Former Ford Prez McNamara has died

[compared2what?]

Thanks, Sweejak. Out of fairness to McNamara, I feel like I ought to link to something from the period where he's speaking for himself. I mean, I don't think much of the way he did his job. But he was one person among many, and not, like, an ogre.

Also -- I know I'm running the risk of appearing to have a personal vendetta against Prouty, which I don't. But what I do have is a very, very serious problem with his misrepresentation of history, on the grounds that those who don't learn from it are doomed to repeat it. So by way of saying: OF COURSE it was in Stars and Stripes, it was a PR stunt, here is a link to a little presentation of tape and transcript in which Kennedy, McNamara and others discuss it in exactly those terms (with Kennedy expressing quite a bit of reluctance to do it, btw); and here is a link to the six tape-transcipt combos of Kennedy et al addressing the topic of the 1000-man withdrawal in various meetings between October 2, 1963 and October 5, 1963 that happened to be readily available at the first site I tried. There's probably much more at the Kennedy Library.

And here also are selected screen-caps from those tapes for the reader in a hurry:







The last one is at the end of a convo bitching about the press in general, and David Halberstam in particular. So it's Halberstam to whom Kennedy is referring. My point in including it being: The Kennedy assassination was the result of a reprehensible criminal conspiracy. So was (and is) the subsequent cover-up. It's therefore genuinely an event that urgently needs to be openly addressed and admitted to in order for democracy to flourish. And furthermore, he was a politically laudable figure in many ways. However, he wasn't a saint, he was merely a martyr. And it not only doesn't help anyone to mythologize him. It clouds the issue and thereby makes the odds that there ever will be the clear admission and understanding that there should be more remote.

And that's why I've got a significant practical problem with Prouty. Who, for all I know, had personal virtues too numerous to count. In fact, I hope that he did. But whether he did or didn't, his work is functionally disinfo, and dangerous disinfo, at that.

[Sweejak]

I'm going to have to sift thru both C2W's and Hugh's posts and think about it. I do like this very much:

he wasn't a saint, he was merely a martyr. And it not only doesn't help anyone to mythologize him. It clouds the issue and thereby makes the odds that there ever will be the clear admission and understanding that there should be more remote.

And I think that's the general impression most people I know have, that Kennedy was a work in progress with a trajectory going towards, for lack of a proper word, the good.

About Prouty's intent I'm reserving judgement. It's complex, maybe he cited the short memo for "clarity", maybe he thought he knew where Kennedy was going with other knowledge, but in either case it's looking like it doesn't add any clarity at all and helps to build a myth.

[Sweejak]

Play Part One Interview - Jim DiEugenio

Jim talks about his ARRB testimony
Declassified and classified documents
Clay Shaw's entire file will never be totally declassified... Jim believes much has been destroyed
Oswald's tax records were never released because Marina never signed off on them
Harry Connick Sr wanted to destroy the Jim Garrison files
Did Oswald actually carry the paper curtain rod bag to work that day?
Jim doesn't believe he did
Ian Griggs proved the bag could not have carried a disassembled rifle in that bag
The curtain rod story never came from Oswald. He only brought a bagged lunch
Ian Griggs: If there is no bag, there is no rifle and no case against Oswald
Len's working on a call-in segment to the show!
Jim relates a book written about a conference on whether or not the Vietnam war would have escalated under Kennedy
The book and video are called Virtual JFK... Jim recommends it
The video is good... The book is better
Meeting with Charles DeGaulle and General MacArthur convinced Kennedy not to go to war in Vietnam
Controversy over the book JFK & Vietnam, a timely and well researched book
The book caused a slow paradigm shift, causing history to show Kennedy wanted out of Vietnam
All of the generals and advisors wanted Kennedy to go into Vietnam
Kennedy's closest advisors, in the end, were unanimous that Kennedy wasn't going into Vietnam
McNamara simply couldn't remember Kennedy's policy even though he was instrumental in implementing it
Stone's JFK went easy on LBJ. Johnson recalled Rostow so he could escalate the war

Show #428

http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2009.html

[Sweejak]

Virtual JFK Film

http://www.virtualjfk.com/

[compared2what?]

Stipulated. But Sweejak -- Those authors and moviemakers are forthright and transparent wrt to terms on which they ask the question -- ie, "What if?" -- and also the terms on which they answer it -- ie, by presenting a preponderance of evidence from named sources, which taken together forms a very persuasive circumstantial case. Which is really the only kind of case it's possible to make about whether x would have happened if y had not, when sadly, if there's one thing about which there's no dispute at all, it's that in one way or another, y did happen, as a matter of cold, dead, irreversible fact.

Furthermore, they don't simply omit all mention of contradictory and/or ambiguous evidence. Nor does the story they tell always default to the same inerrant, unvarying and uncorroboratable absolute truths, each of which always retains the same inerrant, unvarying and uncorroboratable absolute moral values. So there's at least a fighting chance that you might come away from their work with a better understanding not only of history but by analogy of the world you live in, the minds of those with whom you share it, and -- kind of a key feature, by my lights -- yourself as a living being with the agency to occupy your own place in that world on the basis of your own knowledge and understanding as they develop in conventional time and space, and as you choose to exercise them to the best of whatever ability or effort you have or can afford or wish to invest in doing it. And all of those things are equally available to you whether you agree with the authors/moviemakers in part or in whole or not at all. In that sense, you really can't go very far wrong even if you turn out, on a factual level, to have been cruelly misled and badly mistaken. Because at least you'll know how you got there, and how you might get back.

Prouty is the antithesis of all that. The CIA is bad. Military men are efficient and professional. Fletcher Prouty knows. Don't argue.

He could be telling me all the things I most longed to hear from now until time ticked to a finish and the rapture commenced, and every single one of them could be totally true, and I would still regard him with fear and distrust as a danger to my health and welfare and a threat to the common good of the world, as long as he was still telling them on the terms he actually does use to tell the tales he actually does tell. Because he still would be. There is no one-stop-shopping for truth, ever. And that's a more fundamental truth than whatever part of what a one-stop-truth-shop is selling that happens also to be true, always.

I feel rather strongly about this particular point. Can you tell?

[8bitagent]

Prouty. Pristine Bullet. Grassy Knoll.

When I hear the name "Prouty", I think of quick one liner talking points
to back up claims of conspiracy. I dont need to believe Prouty to know JFK was killed in a conspiracy.

I have no doubt Mcnamara and the men he served with genuinely believed there was a communist threat. Indeed, Russia had made some pretty provocative plays.

However, its also my believe that forces were manipulating the US and Russia against eachother. And that communism itself was controlled by the same forces manipulating the Western governments. In this framework, Mcnamara genuinely would believe he was doing the right thing.

[Sweejak]

Yeah C2W , I follow you and I think most on this forum want to dig out the truth keep poisonous myths from directing our thoughts.

Do you have a motive for Prouty's omissions and disinfo?

================

Some reviews of the film. I've got no opinion it's in my netflix queue.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/s ... ws/090108/

http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/article ... rtual_jfk/

[elfismiles]

Virtual McNamara...

From John A. Keel's DISNEYLAND OF THE GODS:

The hybrid concept has a marked effect on the ufologists who accept it blindly. They become totally paranoid. They believe that hybrids have infiltrated highest government circles; that they are even running our world. In the 1960s, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was frequently accused by contactees of being a hybrid.

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