1) Oswald shot three times within 5.6 secs hitting JFK twice.

The WC was not able to duplicate this feat with expert marksmen.

2) The second shot — the Magic Bullet — caused seven separate wounds in JFK and Connally. It lodged in Connally’s leg then rolled onto his stretcher where it was recovered later.

This is a bizarre story and the path of the bullet made little sense.

The WC failed to provide suitable visual reconstruction of the bullet’s path. The WC attempted to duplicate the “pristine” condition of the Magic Bullet by firing bullets through a cadaver and the results did not match the Magic Bullet at all.

Three of the seven members of the Warren Commission went on record as doubting the Magic Bullet Theory.

3) The third shot — the head shot — as shown in the Zapruder film made it look like Kennedy had been struck with a baseball bat from the front-right. Any person watching the Zapruder film instinctively felt that JFK had been shot from the front.

The WC made no attempt whatsoever to explain this. The Zapruder film was unavailable for years and the stills from the film which was shown in the Warren Report were conveniently reversed so that the sequence made it look like JFK’s head was rocketed forward instead of back.

***

I submit that any person persuaded by the Warren Report’s account of the shooting did not bother to think deeply or critically about the assassination but just accepted what they were told.

Your point seems to be that the conspiracy theorists never concocted a persuasive conspiracy theory for the JFK assassination.

True. But you miss the point that the onus was on the Warren Commission to convince people beyond a reasonable doubt that Oswald was the lone assassin.

They failed. Once the theory that Oswald was the lone assassin failed, there was no other explanation than conspiracy, even if the details were unknown.

Additionally JFK, by making mortal enemies with the mob, CIA, anti-Castro Cubans, and right-wing militia types, set himself up as the American president most likely to be assassinated by conspiracy.

And Oswald was an incredibly odd bird whose path intersected with all those elements as well as White Russian emigres, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the KGB.

The JFK assassination was a perfect storm that yielded an astonishing amount of confusion. We’re lucky, I suppose, that we didn’t blunder into WW III or the delegitimization of the government.

I understand the Warren Commission’s objective to settle the assassination quickly and decisively so that the US could return to normalcy and its mission in the world. But the Commission failed to make the sale because they could not nail down the peculiarities of the shooting in Dealey Plaza and the all strangenesses surrounding Oswald.

And here we are.

I misstated what I intended to say: which is not the brains when `back and to the left’, but that Kennedy’s body did so in reaction to the fatal wound.

I will restate my objections to the conspiracy fables that were spread after 1963, by referring to the Z. film itself.

Namely, if before enhancement by computer technology (the jerk forward and brain matter hurtling forward are clearly visible on the original film, but no matter…), it was impossible to `defend the lone assassin theory’, how could it thus support an entirely more fancible theory that assassins shot from behind the `picket’ (stockade) fence, the grassy knoll or wherever?

I think Bugliosi had it right: the Z. film is not, in itself, conclusive evidence of everything. Put together with other evidence, however, it does uphold the `lone assassin’ theory; it DOES NOT support any proferred `theory’ of conspiracy.

thanks

Giles: I’d hardly call the German economic model the result of a “complete and unconditional embrace of Free Market Economics.” For instance, consider this wiki quote:

…the German model of a rigidly structured and regulated economy has become more attractive, as part of the financial crisis could be attributed to a lack of regulation associated with laissez-faire capitalism.

The US periodically tilts between the right and the left. I see no reason that it won’t tilt right again.

The enhancement of the Zapruder film was useful for “jiggle analysis” and examining JFK and Connally for clues as to when and how they had been wounded, thus lengthening the window of time for Oswald to shoot. The enhancement was also necessary for your point about the initial forward head snap.

The claim was not that the blood and brains went “backward and to the left” but that JFK’s body did — which it did — and that is hard to explain with a shot from behind. The jet effect could explain a mild head snap but not lifting JFK’s head and torso. The current thinking is that a neuromuscular spasm combined with Kennedy’s back brace caused that drastic body movement to the back and to the left.

Ah me … this stuff seemingly goes on forever.

In any event, one’s instinctive response in viewing the Zapruder film is that the final head shot was from JFK’s front and right. With all the other anomalies, irregularities, handwaving explanations, withheld evidence, and unexplored avenues, the Warren Report failed to convince many people, and over time the skeptics won the propaganda war.

There was little substantial defense of the Lone Assassin Theory until Posner (1993) and Bugliosi (2007) — far too late.

Even as a Warren Report skeptic, I was aware that Garrison’s investigation of Shaw had been a travesty and I wished that Stone had used a different framework for exploring the assassination.

McCarthy was wrong with respect to his reckless accusations anyone and everyone whom he wished to defame.

There WERE communist spies inside and outside the U.S. government before and during his rise to the top: the rosenbergs, white, and so on.

But to go around accusing Gen. George Marshall of being a Communist – friggin’ George Marshall for heaven’s sake, that’s not being patriotic in defence of your country, that’s being a reckless opportunist.

And you know what? This recklessness brought the entire, just and righteous movement against Communism into disrepute.

McCarthy, the witchhunter who made the world safe for witches.

Although I can see where selective reading can cause a false memory regarding JFK. While Dallas was named the City of Hate after the assassination, it had truly earned the title before 1963. Picture a woman, dressed in red, white & blue, spitting in Lady Bird Johnson’s face. Those that want to conflate events will do so regardless of what really happened.