is meaningless. Paranoid unstable people express doubts all of the time. That doesnt' mean we should take them seriously.

Along the same lines, people all of the time believe stories that are spoon-fed to them by authorities and based on faith.  That doesn't mean those stories are true.

[Mitch Todd]

Were the characteristics of this alleged gouge in the CE 133* photos measured in any way? If so, the analysis is missing from any of the HSCA documents. Kirk's analysis is nothing but hand waving.  There is nothing that actually shows that they are "identical in every respect".

No, Cecil Kirk claimed that CE139 was the rifle in the BY photos -- there was no "determination" done.  In contrast, the panel report actually showed measurements and analysis for their claim that the rifle shown in the police station photos matches CE 139.

You're down to trying to argue that Cecil Kirk could not have concluded or determined anything because he didn't use a methodology that you approve of then.  That's just a ridiculously silly, and quite possibly megalomaniacal, argument. By the way, human beings have very good pattern recognition abilities. If you see someone you know, even under circumstances in which you don't expect to see them, you recognize them instantly without the need to formally measure any part of them. Don't think that we wouldn't be able to recognize the same gouge in different photographs.

Also, you are incorrect about the use of the photography panel's measurements.  They used a series of "identifying marks"  --dings, dents, divots, and scratches, labelled "A" through "W"-- for specific identification. Those marks are listed in Table 7 in the report, and they are what that the panel used to determine that the CE139 rifle in the archives is the same rifle shown in the Alyea film, 11/22/63 news photos, and photos of the TSBD rifle taken by the DPD. Those marks were not measured.  The photography panel did make a set  of measurements of the relative locations of certain parts of the rifle along the length of the rifle. However,  those were used to show that a line of argument used by Jack White was based on fallacious reasoning and weren't used to identify a specific rifle.

Oh, also by the way, you apparently didn't notice this bit from that portion of the report: "significantly, the largest and most prominent mark, mark S, a gouge mark that appears on the backyard picture, also appears in the gun as it is portrayed in the Alyea movie sequence and in three other postassassination photographs of the rifle as well. See table 7."