Creative Speculation

> But the notion that Kennedy was struck somewhere around frame Z207 (or more accurately "exhibits a reaction to a severe external stimulus&quot , is buttressed by the eyewitness accounts of persons in the motorcade and bystanders. Those observations have been aligned with all the photographic evidence - not just the Z film - to establish consistencies... This is what you are dismissing as speculative guesswork.

Um, actually, the issue immediately at hand was not so much the speculative guesswork involved in determining which Z frame shows JFK getting hit, but rather the speculative guesswork behind your claim, "At this point Connally has not been hit."

> Once again, the idea that a bullet passed through Kennedy to strike Connally is the epitome of a speculative guess.

And once again, no it isn't; it's a theory that gives a credible explanation for the actual facts, which so far conspiracists have utterly failed to do. We seem to be simultaneously discussing those facts elsewhere, but what the hell, here's another one: If JFK's back wound (which just coincidentally points back to where somebody is shooting at him) is an entrance wound (which it certainly appears to be), and the throat wound is then almost certainly an exit wound (or certainly is, if we disallow magic disappearing bullets entering both wounds), then given where JFK was sitting relative to Connally, then that path through JFK's two wounds points straight toward Connally's back:



Then, we find that not only does Connally indeed have an entrance wound in his back, but that no trace of the bullet that passed through JFK's neck was found elsewhere in the limo. And you say that it's the "epitome of a speculative guess" to draw the clear, logical connection between these facts? On a par with your guessing when Connally was hit? Wow...

> But it is absolutely vital to the lone gunman theory and the Warren Commission knew it, no matter what they said.

No, it simply was not -- not unless we add the claims that conspiracists make that the timing of the presumed two shots rules out a single shooter. But there's a simple way out of that dilemma: Don't treat guesses about when the hits happened as if they are facts.

> Nonsense. Oswald, according to the official story, was necessarily moving quite quickly down creaky wooden stairs (the timing recreations, which needed to get Oswald to the 2nd floor lunchroom in time to be seen by Baker, proved very tricky for the Commission, and required shortcuts in things such as hiding the rifle). Neither Adams or Styles saw OR HEARD anyone, which means that no one was rushing down the stairs either ahead or behind them.

No, it does not mean any such thing. The fact that conspiracists attribute infallible perceptions and memories to people who tell any story that appears to contradict any WC finding does not mean that those perceptions and memories are actually factual. Furthermore, you only pretended to address what I actually said, which was that if Oswald went down the stairs even as little a 15 seconds before Adams and Styles, then they would have missed him. Yet you want to use that non-observation as proof that Oswald hadn't been on the 6th floor? Now, that's nonsense.

> By your account then, Baker and Truly would have passed Adams and Styles on the staircase - but there is nothing to support this.
> None of these persons ever remembered or described such an encounter. Are you suggesting that it is somehow a "mental contortion" to fail to consider an event which no witness has described as even ever happening?

Don't look now, but you've spun yourself right out of an argument, since that would actually be a problem for your account. If Adams and Styles say that they didn't see Baker and Truly, but Garner says she saw them come up to the 4th floor "right after" Adams and Styles went down, then the story you're trying to spin lacks internal consistency with the timing, regardless of where Oswald was at the time, and it becomes even more baffling what you are claiming that Garner's story "corroborates." I'm not sure that even mental contortions can save your tale now, but one possible sequence of events (not the only one) that doesn't violate any of those witness statements other than the remembered timing is that Oswald came down from the sixth floor and ducked into the second floor lunch room when he heard Truly and Baker coming up; Adams and Styles started down; Truly and Baker went into the lunchroom to confront Oswald; Adams and Styles continued down the stairs past the lunchroom; Truly and Baker returned to the stairs and went up, where Garner saw them go past the fourth floor. If we instead consider that Adams' story and/or Garner's "corroboration" are not quite as infallibly accurate as you would like to pretend, as implied by Adams and Styles not seeing Truly and Baker, then all sorts of other scenarios become possible. In the end, trying to claim that you've got "proof" that Oswald couldn't have been on the sixth floor is abject nonsense, because you haven't even begun to rule out all the other possible explanations.

And please note, since you seem to be very confused about this, I am NOT offering the above speculated timeline as a "fact" but rather as a demonstration of the gaping hole in your reasoning. If your conclusions can be wrong, then your logic is invalid and therefore does not qualify as the "proof" that you claim.

> The Warren Commission's conclusions were a bluff. The evidence collected and published in the Report does not support their conclusions. The idea that there is "credible evidence" supporting the official story is a mirage.

Uh-huh, sez you, but the question remains, what can you actually prove. Apparently, nothing that actually refutes any significant WC conclusion.

> Somehow you have allowed yourself to not only be taken in by this bluff, but presume to haughtily pontificate and demean persons who have been carefully rolling back this curtain in the interests of historical truth.

What a hero you are, which of course means that anyone who doesn't buy the nonsense you peddle must be the villain, out to conceal the "historical truth" that you apparently think can be manufactured out of unsubstantiated speculation by someone properly skilled in the art.

> That Kennedy was struck by a bullet before Connally is supported by photographic evidence (film and stills) and by accounts from multiple eyewitnesses - all of which is mutually supporting.

Yet, for some strange reason, conspiracists can't even convince each other exactly when it happened? No, it's not so strange; that would be because the "photographic evidence" can be (and has been) interpreted many different ways, and the eyewitnesses don't agree with each other so you have to decide who to believe. Same problem as above: If your conclusions do not necessarily follow from sound premises, then your logic is faulty, by definition.

> That Oswald was never on the sixth floor is proven by two witnesses who were on the exact staircase he was allegedly frantically scampering down and who neither saw or heard him. Like the Warren Commission, you are in denial over that fact.

If you meant to say that I deny that's a fact, then yes I do, and I've given some of my reasons. There are others, such as all the evidence that the murder weapon found on the sixth floor was Oswald's gun, which he apparently brought to work that morning, and Oswald's hand prints found on the sniper's nest boxes, etc. etc. I am denying that you've actually proved your claims, and I've given the reasons. Clearly, you are the one in denial about what are facts and what is speculation, and about what the credible facts imply.