JFK Magic Bullet Theory Not So Magical

Yet another thing one really doesn't notice until years later: the best evidence debunking the more pernicious aspects of the JFK conspiracies have been out for several years now.  Unfortunately people either don't know where to look, or they're not looking at all, having long since either accepted the conspiracy or given up on making any sense to it.

Well, wonder no more.  In the last several years information has been available explaining many apparently mysterious aspects of the shooting.  We are not including Holocaust Denying Assholes suggesting the driver shot Kennedy.  No, the more prosaic ones, like the "magic bullet"

As it goes, the bullet's trajectory appears impossible to some as it would have t ziggzag or back track.  See image :

But this is misleading because this was not the correct seating.  The correct seating in the limousine was this:

Further more , the front seats were lowered so Kenndy could be seen better by the crowd, like so:

As they wrote at Cracked:

You'll also notice that Kennedy and Connally weren't sitting rigid and facing forward like robots, as the conspiracy theorists suggest, but were twisted in their seats and waving at the audience as though, like, they were at a parade of some kind. Rearrange their bodies that way, and the path of the bullet -- Oswald's bullet -- goes straight through them. Just like it should.

 On this same subject Fred Kaplan at Salon writes:

For many years, long after I’d rejected most of the conspiracy buffs’ claims, the “magic bullet”—as critics called it—remained the one piece of the Dealey Plaza puzzle that I couldn’t fit into the picture; it was the one dissonant chord that, in certain moods, made me think there might have been two gunmen after all.

Then, in November 2003, on the murder’s 40^th anniversary, I watched an ABC News documentary called The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy. In one segment, the producers showed the actual car in which the president and the others had been riding that day. One feature of the car, which I’d never heard or read about before, made my jaw literally drop. The back seat, where JFK rode, was three inches higher than the front seat, where Connally rode. Once that adjustment was made, the line from Oswald’s rifle to Kennedy’s upper back to Connally’s ribcage and wrist appeared absolutely straight. There was no need for a magic bullet.

I too bought into the JFK conspiracy, though more in a casual sense, like many people are non-practicing Catholics.  There was no passion, just a cultural osmosis I'd been raised with that "something" was wrong with the Warren Commission.  I never saw the Oliver Stone movie, but it's positive reviews seemed to vindict my acquired assumptions and I saw no need to look into it further.

It wasn't until the aforementioned Holocaust denier was caught mixed up with all sorts of 911 "Truth" frauds, that I started to wonder if the JFK theories were also invented hokum:

Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Fetzer has published dozens of articles critical of the Warren Commission's findings,^[7] and has edited three books of studies by experts on the assassination of Kennedy.^[13] He is reported to have become interested in the subject after watching Oliver Stone's JFK in 1991.^[7] Conspiracy debunker Vincent Bugliosi has described Fetzer as a "good and sincere" man and as "the editor of the only exclusively scientific books... on the assassination".^[13] He has also been reported to be "a familiar and controversial figure in the JFK research community".^[7] According to Josiah Thompson, author of Six Seconds in Dallas, Fetzer has proffered theories considered "off the wall" by other assassination researchers.^[14]
According to Fetzer, the CIA, the American Mafia, anti-Castro Cubans, Texas oilmen, the "military–industrial complex", as well as Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and J. Edgar Hoover, all may have been involved in a plot to kill the President.^[13] He has asserted that approximately six gunmen were firing at Kennedy, and that the X-rays of Kennedy as well the Zapruder film were fabricated.^[13][15] Maintaining that William Greer, the agent driving Kennedy's limousine, deliberately stopped the vehicle after the first shot to give the assassins a better target, Fetzer has written that it was "such an obvious indication of Secret Service complicity in the assassination" that "had to be edited out" of Zapruder's film.^[13]
Fetzer appeared as a guest on the MSNBC program Jesse Ventura's America on the 40th observance of the Kennedy assassination. In response to questions from the host and audience, Fetzer spoke about his findings that the Zapruder film "had been massively edited" and that X-rays and forensic evidence had been severely tampered with or withheld.^[5]

 If this Fetzer clown (a close associate of the lying fraud Craig "Killtown"Lazo btw) was involved in the JFK conspiracy community...could that mean some of the JFK conspiracies were just as dubious as his protege Judy Wood's "space beams"?

Then I heard of his ridiculous the Driver Did it Theory, and thought no more of it...still keeping an open mind that maybe something was off about the Kennedy assassination.

And then I find out Stone failed to research thoroughly the seating arrangements, which 100% match the "magic bullet" path.

Not enough derp in the world...

I feel for Mr.Stone.  He made a poplar movie and one day he's going to have to say, "Oops, my bad", at least on that point.  

Recently I've read another JFK book and have my own conclusions about the supposed conspiracy:

1.  Oswald was an asshole and wife beater.  Get that out of the way.

2.  He had some fantasy he was very important in the Russian ex-pat circles he moved in.  I'm sure they found him useful for their own reasons, but he was never considered an equal. 

3. While he had shady, dodgy associates, many perhaps hostile to the US government, they appear to be the bourgeois wine sipping, smoking jacket sort.  Certainly not people willing to risk their emigration status plotting an assassination, no matter what their politics were.

4.  That said, framing of Oswald as a "lone nut" is misleading.  He had a support group who tolerated and encouraged his radicalism...in theory.  However there is no evidence they knew about or participated in the assassination.


And so the osmosis of my youth has been put to rest.  There is no magic bullet...just a bullet.  No conspiracy, except for the delusional visions of grandeur held by a wife beating misanthrope.


The JKF conspiracy, is used as "proof" they "fooled us before, so maybe that's how the planned to fool us about 9/11!!"  This is part of why conartists truthers like "casseia" are very invested in pushing, or at least tolerating, the Moon Hoax, Holocaust Denial and other "woo".  Not that they believe any of it.  It's just a cynical method to control people's perceptions.  A bonus is if you can get someone to fall for the Moon Hoax, JFK and Holocaust Denial and 911 truth for that matter become much easier to sell.


But now we can now stop beating the dead horse.  There was no magic bullet because there was no magic.

Now we can move on

Infoshop News: Debunking the 9/11 Movement: repost

Sometime in mid 2007 a radical left email list noticed they were getting inundated with 9/11 movement spam.   In response, the  article "Debunking the 9/11 Movement" was posted at Infoshop.   This is a much more useful approach than just debunking theories because it gives context to why the "movement" is so attached to reactionary politics and fringe political figures.  They make their own points from a left radical perspective, not the least of which anarchists, already with a dubious rap, really can't afford to make alliances with racist tolerant loons.  They also make a good point about "seeing the light", which inside "truth" is called "waking up".   Equating "truth" with a religious conversion and encouraging people to act with blind faith is one of the creeper aspects of the 911 "truth" movement.

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Debunking the 9/11 Movement

The 9/11 movement is a very troublesome development in American politics. A movement of people who have legitimate questions about the attacks that happened on September 11, 2001 has morphed into a conspiracy cult dominated by people who make a living peddling nonsense and exploiting ignorance.

It would be unfair to the 9-11 “Truth” movement to completely lump it in with the 9-11 conspiracy movement, but there is considerable overlap at this point. The 9-11 movement has gone from one that asked important questions to one that promotes outlandish theories and outright nonsense. The original goals of the movement have now been eclipsed by conspiracy theories about U.S. Government orchestration of the September 11 attacks. What may have been laudable attempts to encourage the public into critical thinking about 9/11 has devolved into religious devotion to a 9/11 conspiracy cult.

Infoshop is contributing to ongoing efforts that seek to challenge and debunk the conspiracy theorists. We encourage people to engage in critical thinking, not just about government officials but about the critics as well. While it's important to question the authority of government and experts, it's also important to be skeptical of DIY experts and authorities in the conspiracy movement. This page has been created to challenge what we see as an unfortunate waste of time that has affected some of our friends. It's important to understand the difference between the liberal shallowness of 9/11 conspiracy theory and a more solid radical analysis of state power, capitalism, imperialism and everything else that really exists.

Websites Critical of 9/11

9/11 Myths

Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy theories

Journal of Debunking 911 Conspiracy Theories

Loose Change Second Edition Viewer Guide

Popular Mechanics: 9/11: Debunking The Myths

Snopes debunks the claim that a missile, not AA77, hit the Pentagon

That's Just Stupid

Articles Debunking 9/11 Conspiracies

The 9/11 Conspiracy Nuts: How They Let the Guilty Parties of 9/11 Off the Hook

The Truth about the “9/11 Truth Movement” [PDF]

Reviews

Loose Change - Internet Detectives

Louis Proyect reviews Loose Change

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Debunking Common 9/11 Myths

No evidence of government coordination of attacks

The 9/11 conspiracy movement has focused attention on outlandish theories involving robot-controlled planes and controlled demolition of the World Trade Center Towers. Yet no evidence, of any kind, has been found that gives any evidence that the government planned or organized these conspiracies. No documents have been found. There is no physical evidence supporting the idea that the U.S. Government orchestrated the attacks. Nobody involved in these alleged conspiracies has stepped forward. One of the significant weaknesses of conspiracies is that people eventually talk. We know about past covert U.S. foreign policies because evidence and information eventually came to light.

Omniscience of the government

Many of the theories espoused by 9/11 movement members about government facilitation or complicity in the 9/11 attacks assume that the U.S. government is a competent, all powerful, all seeing entity. The U.S. government is obviously none of these things. Yet 9/11 theorists would have us believe that a government full of incompetent people and agencies would be totally competent when it comes to organizing terrorist attacks and keeping information about the conspiracy totally sealed shut.
A radical analysis of 9/11 that is ignored by leftists and activists in the 9/11 movement is the fact that the 9/11 attacks illustrated how disorganized, incompetent and weak the U.S. government really is.
Planes weren't skyjacked and crashed into the Pentagon and World Trade Center
There is plenty of evidence that planes were crashed into these building. Planes were destroyed. Buildings were damaged and destroyed. Thousands of people were killed.
One of the wilder 9/11 conspiracy theories has it that a missile was fired into the side of the Pentagon. This is simply false because hundreds of people witnessed the plane crash into the Pentagon. The area around the Pentagon is surrounded by parking lots and highways, which were all full of people on the morning of September 11. Accounts from these witnesses were published and aired by local media on September 11 and in subsequent weeks.

Why is the 9/11 movement an example of liberal politics?

Obsession with 9/11 conspiracies is an example of “arrested radicalization”

Belief about “people seeing the light”

One of the fundamental mistaken assumptions held by 9/11 conspiracy movement members is that if people knew that the government organized the 9/11 attacks that something would happen. 9/11 cultists believe that “if only people woke up” that they would be motivated to take action against the current regime. This belief, which has religious undertones, is problematic for several reasons. It invests an incredible amount of power into the hands of President Bush and his friends, which they simply don't have. It implies that getting rid of George Bush would make everything right, which completely misses the entire history of American imperialism and military aggression. This belief also overestimates the public reaction if their theories about government orchestration proved to be correct. The American public would be outraged, but it is unlikely that they would take any action beyond voting the Republicans out of office (which is going to happen anyway).
This core belief of 9/11 conspiracy theorists also ignores the fact that most Americans are aware of the movement's theories about 9/11. If many Americans know about the 9/11 conspiracy theories, then why do they reject the movement's theories? These theories are widely available on the Internet and in other media. The government is not jailing or persecuting 9/11 movement members. The uncomfortable fact is that the general public rejects the 9/11 movement because it is simply wrong.

Why the 9/11 movement is a dangerous diversion for political activists

The 9/11 movement is a diversion from real radicalism and organizing that needs to be done against the systems that really are the problems. The 9/11 movement builds up the Bush administration as some kind of avatars for all kinds of government corruption, imperial ambition, secrecy and many other things that can be found in any American regime. The Bush administration is not the first to start wars on lies and flimsy reasoning. The Bush administration did not start government surveillance of American citizens. Both parties have a proven track record of violating civil liberties and the freedoms of people like you and me.
The 9/11 movement also discredits activists and associates us with conspiracy whackjobs and religious nuts. Our views are not well-represented in mainstream discourse, so we cannot afford to associate with people who have a flimsy grasp on reality. Would you rather have your movement composed of many Noam Chomskys or of Alex Joneses? We'll take Chomsky, thank you.