CORRECTIONS REQUIRED......
Two corrections are required by me with respect to one portion of
this 9/30/08 Internet post.
I said this on September 30th:
"...Jim [DiEugenio] talks about the way in which Oswald obtained his rifle by mail order, with DiEugenio apparently thinking (or at least he seems to want other people to think it) that Oswald ordered his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle so that he could SHOOT PRESIDENT KENNEDY WITH IT. Of course, as anyone should easily be able to figure out via just garden-variety common sense (and by looking at a calendar), it's obvious that as of the date when Oswald ordered his rifle in the mail from Klein's Sporting Goods (which was in January 1963), he couldn't possibly have had it in his mind to kill John F. Kennedy IN DALLAS IN NOVEMBER. As of January, Kennedy's trip to Texas wasn't even on the drawing board at all. And it wasn't even in the minds of any of JFK's decision-makers until months later. Oswald obviously purchased his rifle to kill General Edwin Walker. It couldn't be any more obvious that this is true. But many conspiracy theorists want to twist things around, and they want to think that Oswald bought the gun specifically for the purpose of shooting KENNEDY with it TEN MONTHS LATER. This, of course, is utter nonsense."
Upon further reflection about what Mr. DiEugenio said in Part 1 of his review for Vince Bugliosi's book "Reclaiming History", I realize that Jim is probably not really inferring that Oswald bought the rifle by mail-order specifically to shoot the President. (It's hard to believe that any schooled researcher could possibly believe that; but I've encountered some people who do believe it.)
So, my apologies to James on this one particular issue. I think I was in error.
Plus: I need to correct the "January 1963" dates noted above, too. Those dates should say "March 1963", not January. Oswald ordered his Smith & Wesson revolver in late January 1963 [although it's possible he didn't mail in the order form until early March; but the order form for the revolver was dated "January 27" at any rate]; but he ordered the rifle in March of '63. I mixed up the dates in that September post above.
I must have been suffering a brain cramp when I twice wrote "January" up there. Because I know full well that Oswald sent his money order for $21.45 to Klein's for the rifle on March 12, 1963, and not in January.
Anyway, I didn't want to leave those two errors uncorrected. Hence, this addendum post.
(I sure wish these newsgroups had "edit" capability, so that mistakes like this could be corrected within the body of the original message itself. But, such is life.)
David Von Pein
December 4, 2008
