pretending 2
John Masland
úÿ
´information from their readers?
ÿ
Your questions are actually quite amusing _and_ well crafted...the use
of the term "are required" negates the value of the question...required
by whom?..."historians" are bounded by nothing other than their own
moral and ethical compass and sometimes, but not often enough, peer
review...
If you had asked "should" historians take the rules of evidence
seriously, the answer is yes...if they did we would have less poorly
written and more accurate works of "history"
However, your question skillfully begs the point...the WC was not, in
any academic sense, writing history...unless you take the Katzenbach
memorandum at face value...if that is what your suggesting, then the WR
and its accompanying 26 volumes get a "D"...
6E´.John
ÿ
Ciao...
JM
---
þ 1st 1.11 #1834 þ Internet: john.m...@compudata.com
John Locke
> However, your question skillfully begs the point...the WC was not, in
> any academic sense, writing history...
Here's how one of our eminent historians views the WC:
[Excerpted from "Prefaces to History" by Bruce Catton, Doubleday, 1970,
pp. 204-208. Catton is a distinguished historian of the American Civil
War and made these remarks in comparing the study of the Lincoln
assassination to the Kennedy assassination.]
Any historian who confronts a gap in the record of bygone days
knows moments of despair when he complains bitterly that no
one took the trouble to dig out and assemble all of the facts
while those facts were still available. To use unlimited
resources in order to make a record for history, a record as
broad and as all-inclusive as it possibly can be, to do it while
everything is still fresh, and to do it with no other earthly
motive than a desire to establish the full truth--this is the
sort of thing that only governments can do, and they almost
never dream of doing it. A complete and reliable account of the
actual facts surrounding any historic tragedy is all but
impossible to come by.
That is why this report of the Warren Commission is so
important.
Here, for the first time, a government moved promptly to get
all of the facts on the record. The Warren Commission was set
up and put to work immediately after President Kennedy's
assassination, and it had only one responsibility: to get at
the complete truth, as far as that can be done by fallible
human beings, and to make an unvarnished report on it. The
Commission was not supposed to prove anything. It had no ax
to grind. Its membership, like its directive, lifted it above
suspicion. It had the task of finding out everything it could
about a shocking human tragedy and to publish what it learned
without regard to the consequences. This task, by all
indications, the Warren Commission has accomplished, and it
ought to be remembered, again, that governments rarely try to
do anything of the kind.
So here is the record: a comprehensive study of a great and
terrible moment in history, undertaken in the faith that the
myths and legends that falsify so much history would not grow
if full light was immediately shed on the dark places.
The Warren Commission talked to everyone who could conceivably
know anything about the assassination. It enlisted the ablest
professional help in existence, studied the facts it had
unearthed, put those facts together in the light of its members'
own knowledge of the law, of people and of the national state of
mind in the fall of 1963, and then it wrote its report. The
report may not have the final, complete and revealed truth about
the miserable affair in Dallas--that kind of truth is the rarest
commodity on earth, and it probably is reserved for the
enlightenment that will come to us beyond the river--but it
comes as close to it as fallible human beings can come. The best
people who could be found spent months trying to do the most
honest job possible. Neither the caliber of the investigators
nor the motives that inspired them can be impugned by anyone
above the mental age of ten. This story of the murder of
President Kennedy is the most complete we are ever likely to
get.
...
Yet when all of this has been said, and emphasized, it remains
true that the story of President Kennedy's death...leaves us
with the uneasy feeling that there are some things about it
that we shall never really know. We have the facts, but beyond
them there is an emptiness in which we can see nothing but the
shadows of our own fears and suspicions.
...
The Warren Commission could find no trace of a plot that used
Oswald as trigger man. It saw no evidence of a conspiracy of
either the right or the left. It established the truth, which
cuts the ground out from under the myth-makers but which also
leaves us confronting a riddle: What did this thing really
mean?
...
Perhaps we shall never know. There are mysteries in the human
story. We are left with Plutarch's somber remark: "...so very
difficult a matter it is to trace and find out the truth of
anything by history." We are left with this factual record, as
complete as dedicated men can make it. We can study it,
searching our hearts for the answer, for generations to come.
N.R.Harrison
>john.m...@compudata.com (John Masland) writes:
>
>[Excerpted from "Prefaces to History" by Bruce Catton, Doubleday, 1970,
>pp. 204-208. Catton is a distinguished historian of the American Civil
>War and made these remarks in comparing the study of the Lincoln
>assassination to the Kennedy assassination.]
>
> Any historian who confronts a gap in the record of bygone days
> knows moments of despair when he complains bitterly that no
> one took the trouble to dig out and assemble all of the facts
> while those facts were still available. To use unlimited
> resources in order to make a record for history, a record as
> broad and as all-inclusive as it possibly can be, to do it while
> everything is still fresh, and to do it with no other earthly
> motive than a desire to establish the full truth--this is the
> sort of thing that only governments can do, and they almost
> never dream of doing it. A complete and reliable account of the
> actual facts surrounding any historic tragedy is all but
> impossible to come by.
>
> That is why this report of the Warren Commission is so
> important.
>
> Here, for the first time, a government moved promptly to get
> all of the facts on the record. The Warren Commission was set
That's why over a million pages of documents are still clasified!
> up and put to work immediately after President Kennedy's
> assassination, and it had only one responsibility: to get at
> the complete truth, as far as that can be done by fallible
> human beings, and to make an unvarnished report on it. The
Nope. To collect evidence that Oswald did it. They never entertained any
other *truths*.
> Commission was not supposed to prove anything. It had no ax
> to grind. Its membership, like its directive, lifted it above
> suspicion. It had the task of finding out everything it could
> about a shocking human tragedy and to publish what it learned
> without regard to the consequences. This task, by all
Johnson : Earl. You realise that if you do not head this Commission there
could be a war that would cost 40 million lives.
Warren : It's a fair cop.
[Rough outline of the possible consequences]
> indications, the Warren Commission has accomplished, and it
> ought to be remembered, again, that governments rarely try to
> do anything of the kind.
Except when they have a reason - implied by the sentance. Perhaps a potential
World War 3 was a good reason.
>
> So here is the record: a comprehensive study of a great and
> terrible moment in history, undertaken in the faith that the
> myths and legends that falsify so much history would not grow
> if full light was immediately shed on the dark places.
Pretensious rubbish. And totally untrue, as has been seen over the last
thirty years. Perhaps if the WC had actually lived up to this, then we
wouldn't now have this newgroup, and we would all be bathed in glorious light.
>
> The Warren Commission talked to everyone who could conceivably
> know anything about the assassination. It enlisted the ablest
Aquilla Clemmons? Richard Randolph Carr? I'm sure there's more, but I'm
too tired to make a list.
> professional help in existence, studied the facts it had
> unearthed, put those facts together in the light of its members'
> own knowledge of the law, of people and of the national state of
> mind in the fall of 1963, and then it wrote its report. The
> report may not have the final, complete and revealed truth about
> the miserable affair in Dallas--that kind of truth is the rarest
Hell, did it *really* try?
> commodity on earth, and it probably is reserved for the
> enlightenment that will come to us beyond the river--but it
> comes as close to it as fallible human beings can come. The best
Except maybe for the HSCA!!?! 8-)
> people who could be found spent months trying to do the most
> honest job possible. Neither the caliber of the investigators
> nor the motives that inspired them can be impugned by anyone
> above the mental age of ten. This story of the murder of
Hey, I'm impugning them and I've an I.Q. of 157.
> President Kennedy is the most complete we are ever likely to
> get.
>
Whilst the government denies access to vital papers.
[deletia of grandoise and useless prose about emptiness]
Neil...
John Locke
> > up and put to work immediately after President Kennedy's
> > assassination, and it had only one responsibility: to get at
> > the complete truth, as far as that can be done by fallible
> > human beings, and to make an unvarnished report on it. The
>
> Nope. To collect evidence that Oswald did it. They never entertained any
> other *truths*.
Read the Warren Report, ignoramus. It lists the "other truths" they
entertained. You're just annoyed they didn't concoct some Rube Goldberg
scenario to entertain you with.
> > So here is the record: a comprehensive study of a great and
> > terrible moment in history, undertaken in the faith that the
> > myths and legends that falsify so much history would not grow
> > if full light was immediately shed on the dark places.
>
> Pretensious rubbish. And totally untrue, as has been seen over the last
> thirty years. Perhaps if the WC had actually lived up to this, then we
> wouldn't now have this newgroup, and we would all be bathed in glorious
> light.
This newsgroup, despite what you think, is serving to extinguish the
myths by examining them in close detail. This same process occurred many
years ago among the ranks of legitimate historians, as Catton's remarks
are a testament.
>
> > know anything about the assassination. It enlisted the ablest
>
> Aquilla Clemmons? Richard Randolph Carr? I'm sure there's more, but I'm
> too tired to make a list.
You make Catton's case. Clemons had she been known to the commission
would have been of no use. She claimed to see two men when, as a dozen
witnesses confirm, there was only one!
> > Neither the caliber of the investigators
> > nor the motives that inspired them can be impugned by anyone
> > above the mental age of ten.
>
> Hey, I'm impugning them and I've an I.Q. of 157.
As Catton indicates, you lack a mental age above ten.
john
John Locke
> > Neither the caliber of the investigators
> > nor the motives that inspired them can be impugned by anyone
> > above the mental age of ten.
>
> Hey, I'm impugning them and I've an I.Q. of 157.
And a mental age less than ten. Catton was right.
john