USA Today \u2013 JFK Op-Ed (unedited) 22 Nov 2013<\/i><\/p>\n
Common Sense<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n
Living through the media assault of the last few weeks leading up to this 50th year\u2019s commemoration, marking the violent end of JFK\u2019s Presidency, I\u2019m amazed there is any single adult left in the USA who would not think that Lee Harvey Oswald was the one and only assassin.
\nAlthough national polls from 1964 on clearly signal the public\u2019s distrust of the official story, the mainstream media has never given up telling us how superstitious or illogical the common people are in this belief. As one of that multitude who does not believe the official story, the motivating factor has not been my idealistic view of Kennedy or what he might have done had he lived, but the very evidence of the shooting itself, which remains, then and now, highly dubious. Some basic examples–<\/p>\n
1. The Single Bullet Theory (SBT) allows for one bullet fired from the sixth floor downward to go into Kennedy\u2019s back and then back up out of his throat and into Governor Connally to his front, where it zigs and zags breaking two heavy bones and creating a total of seven wounds in two individuals– and then the bullet emerges, slightly damaged, as the \u201cpristine bullet.\u201d\u00a0 Now I\u2019ve been in the infantry and I\u2019ve seen enough combat to tell you that in all the craziness of war, this \u201cAlice in Wonderland\u201d scenario defies not only just the basic physics, but common sense.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what the American people have\u2014they\u2019re not stupid, although our mainstream media seems to think they are.<\/p>\n
2. That the President, moving away from the alleged sharpshooter, up six floors, can be shot in the back of his head and snap suddenly back and to the left\u2014although again common sense and the naked eye tell us that he should be going forward when he receives that shot.<\/p>\n
3. That coincidentally there was a supposedly empty fence to the right front of the President, which when you stand there in Dealey Plaza prevents a nearly perfect eye line at the President\u2014and would naturally justify the motion of the President back and to the left if he were shot from the front right.\u00a0 Now the fact that the fence was filled with eager observers of the popular President further defies common sense.<\/p>\n
4. That more than fifty witnesses testified at the time to the Warren Commission (WC) that the shot that they heard or saw a shot coming from that fence area to the front of the President.<\/p>\n
5. That the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB, 1994-1998), has proven that over 40 witnesses in two different locations saw a large avulsive (i.e. penetrating outward) wound in the rear of JFK\u2019s skull. This includes\u00a0 highly qualified medical personnel at both Parkland and Bethesda, as well as FBI agents James Sibert and Frank O\u2019Neil who were at the autopsy in 1963 and restated it to the board. This wound again indicates an exit wound from a shot to the front. Conclusion: the President was shot from at least 2 sides, front and back\u2014not 1 location.<\/p>\n
6. There is additionally an accidental film made that day, the Zapruder film, that shows in those terrible 6 seconds a sequence of motions that indicate 5-6 shots fired. It also shows that when the President is shot in the back by a 2nd bullet that he\u2019s moving forward while Governor Connally is still holding his Stetson hat, which is impossible if he was hit by the same bullet. Connally himself said he was not hit by the same bullet as Kennedy.<\/p>\n
Yet the mainstream media in recent weeks, from the highest levels New York Times, Time magazine, NBC, CNN, etc. ad nauseam, tells us more strongly than ever that the \u2018consensus\u2019 and \u2018history\u2019 bare out the fact that Oswald, with his twisted motives, did it alone with his Mannlicher-Carcano WWII rifle. What kind of history are they talking about? Not the one that is perhaps far darker one for them to deal with and unsettles their smug belief in some form of American exceptionalism, in which our politics is unflawed by such corruption. Is this why the media, with very few exceptions, has not allowed any serious presentation of the evidence against their official story from qualified pathologists, scientists, photographic experts, and doctors, etc.? I\u2019ve rarely seen brought to review the many fine works by these qualified individuals, including most recently\u2014
\nRobert Groden\u2019s \u201cJFK: Absolute Proof\u201d (2013), James W. Douglass\u2019 \u201cJFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters\u201d (2008), James DiEugenio\u2019s \u201cReclaiming Parkland\u201d(2013). Particularly note in DiEugenio\u2019s book Ch. 4-7, which deconstructs the massively impressive 2000-paged tome by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, overly praised by the media probably, I think, because very few people have actually read it. Read DiEugenio\u2019s deconstruction to fully understand the shaping of a lie.<\/p>\n
As Friday approaches, please take a moment and remember no professional marksman in any simulated test has ever achieved the Warren Commission scenario with Oswald\u2019s rifle; the trigger pull was too difficult, the scope was misaligned, and the firing pin was defective.<\/p>\n
To my knowledge, there have been at least 4 attempts with professionals to simulate the shooting without that rifle. No person ever achieved what the Commission said Oswald did on the first try, i.e., attain 2 of 3 direct hits in the head and shoulder area to President Kennedy in six seconds.\u00a0 Carlos Hathcock, possibly the best sniper of the Vietnam era with 92 confirmed kills, tried it several times. He could never do it on the first try.\u00a0 He gave up.<\/p>\n
This alleged shooting has only been achieved with superficial computer simulations such as the ballyhooed Peter Jennings\u2019 2003 TV documentary, which supposedly justifies the SBT. Further, when the FBI turned over results of their Neutron Activation Analysis tests on the paraffin cast of Oswald\u2019s cheek, Commission counsel Norman Redlich wrote they could not conclude from it that Oswald fired a rifle that day. In the face of this recent onslaught on the truth, let us be very exact about Oswald\u2019s alleged guilt. He was never given a trial, either staged or fair. As such, he should always be identified as the alleged assassin.<\/p>\n
And on top of that this media has not allowed any serious presentation of the evidence against their official story. Rarely have I seen brought to review the many fine books written by qualified doctors, pathologists, rifle and photographic experts. Among the most recent I would emphasize James Douglass\u2019 \u201cJFK and the Unspeakable\u201d and \u201cReclaiming Parkland\u201d by James DiEugenio, particularly Ch. 4-7 which deconstructs the massively impressive 2000-paged tome by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, overly praised by the media because of the fact that very few people have actually read it. But read DiEugenio\u2019s deconstruction line by line.<\/p>\n
In conclusion, no professional marksman in any simulated test has ever achieved the Warren Commission scenario with Oswald\u2019s Mannlicher-Carcano WWII rifle; the trigger pull was too difficult, the scope was misaligned, and the firing pin was defective.<\/p>\n
To my knowledge, there have been at least 4 attempts with professionals to simulate the shooting without that rifle. No person ever achieved what the Commission said Oswald did on the first try, i.e., attain 2 of 3 direct hits in the head and shoulder area to President Kennedy in six seconds.\u00a0 Carlos Hathcock, possibly the best sniper of the Vietnam era with 92 confirmed kills, tried it several times. He could never do it on the first try.\u00a0 He gave up.<\/p>\n
This alleged shooting has only been achieved with superficial computer simulations such as the ballyhooed Peter Jennings\u2019 2003 TV documentary, which supposedly justifies the SBT.<\/p>\n
Further, when the FBI turned over results of their Neutron Activation Analysis tests on the paraffin cast of Oswald\u2019s cheek, Commission counsel Norman Redlich wrote they could not conclude from it that Oswald fired a rifle that day. In the face of this recent onslaught on the truth, let us be very exact about Oswald\u2019s alleged guilt. He was never given a trial, either staged or fair. As such, he should always be identified as the alleged assassin.<\/p>\n
History is a struggle of the memory. But when the counter evidence cannot be introduced into that memory, then we are closer to a Soviet-era propaganda mindset, in which the mainstream media, in their consensus to cover this up as if it were a Reichstag Fire, deeply discredit our country and continue to demean our common sense. We must question those who tell us what to think.<\/p>\n
____________________<\/p>\n
Oliver Stone, born Sept. 15, 1946 in New York City, has been credited with writing and or directing over 20 full-length feature films, earning him a well-respected place in cinematic history for some of the most influential and iconic films of the last two decades. Throughout his long career, he has served as director, writer and producer on a variety of films, documentaries and television movies. He is widely recognized for his controversial versions of recent American history, some of them at deep odds with conventional myth — films such as 1986’s \u201cPlatoon,\u201d the first of his Vietnam trilogy, or 1991\u2019s \u201cJFK\u201d and 1994\u2019s \u201cNatural Born Killers\u201d and \u201cNixon,\u201d his 1995 take on the finer points and parables of the Nixon administration<\/a>, as well as on George W. Bush in \u201cW.\u201d (2008) Stone says his films are “first and foremost dramas about individuals in personal struggles,” and considers himself a dramatist rather than a political filmmaker.<\/i><\/p>\n