PAT SPEER SAID:
David...you PROVED Lee's point. You itemized reasons [in this essay] to believe Oswald did it. You DID NOT look at the whole. It's an entirely different way of thinking than that engaged by most CTs.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Nonsense.
Conspiracy theorists never look at the "whole". Ever. (Especially the “Anybody But Oswald” CTers.) They chop out, whittle down, and misrepresent each "bit" of the evidence, until it's the "messiest case ever" (to use the words of Patrick Speer).
But it's only the messiest case ever because of the conspiracy theorists--and everybody knows it.
Take the examples I previously cited (and I didn't cite every part of the "Oswald Did It" whole, of course, in my thread-starting post; I just talked about a few things that are part of the "whole" that CTers always ignore or misrepresent; so I must disagree with Pat Speer when he says I proved Lee Farley's point by citing just a few things; I was merely using those items as an example of the parts of the "whole" that CTers want to misrepresent and "isolate" all the time):
It's utterly foolish to believe that just ONE of the three spent bullet shells in the Sniper's Nest couldn't have been fired on November 22 (due to the "dented lip" argument). That shell was right there with TWO OTHERS from Oswald's rifle. And over 90% of the witnesses heard THREE SHOTS.
Shouldn't those two things--in tandem--be a pretty big hint as to how many shots really were fired in Dealey Plaza? And those two things in combination with one another--i.e., the THREE spent shells and the incredibly large number of THREE-SHOT witnesses--are certainly part of "the whole" too.
Is it truly reasonable to "isolate" that ONE bullet shell from the other two and pretend that that one shell couldn't be fired on the day of the assassination, but the others could have been...even though ALL THREE of the shells are right there near each other in THE VERY SAME SNIPER'S NEST?
No. Frankly, that argument is just plain silly. And furthermore, as John McAdams pointed out to Jim DiEugenio during their radio debate last year, the argument made by CTers about the dented lip is just a flat-out lie too, because Professor McAdams HIMSELF said he fired a Carcano rifle and got a dented lip on a cartridge case after firing a round.
Do CTers think McAdams just made that up?
(Don't answer, CTers. I know what the answer will likely be anyway.)
Bottom Line: If conspiracy theorists really did look at "the whole", they couldn't possibly REALISTICALLY believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent of shooting John Kennedy and J.D. Tippit. Because the "whole" tells any rational-thinking person that Oswald had to be the killer of BOTH Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Tippit.
David Von Pein
July 13, 2010
