Michael Griffith

On 3/31/2023 at 11:59 AM, Jeff Carter said:

“General Y” is obviously based on Lansdale but is not portrayed as a “master plotter” or a “key figure”. He is not, for example, in the smoky room of power brokers where the grievances against Kennedy are aired. General Y is seen receiving a phone call - presented as a speculation, as something that “maybe” happened. General Y is portrayed as an “agent” of higher powers, which is exactly how Prouty always characterized him.

It appears you set up a sort of “straw man” with the attributions of “master plotter” and “key figure” which you use to apply a dismissive term (“quack”) to your target (Prouty). The film doesn’t make those attributions and as far as I am aware neither did Prouty. So there is no “reckless baseless charge” in the first place other than those directed towards the film.

As a matter of fact, it was a reckless, baseless charge to suggest that Lansdale played any role in JFK's murder, much less a clearly crucial role.

Now, okay, we can go back and forth about how we define "master plotter," but the film clearly portrays General Y as a key figure in the plot. I don't know how anyone can deny this. 

The film has General Y being contacted by someone who is obviously close to the top of the plot and who asks General Y to "come up with a plan." The film also has Mr. X claiming that General Y helped strip JFK of security by sending Mr. X on a supposedly unusual escort mission to the South Pole, and that General Y was even in Dealey Plaza during the assassination. 

Incidentally, the film also falsely accuses General Y/Lansdale of involvement in the murders of Lumumba in the Congo and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. Says Mr. X in referring to General Y, "He's done it before. Other countries. Lumumba in the Congo, Trujillo, the Dominican Republic, he's working on Castro. No big deal." Lansdale had nothing to do with those murders.

By the way, the film briefly shows the name plate on General Y's desk. Part of it is blocked, but the visible part reads "M/GEN E.G. . . . U.S. Air. . . ." Lansdale's first two initials were E.G., and he was a general in the U.S. Air Force.

Yes, the WC's refusal to believe Kantor over Ruby is a prime example of the Commission's bias and dishonesty. The Commission didn't want to have to explain what in the world Ruby was doing at Parkland Hospital. 

On 3/31/2023 at 10:41 AM, Paul Brancato said:

Your last paragraph resonates with me. If scientists disagree on that one they are out of their minds. Would you add to that reasonable action taking care of our forests, our wildlife, our oceans?

Forests and oceans, absolutely, yes. Wildlife? In most cases, yes. I was very disappointed that Trump refused to include the U.S. in the agreement to cut plastic waste in our oceans. 

I am especially concerned about the safety of our water. I was very disappointed with the performance of Trump's EPA when it decreed that pollution discharges into protected waters via groundwater were excluded from the regulations of the Clean Water Act. Some Republicans seriously don't seem to care about or understand the dangers posed by water pollution. 

Quote

Another one that I think should be added is sustainable agriculture. I don’t buy the idea that feeding the world requires chemical fertilizers, or genetically modified seeds. I’m actually in favor of phasing out ocean fishing and replacing that with farmed fish. Surely we can make that work better. Feed lots, cooped up chickens, indoor hog farms all seem cruel to me. I’m not vegetarian, I just think we can do these things a lot better. 

I don't know about fish farming. It would depend on how it were done and what the fish were fed. Some fish farms sell unhealthy fish. I'm all for natural, healthy food. Our family drinks raw milk and eats pasture-raised, hormone-free, antibiotics-free meat, even though it is rather expensive.  

Quote

The main point is that discussions around climate change or global warming have become politicized, but pollution is not. And as George Carlin was fond of saying, the planet doesn’t need saving, we do. The earth will be fine. Its denizens will suffer.

Literally thousands of scientists reject man-made climate change, but you never hear about them. They get no exposure on "mainstream" news outlets, especially in the U.S.

We are not losing massive amounts of polar ice--in fact, in some recent years, we actually had a net increase in polar ice (with gains in Antarctic ice more than offsetting losses in Arctic ice). About 97% of CO2 is produced by nature. Plants needs CO2 to perform photosynthesis. The climate has not markedly warmed over the last 20 years--and the questionable temperature-measurement methods used by some scientists to support "global warming" have justifiably come under severe criticism. The New England region and New York state had record-breaking amounts of snow in 2022, and the Northwest experienced record-breaking low temperatures in 2022, but very few news outlets have covered these facts. 

To watch NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, and MSNBC, you'd never know that a growing number of scientists are saying there is evidence that suggests we are entering a moderate cooling period in Earth's history.

Remember all the dire predictions that climate-change alarmist scientists made in the early 2000s that we would see a significant increase in the number of hurricanes in North America and worldwide because of "global warming"? Another failed prediction. The number of hurricanes making landfall in North America per year has remained relatively steady since 1900--yes, since 1900, or over the last 120 years. Speaking globally, the total number of hurricanes worldwide since 1990, i.e., over the last 23 years, has averaged 47 per year, with 2022 seeing 40 hurricanes worldwide. 

Leslie, I hope the paperback version now in development will address the issues raised by Jeff Sundberg, especially the issue that two of the culprits identified in the hardback book as JFKA participants were actually in prison at the time. Now, I realize this does not automatically invalidate everything else in the book, but it needs to be addressed. 

16 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Re. Trump's voice .. in the ear of the beholder.  

Practically speaking, a campaign could do great damage to RFK Jr., but to imply he should shy from running because of his voice seems "off" somehow.

Jr.'s outspoken defense of our environment should get him elected, but alas we know there are millions in the US who deny the global crisis. {1 gal. of clean water = $2.79 in many NM stores.)  

His recognition that vaccines are a necessary evil around the world could balance the insanity of the anti-vax movement.  It's unfortunate he's associated with those extremists.

Oh, I'm not saying he should not run. I'm saying I don't think he's a viable candidate because of his voice defect. Trump's voice is somewhat coarse but it's not defective or hard to hear/understand. RFK Jr.'s voice is both defective and often hard to hear/understand (even when he is speaking in a studio with a mic near his mouth). 

I think you're soft-peddling RFK Jr.'s record on vaccines. He has made a number of statements that put him squarely among the anti-vaxxers and that have drawn the wrath of medical scientists. 

As for those who "deny the global crisis," i.e., man-made climate change, have you read a single scholarly work that challenges the doom-and-gloom espoused by liberal environmentalists? Here's one good site that presents scholarly responses to climate-change hysteria:

Watts Up With That? – The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Alarmist climate-change scientists and their political spokespersons have a long history of making dire predictions that failed to come true. Look how many predictions made in the first several IPCC reports failed to materialize. Look at the predictions in Al Gore's 2006 presentation An Inconvenient Truth that failed to occur. 

However, when it comes combating pollution, I believe that every reasonable action should be taken to keep our air and water clean. Heck, I have an electric lawn mower, an electric power saw, and a solar-powered house!

7 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

Can you cite where Fletcher Prouty specifically identified Lansdale as a "master plotter" of the assassination?

Or how exactly the "JFK" film implied Lansdale was a "key figure behind the assassination"?

Are you serious? Nobody but nobody denies that "General Y" was clearly intended to be Edward Lansdale. If you doubt this, you can Google it.

Critics exploited this reckless, baseless charge to impugn the validity of the entire movie. 

27 minutes ago, B. A. Copeland said:

Hey there Michael. I think, with all due respect, we should give Mr. Stone credit for continuing to study the material through the years. He stated unequivocally last year that he no longer puts any stock to Col. Prouty's Lansdale allegations. I came across this post sometime ago from Doug Campbell (of the Dallas Action Podcast):

Now that above quotation is sourced from this video:

https://youtu.be/-Rh7yrIOmY0

Timestamp for the quote is at about 00:44:43. It seems to me that Stone is acting in a good faith of sorts of what I think is a good quality to found in the research of many fields: keeping the mind open to new developments and being willing to welcome new ways of thinking about an old puzzle due to said new developments and evidence.

That is great to know! Thank you for the information. I'm very glad to see that Stone has ditched Prouty's Lansdale claims. 

And, yes, I do give Stone plenty of credit for continuing to research the case. His latest documentary, JFK Revisited, is fantastic. I've praised it to the hilt in interviews and on my JFK site. 

Thanks again for the information!

1 hour ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Diane Rehm has maintained a captive audience for over a decade.

We need these voices!  (as a side note, have you listened to Joe Tacopina. Which reminds me, Trump's voice is quite annoying yet he won an election.  Then again, he lost the next one but likely his tenor had nothing to do with that loss. I digress...)

But Trump's voice is not weak or impaired. His speaking style is annoying because he phrases his sentences in a disjointed manner, but his voice is strong and clear. 

I admire RFK Jr.'s willingness to think outside the box, even on issues such as vaccination. It shows guts. I'd like to know more about his political views. I've only heard him talk about three or four issues.

I just think that his voice defect would be a major problem if he ran for office.  

1 hour ago, Paul Brancato said:

You think that people won’t vote for a presidential candidate with a  disability? I don’t find it hard to listen to him. I would if he was untruthful, or in the pockets of billionaires. He’s not either. 

I'm saying that I believe his voice makes him an unviable candidate. I agree that in a perfect world his voice should not matter, but we don't live in such a world. 

Some of his anti-vax views concern me. I generally favor vaxing, but I know there are valid concerns about some vaccines. I agree with most of his criticisms of Fauci. I like his idea of tax cuts for restorative/regenerative farming. I think many of his views on the environment are based on junk science.

1 hour ago, Jonathan Cohen said:

Two major problems, depending on who you think the "Mr. Hunt" was. If It was E. Howard Hunt, why would Oswald have been writing to him using his real name, when Hunt frequently used aliases during intelligence operations? If it was a member of the Hunt oil family, why on earth would they get involved in the assassination and then pay for a full-page ad in the local newspaper advertising just how much they hated and despised President Kennedy? E. Howard Hunt himself believed the document was a forgery made by the Russians to implicate him in the assassination plot.

Oh, I don't think the letter was addressed to E. Howard Hunt. If it's genuine, I think it was addressed to a member of the Hunt oil family. 

My main takeaway about the letter is that it may prove that even a substantial amount of handwriting can be so expertly forged as to fool a number of handwriting experts, and that this, in turn, should give us pause about the handwriting on the envelope and money order used to buy the Carcano.

1 hour ago, Douglas Caddy said:

Alice Widener, a syndicated newspaper columnist, told me of her interview of General MacArthur when he was living in the Towers of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City.

He told her that there was a spy in Seoul who betrayed his strategic military moves in the Korean War to the enemy. The only exception was the Inchon Landing, which he secretly planned that was a total success that changed the war.

Years later after she told me this story, I read a column by Walter Trohan in the Chicago Tribune that confirmed what MacArthur told Widener and named the spy who was in the British Embassy in Seoul. 

I suggest you read John Toland's book on the Korean War, In Mortal Combat. I think it's the most balanced book on the Korean War in print. It's not perfect, but I think it's the best available.

The Inchon Landing, although it did succeed in liberating Seoul, allowed tens of thousands of North Korean troops to escape to fight another day. If MacArthur had landed at Kunsan, as suggested by General Walker, the Navy, and the Joint Chiefs, Seoul could have been freed sooner and without letting so many enemy troops get away.

MacArthur was very lucky that Kim Il Sung chose to ignore China's warning about Inchon. The Chinese knew that MacArthur was going to land at Inchon, and they duly warned Sung, but Sung, incredibly, failed to reinforce Inchon and kept focusing on the Pusan Perimeter. 

No one has ever been able to figure out exactly why MacArthur ignored the clear, compelling intelligence on the enormous Chinese forces near the Yalu River in October and early November 1950. This blunder rivaled his catastrophic handling of the defense of the Philippines after Pearl Harbor.

However, it is certainly true that in early November MacArthur belatedly recognized the danger and wanted to bomb the Yalu bridges to cut off the movement of Chinese troops and supplies into North Korea, and that Truman, showing weak nerve and bad judgment, at first prohibited the bombing and then, only after MacArthur protested vehemently, allowed it but with severe restrictions.

My main point is not to bash MacArthur overall but to point out that when it came to military matters, he was often incompetent, fatally incompetent. 
 

On 1/28/2023 at 10:45 AM, Joe Bauer said:

Regards Stone's 1991 "political thriller" film "JFK" which I just viewed again yesterday.

Are we still reading the same "factual deviancies" criticism cr*p that has been expressed with outrage by Stone haters since before the film was even released ... 33 years ago !?

Yes, unfortunately.

Stone himself has admitted his use of much dramatic license in telling his JFK film "story" so many times it's actually nauseating to still read this same old childish outrage criticism which has been rendered mute and by Stone himself!

Stone has said, his goal was to create an alternate reality dramatic story...to "counter-balance" the Warren Commission lone nut finding one regards the assassination of JFK.

The film was never created to be a strict fact reporting documentary.

Who would pay money to see such a dry docu-film like that?

If the viewers of JFK believed more of Stone's film story than the Warren Commission version... that says it all regards how little trust the majority of Americans ( and millions overseas ) had in our official government conclusion regards the truth about the JFK event.

An unprecedented dark suspicion minded lack of trust and confidence that had festered inside of them for almost 30 years before Stone's JFK film.

The integrity failure of the Warren Commission and those that created and promoted their work and finding is what the JFK film was all about.

Stone's film reflected this societal mistrust mind set and was actually a visceral release of their three decades long pent up gut wrenching angst regards feeling and/or sensing something disturbingly wrong about the government's findings about JFK...and the MLK and RFK murders as well...imo anyways.

And let me add once again...Stone's JFK film was just as dramatically gripping, intriguing, moving and over-all entertaining yesterday as it was when I first viewed it twice in theaters when it first came out 32 years ago.

In so many ways.

The opening scenes ( in old newsreel black and white ) leading up to the flash backs of JFK's limo getting closer and closer to Dealey Plaza with ever building military drum roll tension had everyone in the viewing audience on the edge of their seats ... culminating with the loud rifle gun shot "BOOM" and birds flying off the top of the Texas Schoolbook Depository building just SHOOK the audience ( audible gasps and cries ) like I had never seen before.

The most powerful film beginning I have ever seen.

That highest level entertainment staying power film achievement is proof of the film's greatness imo. A real masterpiece. Definitely one of the greatest American films ever made.

Every character in the film ( dozens) just holds you in their performances. 

And is there any other American film with so many of our top award winning actors in the cast?

That could have backfired into a dizzying "too much" ensemble jumble, but Stone remarkably made it all work which is an incredible film production achievement in itself imo.

As I've said before, I believe the movie JFK was monumentally important and basically accurate in its essential thrust. 

Stone's one major blunder in the movie was his implication that General Edward Lansdale was a key figure behind the assassination. Stone made this horrific gaffe because he relied on Fletcher Prouty.

Some due diligence would have quickly revealed that Prouty's claim was utter nonsense and slanderous garbage. Lansdale liked and admired JFK, grieved over his death, and opposed the introduction of large numbers of American troops in South Vietnam. Lansdale opposed most of the Taylor-Rostow recommendations on Vietnam. He opposed LBJ's escalation in 1965 and criticized U.S. military operations as misguided. By the way, Lansdale also opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion.

It is a red flag of Prouty's quackery that, of all people, he identified Edward Lansdale as one of the master plotters who wanted JFK dead in order to vastly escalate the war effort in Vietnam. 

When I became interested in the JFK case in the early 1990s, Harry Livingstone's books were some of the first ones I read. I think he did a great deal of valuable research on the case, especially on the medical evidence. 

Sadly, when he found out that I was working in military intelligence in the Army, he would not have anything to do with me. I wanted to get to know him and learn from him, but when he found out that my field in the Army was intelligence, he stopped communicating with me. This saddened me, but I understood where he was coming from.

I think Harrison Livingstone deserves great credit for the work he did on the case. Some of it was problematic, but much of it was valuable and important.  

Three handwriting experts consulted by the Dallas Morning News concluded that Oswald wrote the Hunt letter. If Oswald didn't write it, it was a very good forgery.

Federal investigators didn't want to admit that Oswald wrote the letter because it raises several troubling questions, nor did they want to explore who may have forged the letter if it was in fact a forgery, since such a highly skilled forgery would suggest the involvement of intelligence personnel.

On 3/24/2023 at 2:22 PM, Douglas Caddy said:

Those of us who were alive when General MacArthur returned to the U.S. after being fired by President Truman remember well how Americans in mass turned out in adoration as they judged him to be one of our nation's greatest leaders. When he came to Houston, I ran alongside his open limousine in a rousing parade from downtown enroute to his speaking before a huge crowd at Rice University stadium. I shouted to young Arthur MacArthur in the limousine who smiled and waved back.

In my mind's eye I can still see MacArthur walking out of the White House after JFK summoned him for advice on Vietnam and his telling the press that he had advised the President not to get involved in another land war in Asia. LBJ went on to get America bogged down in Vietnam in a war that we lost but made his Texas cronies rich. LBJ did not even bother to attend MacArthur's funeral.  

My opinion of him as being a truly Great Man endures to this day.

Take a moment and read his biography on Wikipedia.

Douglas MacArthur - Wikipedia

Huh, it's interesting that you still view MacArthur as a truly great man. Most of your fellow liberals hold a very negative view of him. 

My view of him is mixed. Overall, in spite of his military blunders, I hold a moderately favorable opinion of him, because of the good job he did in overseeing Japan's occupation and reconstruction, because of his opposition to nuking Japan, because of his defense of constitutional liberty, and because he supported Senator Robert Taft in the 1952 GOP primary.

But, let there be no mistake: MacArthur's incompetence as a military leader resulted in the needless deaths of tens of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers. 

He's not a viable candidate because his voice is now so weak and scratchy. It's hard to understand him when he speaks. He suffers from spasmodic dysphonia.

Here's an insightful and interesting 2013 article on JFK's views about Jews as people, his willingness to publicly call out the Soviet Union for its persecution of Jews, his appointment of Jews to high-ranking positions, and his approval of the sale of HAWK missiles to Israel:

Jews have special reasons to remember JFK on 50th anniversary of assassination | Jewish Rhode Island (jewishrhody.com)

JFK actually overrode Eisenhower-era State Department policies and increased arms sales to Israel (John Kennedy: A Martyr Who Worried About the Spread of Nukes - U.S. News - Haaretz.com).

Some anti-Semitic websites have grossly misused a speech that JFK gave soon after the Bay of Pigs, claiming that he warned of the "menace" of Zionism/Jews when in fact he was talking about the menace of international communism (Anti-Semitic video distorts JFK speech - Australian Associated Press (aap.com.au). 

Some radical Muslims, including the Mullahs in Iran, have been spreading the lie that Israel was behind the JFK and RFK assassinations. As recently as 2020, the Tehran Times ran an article titled "Israel Is Behind Serial Assassinations of Kennedy Brothers." Many of these same folks have made disturbing, nutty claims about the Holocaust and Hitler. 

JFK's misguided attempt to prevent Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons does not mean he was anti-Israeli. He never did follow through on his private threats to isolate Israel over Dimona (nor did LBJ). The idea that the Mossad played any part in the conspiracy to kill JFK is obscene and preposterous, as is the attempt by some ultra-liberals to paint JFK as being anti-Israeli. 

On 3/25/2023 at 7:54 AM, Pete Mellor said:

Ron,

Angleton's influence on U.S.-Israeli relationship touched upon the sensitive question of Israel's military nuclear ambition.  In 1960 Angleton ignored a request from the U.S. Intelligence Board, which reviewed CIA operations on behalf of the White House, that all information regarding Dimona be transmitted expeditiously.  Angleton also failed to notice, or report, about the stealing of weapons-grade enriched uranium from NUMEC in Apollo, Pennsylvania.  NUMEC had been created under U.S. government license by David Lowenthal, a Zionist financier, and was run by Zalman Shapiro, the son of an orthodox rabbi from Lithuania, who also was head of the local chapter of the Zionist Organisation of America.  Over the 9 years from '59 to '68, the Atomic Energy Corp., estimated that 267 kilograms of uranium went missing at the Apollo NUMEC plant. One Israeli, masquerading as a nuclear engineer who visited the plant was a Mossad agent named Rafael Eitan, who was known to Angleton.  With the fissile material stolen from NUMEC Israel was able to construct it's first nuclear weapon by 1967 and become a full blown nuclear power by 1970-the first, and still the only nuclear power in the Middle East.  Angleton, it is fair to say, thought collaboration with Israel was more important than U.S. non-proliferation policy.  (CIA & Mossad-Jefferson Morley)

Angleton's close personal ties with the DeShalit family and others in Israel made it inevitable that he would learn about the Dimona construction in the Negev.  Yet he never reported on the Israeli's efforts to build a nuclear reactor for military purposes.  (The Samson Option-Seymour Hersh)

Angleton made his first visit to Israel in 1951.  "He used to come from time to time, to meet the head of Mossad, to get briefings", recalls Efraim Halevy, who served as the Mossad's liason officer to the CIA station in Tel Aviv in the early 1960's.  "He used to meet with David Ben Gurion whom he knew for many years.  Ben Gurion ultimately left office in May '63 and Angleton went down to Ben Gurion's home in the Negev to meet him.  I didn't attend those meetings.  Those were just the two of them.  He had business to transact."  Angleton befriended Isser Harel founder of Shin Bet and chief of Mossad from 1951.  He also had a lifetime friendship with Amos Manor, director of Shin Bet from 1953 to 1963, and of Meir Amit, head of Mossad from 1963 to 1968.  When Yitzhak Rabin became Israeli ambassador to Washington (1968-73), Angleton met him as often as five times a week and had monthly lunches with Rabin.  (The Ghost-Jefferson Morley)

Mossad figure and future Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, (in November '63), was then a high ranking military officer, purportedly on a military briefing tour, was in Dallas at the time of JFK's assassination, according to Rabin's widow.  (Final Judgment-Michael Collins Piper) 

I find it just sickening to see all this bashing of Israel, and especially to see suggestions that Israelis may have been involved in JFK's death. This is a sad reflection of the fact that extreme liberals, who form a large segment of the research community, are becoming increasingly anti-Israeli. This is also another example of ultra-liberals going well beyond JFK's views on Israel while acting like they are defending JFK's approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict. 

I can tell you from my correspondence with her, and from reading her book, that Monika Wiesak has a rather strong anti-Israeli bias and that her research on the Arab-Israeli issue has been one-sided and incomplete, to put it gently.

Those who are pushing this anti-Israeli agenda should consider what JFK said in August 1960 to the Zionists of America convention in New York City:

          I first saw Palestine in 1939. There the neglect and ruin left by centuries of Ottoman misrule were slowly being transformed by miracles of labor and sacrifice. But Palestine was still a land of promise in 1939, rather than a land of fulfillment. I returned in 1951 to see the grandeur of Israel. In 3 years this new state had opened its doors to 600,000 immigrants and refugees. Even while fighting for its own survival, Israel had given new hope to the persecuted and new dignity to the pattern of Jewish life. I left with the conviction that the United Nations may have conferred on Israel the credentials of nationhood; but its own idealism and courage, its own sacrifice and generosity, had earned the credentials of immortality.

          Some do not agree. Three weeks ago I said in a public statement: "Israel is here to stay." The next day I was attacked by Cairo radio, rebuking me for my faith in Israel. . . .

          For Israel was not created in order to disappear - Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom; and no area of the world has ever had an overabundance of democracy and freedom.

          It is worth remembering, too, that Israel is a cause that stands beyond the ordinary changes and chances of American public life. In our pluralistic society, it has not been a Jewish cause - any more than Irish independence was solely the concern of Americans of Irish descent. The ideals of Zionism have, in the last half century, been repeatedly endorsed by Presidents and Members of Congress from both parties. Friendship for Israel is not a partisan matter. It is a national commitment.

          Yet within this tradition of friendship there is a special obligation on the Democratic Party. It was President Woodrow Wilson who forecast with prophetic wisdom the creation of a Jewish homeland. It was President Franklin Roosevelt who kept alive the hopes of Jewish redemption during the National Socialist terror. It was President Harry Truman who first recognized the new State of Israel and gave it status in world affairs. And may I add that it would be my hope and my pledge to continue this Democratic tradition - and to be worthy of it. (Speech by Senator John F. Kennedy, Zionists of America Convention, Statler Hilton Hotel, New York, NY | The American Presidency Project (ucsb.edu)

If you are anti-Israeli and/or you view the Israelis as the bad guys and the Palestinians as the victims, and if you are willing to read one book that challenges this warped position, I recommend Princeton and Harvard graduate David Brog's 2017 book Reclaiming Israel's History: Roots, Rights, and the Struggle for Peace. 

On 3/25/2023 at 7:28 AM, Gil Jesus said:

During the search of the Paine residence on Saturday 11/23, Mr. and Mrs. Paine, along with Marina Oswald and all the kids were absent from the property while the police searched their garage. The official version is that the Paines were getting ready to go shopping when the police showed up with a search warrant and they simply told them to "help themselves" and left.

This account sounds ridiculous to me for two reasons:

First of all, if I'm the property owner and the police show up with a search warrant to search my property, I'm not leaving, especially if someone else's property is mixed in with mine. If they're after the other party, I want to make sure that they don't "confiscate" any property of mine. Whatever else I had planned, including "Shopping", can wait.

Second, if I'm the police officer in charge of the search, I'M NOT LETTING ANYONE LEAVE THE PROPERTY UNTIL THE SEARCH IS COMPLETED. I'll have them sit on the couch in the living room and assign an officer to them to make sure they don't move. I can't take a chance that someone will go for a weapon or destroy evidence, so their mobility is restricted until the search is complete.

How do you know you're not going to find something during the search that is going to implicate either one of the Paines, Marina Oswald or all three in the crime ? You just let them leave ? Just like that ? Why, because they SAID they were going shopping ? How do you know they're not on their way to Redbird Airport to jump on a private plane out of the country ?

Letting them leave the property like that is a no-no.

At best, there seems to be an abnormal amount of trust being displayed by both the property owners and the police.

At worst, it looks like collusion.

Very good points. I agree that all of this sounds extremely odd and smacks of collusion.

We should keep in mind, too, that multiple waves of DPD officers and FBI agents searched Ruth Paine’s residence hours after the assassination and did not find any backyard rifle photos. 

56 minutes ago, Gil Jesus said:

Also, General MacAthur met with the President in July of 1961 ( at a time when Laos was on the front burner ) and warned him to NOT get involved in a land war in Asia. It was advise the President took seriously. He also had some disparaging remarks for the then current Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Unfortunately, MacArthur's advice was misguided, badly misguided. Eisenhower had correctly warned JFK, as did the Joint Chiefs, that taking a stand in Laos was critical, absolutely crucial, especially for blocking Communist infiltration into South Vietnam. JFK's failure to prevent the Communists from controlling and using southeastern Laos as their key supply route proved to be disastrous.

Eisenhower and the Joint Chiefs recognized what the North Vietnamese themselves later acknowledged: without the supply route through southeastern Laos, North Vietnam's war effort would have been severely limited, if not crippled. JFK failed to realize this and agreed to a coalition government in Laos, which enabled the Communists to control the southeastern part of the country.

Eisenhower was a much better general than MacArthur. JFK should have listened to Eisenhower.

I should add, however, that MacArthur deserves great credit for condemning the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. MacArthur thought that nuking Japan was inexcusable. He later wrote to former President Herbert Hoover that if Truman had modified the terms of the surrender to specify that the emperor would not be deposed, "the Japanese would have accepted it and gladly I have no doubt."

This was a very unpopular view at the time, even though many other senior American military officers agreed with it (including Dwight Eisenhower, Admiral Halsey, and Admiral Nimitz).

Because of the truly barbaric conduct of the Japanese army and the horrible suffering that Japanese forces imposed on civilians in several countries, not to mention the Japanese army's cruel mistreatment of our POWs, most Americans had zero sympathy for the Japanese. Most Americans believed that the Japanese deserved merciless retaliation. The vast majority of Americans were in no mood to distinguish between the many moderate Japanese who never wanted war in the first place and the Japanese militarists. 

On 3/21/2023 at 8:52 AM, Michael Griffith said:

Oh, I forgot to mention two things.

One, Hastings provides an exceptionally detailed look at the extreme level of repression imposed by North Vietnam's government on its own people during the war. His treatment of this subject even rivals that of Lien-Hang Nguyen in her book Hanoi's War. The Hanoi regime was so fanatically controlling and oppressive that even the Soviet advisers were surprised by the pervasive and excessive nature of the regime's totalitarian grip. Soviet advisers wrote home and/or later talked about the extreme degree of control that the Hanoi government exercised over the people.  

Two, in his analysis of the sorry performance of liberal journalists during the war, Hastings discusses the Hanoi regime's extensive propaganda efforts. He discusses cases when the Hanoi regime fed visiting liberal journalists false stories, including faked pictures, about the effects of American bombing. Those journalists uncritically repeated these stories and many American newspapers published them. Hastings spends some time on Harrison Salisbury's infamous 1966 visit to North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese gave Salisbury bogus statistics lifted straight out of one their propaganda booklets, and Salisbury repeated them virtually verbatim in the New York Times. The North Vietnamese also gave Salisbury a fraudulent photo that appeared to show that American bombs had destroyed a Catholic cathedral. Without making any effort to verify the photo, Salisbury ran with it. The photo was later exposed as a fake when photo reconnaissance and ground observation proved that the cathedral was totally undamaged. Hastings notes that liberal journalists frequently repeated bogus North Vietnamese claims about American bombs hitting the Red River dikes and hitting rural areas that were actually never hit and that never even had bombs land anywhere near them.

Yet another worthwhile item in Hastings' book is his acknowledgment of doubt about journalist Peter Arnett's famous alleged quotation of an unidentified U.S. Army major who supposedly said, "It became necessary to destroy the town to save it." Several other journalists repeated this alleged quote but changed "town" to "village" to make it sound even worse. This supposed quote became a favorite line of the anti-war movement. However, even at the time, the authenticity of the quote was strongly challenged, and Hastings acknowledges that the quote is now widely believed to be a fabrication.

Arnett claimed that one of the four Army officers he interviewed after the battle at Ben Tre during the Tet Offensive made the alleged statement, although Arnett would never name his source. For starters, Ben Tre was not a town or a village but was a sizable city. Furthermore, and most important, Ben Tre did not even come close to being "destroyed." It suffered some damage during the battle, but the damage was moderate and most of the city remained intact. Thus, no Army officer would have had any reason to say they had to destroy Ben Tre to save it. The Army quickly pointed out these facts at the time, but they were ignored by most journalists.

I think one major reason that so many anti-war liberals dislike Hastings' book is that, even though Hastings harshly criticizes the Saigon regime, argues that the war was unwinnable, and says that neither side deserved to win, Hastings tells the truth about the Hanoi regime and makes it clear that the Hanoi regime was the worst of the two. I think another reason is that virtually everyone who reads the book will come away believing that South Vietnam's defeat and North Vietnam's victory were terrible tragedies and that the people of South Vietnam would have been far better off if South Vietnam had remained independent. 

On 3/20/2023 at 2:00 PM, Joe Bauer said:

I haven't heard of this guy "Pete Santilli" but it appears he has a national radio audience?

Can't figure his JFKA reference in his Trump criminal charge warning of violence and calling for executions of Obama, Holder and Rice.

I wouldn't have posted this except for his direct reference to the JFKA. I didn't do so for any current political discussion reasons.

In a video clip obtained by Right Wing Watch, Santilli pleaded with members of the military to take action.

"Get the military, whatever few are left that are gonna side with the people," he said. "That you military personnel and you people with guns and badges and law enforcement will succumb to the will of the people."

"And ultimately, we demand, we absolutely demand that the criminals, the criminals in this country, if you want them held accountable, the criminals are Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Susan Rice," he continued, "this entire criminal cabal that came about as a result of the murder of John F. Kennedy, the people that perpetrated the murder of John F. Kennedy, rise up to that.

"Military, join us and put all of them up against a concrete wall... and do what we must do to save not just our country, the entire world," he implored.

Wow, this sounds like extremist rhetoric. We don't need this kind of poison in our politics and discourse. Yes, the prosecution of Trump over the Stormy Daniels payoff seems very selective and smacks of partisan prosecution, but this does not excuse Santilli's poisonous rhetoric. 

On 3/17/2023 at 8:38 PM, Michael Crane said:

Recently corpsman James Jenkins said it was a pipe.

It was Humes that thought it was a cigar.

Didn't Paul O'Connor say it was a cigar?

Anyway, I regard Curtis LeMay as a war criminal for his actions during WWII. 

Many of my fellow conspiracy theorists approvingly cite General MacArthur's opposition to using regular combat troops in South Vietnam, and they praise JFK for citing and relying on MacArthur's view. I find this curious because it has been widely recognized for decades that MacArthur was a disastrously incompetent general, not to mention a shameless publicity hound and a gigantic narcissist. Military historians always include MacArthur in their lists of overrated American military leaders and frequently put him at or near the top of the list.

MacArthur did a good job administering the U.S. occupation of Japan and overseeing Japan's emergence as a democratic state after the war. On balance, he did a solid, commendable job as the de facto governor of Japan during his time there, and he deserves great credit for this. However, as a military leader, he repeatedly displayed disastrous incompetence--not just incompetence, but disastrous incompetence.

MacArthur inexcusably allowed his bombers and fighters in the Philippines to be caught on the ground and virtually wiped out by the Japanese, even though Pearl Harbor had been attacked some eight hours earlier. MacArthur's refusal to follow orders and his fatally flawed deployment of his forces in the Philippines enabled the Japanese to seize the Philippines and led to the needless deaths of thousands of American and Filipino soldiers, not to mention thousands of Filipino civilians. 

The Philippines could have been held if MacArthur had not blundered so badly and had not disobeyed orders. Holding the Philippines would have markedly changed the course of the war in the Pacific for the better and would have saved many thousands of lives, arguably hundreds of thousands of lives.  

MacArthur's inept handling of the defense of Australia led to unnecessarily high casualties among Australian troops and nearly enabled the Japanese to seize the Kokoda Track. To this day, Australian military historians fault MacArthur for his handling of Australia's defense.

MacArthur's disastrous miscalculations in the Korean War are well known. He ignored clear and compelling intelligence indicators that Red China had a large force in North Korea and was poised to attack. The resulting Chinese assault cost thousands of American and South Korean troops their lives. 

What is not widely known among non-historians is that MacArthur's supposedly "brilliant" landing at Inchon in South Korea was poorly conceived and failed to achieve the results that could have been achieved if the landing had been done at Kunsan, which was the landing site favored by the Navy, by General Walker, and by the Joint Chiefs. MacArthur's choice of Inchon was a foolish mistake that avoided disaster only because North Korean president Kim Il Sung committed the astonishing blunder of not reinforcing Inchon even though he was warned by the Chinese that MacArthur was going to land there. If MacArthur had chosen Kunsan as the landing site, he could have captured the key city of Taejon much earlier and, more important, could have trapped the bulk of the North Korean forces that were assaulting the Pusan Perimeter. Instead, large numbers of those forces escaped and lived to fight another day.

There are other examples of MacArthur's incompetence as a combat leader, such as his handling of the Bonus Army confrontation before the war, but the above examples should suffice to show that he was not the skilled military leader that his defenders claim he was. 

https://www.pacificwar.org.au/Philippines/Japanattacks.html

https://www.pacificwar.org.au/battaust/MacArthurinAustralia.html

https://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/WWII/MacArthursFailures

https://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3074&context=td

https://wou.edu/history/files/2015/08/Lahia-Ellingson.pdf

https://www.grunge.com/475875/the-untold-truth-of-general-douglas-macarthur/