re: JFK assassination anniversary conspiracy thread

is it sick to be impressed with Oswald's skill with a rifle?

3 shots in 8 seconds...1 head shot, 2 if you count the neck...and he missed on the first...

bolt action rifle, moving target, obscured target and considerable nerves (he was there to kill the fricking president)

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Posner never addresses how the guy who couldn't kill General Edwin Walker on a much easier shot with the same weapon all of sudden became good enough with the weapon to hit Kennedy twice.

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Have you ever fired a gun? Not every trigger pull is the same, particularly when you get one chance at 2 different locations in different environments, at 2 different targets.

Results will predictably vary.

I don't know that you can replicate that shot purely because of the stress of the situation the shooter would feel...

there's no doubt he did make it and it's more than doable for someone with his training, but I still think it was a pretty difficult shot...he had only a neck and a head that was moving away from him at an angle and a limited window of time. did he use iron sights or did he have a scope?

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There was no conspiracy.

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You don't know the definition of the word "conspiracy", do you?

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He also shruggs off discussion of how a 19 year old with an 8th grade education and a supposed learning disability, who joined the Marines at 17 and was never officially given language training, could show up in Russia speaking Russian, defect, get a job, and meet his wife soon after, who remarked on meeting him that while she could tell he wasn't a native, his Russian was so good she assumed he was Latvian or similar - some place where kids are taught Russian as a second language starting in Kindergarten.

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Because he was never officially involved in a Russian language school or training program. Russian is immensely difficult to learn as a native English speaker. The official story is that he taught himself from "learn to speak Russian" records that he listened to in his spare time. No one who has learned proficient spoken Russian thinks that it is possible to do that. We know from his school history that he was not a genius in any way, so that rules out his having had some sort of savant abilities.

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You're over-valuing formal education. Many of your fellow human beings are quite capable of learning things using self-taught methods from available resources. I learn better on my own than in a classroom where learning is highly scripted. So it is completely plausibe to me that Oswald could have learned whatever the frick he wanted to learn.

His Marine roommate while stationed in CA even provided a sworn statement that Oswald spent a great deal of time reading Russian papers and other Russian language books.

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You're over-valuing formal education. Many of your fellow human beings are quite capable of learning things using self-taught methods from available resources. I learn better on my own than in a classroom where learning is highly scripted. So it is completely plausibe to me that Oswald could have learned whatever the frick he wanted to learn.

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Do some research on the difficulty level involved in learning Russian.

Then add to that Oswald's lack of a tutor or a speaking partner.

It's not plausible.

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Do some research on the difficulty level involved in learning Russian.

Then add to that Oswald's lack of a tutor or a speaking partner.

It's not plausible.

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What level of skill is not plausible?

Another thing to keep in mind is that Oswald was trained using asemiautomatic rifle. The mechanics are very different when trying to rapid fire with a bolt action rifle.

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Have you ever fired a gun? Not every trigger pull is the same, particularly when you get one chance at 2 different locations in different environments, at 2 different targets.

Results will predictably vary.

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Yes I have and agreed. All I am saying is Posner deals with some of the more inconvenient or difficult facts by either failing to address them or creating straw men out of the real facts and beating up on them in the book. This is one such fact. The General Walker shot was way easier, with much less pressure and he fricked it up. We are then expected to believe in a much higher pressure situation under more demanding time constraints that he got lucky twice. That is tough.

As to recreating the shots, yeah they have been done. Setting up towers and gun stands and gelatin blocks is a little different then showing up to the depository knowing you have one shot at getting the president. Creating ideal conditions to show it is possible is useful and helpful, but we need to also understand that the way the shot was replicated was meaningfully different then the shot Oswald presumably took, and there isn't a way to simulate those crucial factors.

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CIA

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or the mob