Ford On Kissinger

I hate to be glib but given Bush's reported fondness of Kissinger's advice I wonder if Ford's albeit self-interested remarks also provide a nice stark contrast to today.

There were so many times Ford could have made a real difference by doing the right thing, The Warren Commision, the Nixon Pardon and finally speaking out against the war in 2004 but he did what the party wanted and now he's a footnote. Sad.

What could he (Ford) have really done on the Warren Commission--frankly, even most skeptics now conclude just what they did--that Oswald acted alone. Yes, it was a sloppy rush job. But Johnson was afraid that if evidence surfaced that Cuba was involved, we'd be right back on the road to WWIII, just as we had been during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and frankly, I don't think he wanted THAT again.

Tell the truth for starters. The Warren Commision was a whitewash and the real murders got away with it.

But this morning Matt Lauer led off the Today Show by breathlessly playing up Ford's comments about Cheney and Rumsfeld as if he (Ford) had calling them names or somesuch. I think Lauer used the term "shocking" as well. After watching the segment, I came away feeling distinctly underwhelmed (sort of like I did after the Ford presidency itself).

When is the "mainstream" media going to stop treating every interview and book Woodward peddles as being revelatory? I'm tired of that guy's cottage industry.

That Woodward probably made it all up. Funny he has nothing to back up his claim like a tape.

The whole four hour interview was recorded.

By the way, my litmus test of whether someone is a nutcase is whether they think Ford was part of a coverup conspiracy on the Warren Commission. That and the faking of the moon landing.

I had long been of the same view-- that believing that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone killed the president indicated that a person was too far outside the mainstream to be given any attention.

But in the wake of the Iraq war-- where all the respectable people argued for it, and only crazy people argued against it-- I'm no longer willing to believe something just because it's the cool thing to do.

I still know next-to-nothing about what the Warren Report actually said. And maybe the single-shooter theory or whatever is the right one. But the idea that I should trust it because it's easily portrayed as non-nutcase-y... well, that doesn't carry as much weight with me as it did 5 years ago.

"Only crazy people" argued against the Iraq war? You didn't used to work in the Bush White House, did you, spoonman?

And I agree 100% with stgla that people who mutter darkly about "the real murders" (sic) and the Warren Commission's "whitewash" don't do their credibility any favors. So who really did murder JFK, yminale? That is, if revealing The Truth About The Assassination won't put your life in too much danger ...

The military-industrial complex of course with assistance from CIA. They were the only one who gained from JFK's assianation ("Follow the money"). Of course if you want to believe a complete loser like Oswald who barely passed basic marksmanship with a cheap italian rifle that wasn't sighted correctly (something the Warren commision "failed" to report) that's up to you.

"Oswald who barely passed basic marksmanship"

What? Oswald received sharpshooter weapons qualification badge, the second highest badge you can get in the Marines. He hit 212 out of 250 targets.

Perhaps you should know the facts before you try to argue. Just a suggestion.

"What? Oswald received sharpshooter weapons qualification badge, the second highest badge you can get in the Marines. He hit 212 out of 250 targets."

That's disinformation planted by the Warren Commision. People who knew Oswald in the marines said he could barely shoot straight.

. . . who doesn't know what he's talking about.

"What? Oswald received sharpshooter weapons qualification badge, the second highest badge you can get in the Marines. He hit 212 out of 250 targets."

I have nothing to say about the JFK assassination, other than that there is no more reason to trust the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report than there is reason to give credence to one or more of the more plausible "conspiracy theories". But the rifle scores you cite for Oswald are virtually meaningless.

Anyone who qualifies at any level of rifle skill in the Marine Corps-- and that is everyone who makes it through boot camp-- will hit a large majority of the targets. The difficulty scale is logarithmic. The last thirty-eight targets are much harder to hit than that first 212.

The nomenclature for the skill levels is hyperbolic. The worst class is called a "marksman". The "sharpshooter" class achieved by Oswald is the largest group, with more than half of recruits qualifying at that level. The highest class is "rifle expert", with, typically, less than twenty per-cent of all recruits qualifying at that level.

And, of the highest rank of "rifle expert", only a handful are good enough to receive additional, advanced training as "snipers", which is the the only specialized level of skill that can be attained in military riflery.

My stepson, who was Force Recon in the Marine Corps in the 1980s, told me that Osward's shooting would have been spectacular (but not, necessarily, impossible) for even a Marine Corps sniper.

With deadly accuracy, Oswald (supposedly) got off three shots in less than six seconds, with at least one of the two damaging shots fired through tree branches.

In light of the rifle qualifications described in my previous post, it is not necessary to consider the Warren Commission Report's description of Oswald's (mediocre) rifle abilities as anything other than accurate, for whatever that is worth.