The Kennedys assassinations

[nonlnear]

LoLz so assassinations do not lead to wars?

Wow, way to miss the point entirely. Shocking! And no, not all assassinations do lead to wars. In fact the vast majority of them don't.

 

[Craig234]

I've read quite a bit on the Kennedy administration, including the assassination.

In short, I do not post with answers; I post with the statement that it's far, far more complex than anyone who hasn't looked into it can understand IMO.

My view normally breaks an issue into this down by saying there can only be one truth, and there may be one single fact that settles all the other question one way or the other. Or, there may not be such a fact, just a lot of gray areas - 'is that a coincidence?'

If there's a fact and the odds are 1000 to 1 against it being a coincidence, that's a hell of lot of people going to jail in a nation of 300 million for the 1 in 1000 times it is.

The JFK assassination is filled with motives, and complicated organizations who are designed not only to not get caught but to plant false suggestions. It's filled with mysteries and more mysteries that it's next to impossible to conclude much about, where your normal opinion of what 'evidence' is is shattered as you see all kinds of evidence one direction or another, that's mutually exclusive.

Some of the most plauible theories are the least provable, and some of the most solid evidence is patently false.

If someone wants to appreciate this, one suggestion is to watch just one amateur investigator's video - David Lifton's "Best Evidence". How do you see the people who prepared the President for autopsy and flight at one end of the flight and witnesses at the other end testify that the materials were completely different at each end, 'proving' that there was a secret removal, sugical alteratoins, conspiracy, before the official military autopsy (by a relative amateur) at Bethesda?

You watch the eyewitnesses speak, and they seem quite credible, but you can't easily agree with the story that results. What's going on? Get used to it.

I can probably resolve a hundred common topics of the assassination here with fact or opinion, without offering answers on the conspiracy question.

One tip - forget the multiple shooter issue, and ask who was influencing Oswald.

There are real mysteries on his story - a strong suggestion he was working for the US government in his defection to the USSR, with some 'off the reservation'behavior like slashing his wrists in Moscow when the Soveits denied him a visa for those suspicions. Not just every young 20's kid who has defected to the USSR and return and is doing menial work finds himself with a best friend who is an older man with CIA ties, cleared to work on secret government photography.

There are many questions, such as the contradictions with Oswald - his creating a false image as a 'communist leader' for one, with his one man 'committee' creating publicity about him as a communist while his operation was based with a mysterious former FBI agent who was involved with far-right anti-communism. From his childhood, he had a fascination with the idea of being an agent - he was influenced by a tv show about a man who was loyal to the US but pretended to be something he wasn't to spy.

Oswald had no one who would know his views, really - a wife who he beat and was estranged from, a pretty crazy mother. When he'd chat, he praised Kennedy.

RFK's assasination has its own mysteries. It was a time of 'mind control' research and the assassin has long said he has no memory of the event.

There's a lot very strange about it, including some connections with shadowy figures he made before the killing, but there's nothing proving it wasn't the straightforward assassiination by someone indufirated by Kennedy's support for military aid to Israel. It is tragic that Secret Service protection wasn't provided to candidates until after he was killed.

It has its own mysteries - the coroner concluded that the killing shot was point blank behind Kennedy's head, at a point it appears Sirhan never got to, with questions whether Kennedy, falling from the first shot or shots, might have somehow fallen closer to the gun for a moment than anyone thought he did.

JFK's assassination exposes huge issues that would otherwise possibly be unknown, including the whole Cuba assassination infrastructure.

Indeed, there's evidence there was a coverup of much information - but to avoid exposing the Cuban activities, not the assassins.

It was a time when leaders and security officers could easily believe things should be covered up for 'national security'.

I'll mention just two interesting tidbits that did show some useful info, other mysteries, about Nixon.

The first is that Nixon, who was defeated by JFK, was obsessed with the family (he had Ted Kennedy surveilled), and he had phony documents implicating JFK for things he hadn't done wrong in foreign policy he claimed were found in the White House safe, and tried to release them to the press to smear JFK. The press figured it out. It should be a better known scandal than it is, but his other wrongs were better known after those.

The second is a real mystery. When Nixon wanted to pressure the CIA to stop the FBI from investigating Watergate by saying it was a national security operation, for leverage to force them to do what he wanted, he instructed his representative to the CIA to tell them, if they refused to lie for him, just to tell them to remember "the Bay of Pigs", and they'd get the message - the representative had no idea what that meant.

But Nixon's chief of staff, in his diary, wrote that Nixon used code words, and "Bay of Pigs" was his code word for the JFK assassination.

So here you have a President, his presidency as stake, trying to pressure the CIA to lie, and the best pressure he has is to say to remind them of the JFK assassination.

As if Nixon has something he can blackmail them about if they don't do what he says.

That suggests some real mysteries.

 

[Siddhartha]

I just finished reading a book and watching some documentaries on the Kennedys assassinations. It seems like they went to great lengths to try to kill Castro and got involved with a lot of unsavory characters with their own ideas and may have turned the tables on the brothers. The person that killed RFK may have had a different agenda but RFK was no MLK or Ghandi, as history wants to portray them. While tragic for the nation, it's hard to feel bad for these men when they were ordering the killings of foreign leaders in their comfy chair, burgandy desk in the White House or the Justice Department. The next minute they're dead. If you play with fire, you're going to get hurt.

Are you saying that they deserved to be assassinated?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

There are just wars, there are no just murders.

That's an interesting point worth discussing. I fully understand what you are saying, yet what is "just"?

Let's assume a possible hypothetical.

Suppose some leader was found (after due diligence applied to intelligence) to be planning a terrorist strike on our soil. Diplomacy isn't going to fix this, so the choices are to restrict prevention to our borders or a military action.

Assuming that the threat rises to the concern that the former is imprudent, what ought to be the nature of the second?

We could wage a just war because we know (not speculate in this case) that we are in imminent danger, or an unjust murder of their leader(s).

In words, the just action sounds good, but the result of any war is that those who suffer are often those who are innocent. We will kill many who had no part in this. Would that be just?

If one were tasked with deciding between evils, which would be the best moral choice?

I'm glad I do not need to make these decisions, yet for me I'd lose more sleep over killing an innocent family to get to the one who is a threat than to go directly after the latter.

All choices are bad, but sometimes one has to pick anyway.

 

[werepossum]

That's an interesting point worth discussing. I fully understand what you are saying, yet what is "just"?

Let's assume a possible hypothetical.

Suppose some leader was found (after due diligence applied to intelligence) to be planning a terrorist strike on our soil. Diplomacy isn't going to fix this, so the choices are to restrict prevention to our borders or a military action.

Assuming that the threat rises to the concern that the former is imprudent, what ought to be the nature of the second?

We could wage a just war because we know (not speculate in this case) that we are in imminent danger, or an unjust murder of their leader(s).

In words, the just action sounds good, but the result of any war is that those who suffer are often those who are innocent. We will kill many who had no part in this. Would that be just?

If one were tasked with deciding between evils, which would be the best moral choice?

I'm glad I do not need to make these decisions, yet for me I'd lose more sleep over killing an innocent family to get to the one who is a threat than to go directly after the latter.

All choices are bad, but sometimes one has to pick anyway.

This. The idea that it's okay to drop a bomb on an evil leader as long as you're dropping other bombs on his (possibly enslaved) subjects but not okay if you're dropping one JUST on the evil leader is as bizarre as the idea that a man being hacked to death is okay if he has repugnant views but wrong if he is found guilty in a fair trial of raping a child and burying her alive.

 

[Moonbeam]

This. The idea that it's okay to drop a bomb on an evil leader as long as you're dropping other bombs on his (possibly enslaved) subjects but not okay if you're dropping one JUST on the evil leader is as bizarre as the idea that a man being hacked to death is okay if he has repugnant views but wrong if he is found guilty in a fair trial of raping a child and burying her alive.

Yup, that is pretty bizarre, all right so let me fix it for you:

In a just war, use as few bombs as is possible to end it. If you can kill the individual responsible for the need for your just war with one bomb and kill nobody else, great. If you can shoot him, great. To kill somebody who is trying unjustly to kill you is just. To kill innocent civilians in a country that is trying to kill your own innocent civilians is ok. That's what a just war is as long as you kill only the fewest you can to end the threat.

To hack a man to death because his views differ from your own is wrong. To kill a person convicted of wrong is wrong because killing him is killing one more person than is needed to end his violence. All justice asks of a person is that they stop injustice with a minimum violence. The violence can be tremendous if that is required. It just must stop as soon as it works.

You have no obligation to die because of the insanity of others. To be insane is to create an other whom you see as a threat and then justify your right to kill him. You can stop such a person if he comes after you. You want to stop him, not become better at being insane than he is.

 

[werepossum]

Yup, that is pretty bizarre, all right so let me fix it for you:

In a just war, use as few bombs as is possible to end it. If you can kill the individual responsible for the need for your just war with one bomb and kill nobody else, great. If you can shoot him, great. To kill somebody who is trying unjustly to kill you is just. To kill innocent civilians in a country that is trying to kill your own innocent civilians is ok. That's what a just war is as long as you kill only the fewest you can to end the threat.

To hack a man to death because his views differ from your own is wrong. To kill a person convicted of wrong is wrong because killing him is killing one more person than is needed to end his violence. All justice asks of a person is that they stop injustice with a minimum violence. The violence can be tremendous if that is required. It just must stop as soon as it works.

You have no obligation to die because of the insanity of others. To be insane is to create an other whom you see as a threat and then justify your right to kill him. You can stop such a person if he comes after you. You want to stop him, not become better at being insane than he is.

Agreed. I'd only add that to some degree the stronger also have an obligation to defend the weaker.