vidor1 thus spake:

"Oswald's rifle was capable of being fired. Saying otherwise is a lie."

No, saying it was is a lie. The damned thing was most likely a stage prop. All efforts to actually manually inspect the rifle (represented on the part of Patricia Dumais and others) were rebuffed by the National Archives. Reason? It might fall apart. Why the worry if it was a bond fide, real rifle, and not some theatric prop?

The WC DID attempt to use the actual rifle, but had to exchange it because of the problems. The bolt action repeatedly stuck in trials, and the shims were too far off and couldn't be adequately compensated for. Thus, a "substitute" Mannlicher was brought in.

"Marina Oswald testified that her husband dry-fired the rifle. Saying otherwise is a lie."

Then, you are saying Marina was lying in her 1993 interview with Brokaw (on an NBC special)? As I noted - and still have the interview on tape - Marina repeatedly said she denied she made any such testimony to the WC. What they did is to alter her testimony to make it fit the PR job they were trying sell.

Think about that, and when ou do think about this also. That 200 witnesses, each with knowledge at least as valuable as that given by the 488 commission witnesses, were not asked questions!

These included: Tom Alyea (who allegedly first filmed the sniper's 'nest'), Charles A. Crenshaw (Parkland surgical resident at the time - who observed the head wound, e.g. 'Conspiracy of Silence, p86), Julia Ann Mercer, William Harper (who found the bone fragment); Guy Banister (who ran the 544 Camp St. office from which Oswald distributed leaflets); Joseph Milteer (the right wing zealot who had been taped by an FBI informant in Miami predicting and verifying the events of Nov. 22 - given 'clean bill of health by FBI' (4,p383); Sergio Archacha Smith, Mary Moorman, and Aquilla

Clemons (who observed the Tippitt shooting, and saw another man - not LHO, doing it).

The rationale for the above is evident from the Katezenbach memo written to Bill Moyers, dated 25 November, 1963. The most germane part to this discussion is:

"1. The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial".

And there you have the smoking gun for the Warren Whitewash in a nutshell. Which obviously would have meant that everything under the Sun, Moon and stars would be done to nudge and permute the evidence into that niche.

A palm print from the rifle was matched to Oswald. Saying otherwise was a lie.

I don't say "otherwise". S.F. Latonia of the FBI Latent Fingerprints section said so, and I choose to accept his version rather than your disinfo.

Saying that it takes at least ten seconds to get off three shots with the rifle is a lie--once again, the bolt action takes 2.3 seconds to work, so you can get off three shots in 4.6 seconds if you have a round chambered.

Again, you're full of horse manure. What I said is that I used an MC and was unable to get off three precision shots in the time. I am not the first to have claimed this, or said so. (Refer to HSCA Investigator Gaeton Fonzi's book on the HSCA investigation, The Last Investigation)

As Fonzi notes, it was no secret the M-C was a poorly made weapon. Its bolt stuck, and yes - if lucky and when it worked - you might get off one shot in each bolt cycle, or 2.33 secs. Trouble is that seldom occurred.

If Oswald was an expert marksman and had prepped his weapon he might have been able to do the feat attributed to him, but he wasn't. He wasn't even in the correct postion to make the kill shot - as my momentum analysis showed.

"Saying Oswald was not a good enough shot is a lie--the poster upthread pushing this line himself admits that Oswald scored marksman in Marine target practice.

Marksman is the lowest rank. Marksman as most experts concur, would not have gotten off those shots in the time. Once more, you claim his own DI, Nelson Delgado, was lying, because HE made the reference to "Maggie's drawers". Why should anyone believe you over Delgado?

Once more, the dynamics and even the brain findings (at Parkland) argue against your hypothesis that Oswald killed Kennedy. He could not have because he is alleged to be behind and not in front. As my analysis showed - the shot had to come from the front to be consistent with the observed dynamics & head motion, Jackie's movements.

Oh, and let's not forget Parkland surgeon Charles Crenshaw's own words (JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, p. 78:

"Part of his brain, the cerebellum, was dangling from the back of his head by a single strand of tissue, ...

From the damage I saw there was no doubt in my mind that the bullet had entered the head through the front, and it surgically passed through his cranium. The missile obliterated part of the temporal and all of the parietal and occipital lobes before it lacerated the cerbellum"

As for Costner, I could care less. I care about the TRUTH. It's time the crappola stopped and hardheads ceased burying their heads in the sand. As Michael Parenti noted (Dirty Truths, p. 155):

"To know the truth about the assassination of John Kennedy is to call into question the state security system and the entire politico-economic order it protects."

If you can't take the truth and wish to remain in fantasyland, I can grok it. But don't try to turn the rest of us into fellow fantasy pursuers because you can't hack it.