 JFK, MLK, RFK
Gulf of Tonkin Vietnam, Desert Storm The October Surprise, Iran-Contra Bush vs. Gore Nine Eleven … What do all of these and other events have in common? War mongers profited and chances for peace plummeted The official story given to the public through the corporate media Once again trumped the truth It will keep on happening Because we think we are free And we are Except we have no freedom to change the direction of our nation I was born in 1968. It confounds me that someone has been imprisoned my entire life for something he did not do.
This person is Sirhan Sirhan. He was convicted for the first-degree murder of Senator Robert Kennedy and sentenced to death. Courts later reduced the sentence to life with the possibility of parole. And he is up today for parole once again. Sirhan has been denied parole several times. The parole board will not likely take into consideration claims of innocence. But they still merit our attention. Consider the following facts, taken from my book Dead Men Talking: Consequences of Government Lies, which gives a full analysis of Sirhan’s innocence: · The public coroner, Thomas Naguchi, testified without contradiction that the fatal shot to the Senator was point-blank to the back of his head next to the right ear. · Naguchi also testified that Kennedy was struck with three other bullets, also at close range from behind and to the right. · Twelve eyewitnesses said that Sirhan was at all times to the victim’s left and in front of him and was never within two feet of him. · Another person, who misled investigators about having a firearm, admitted that he was immediately to the Senator’s right and behind him · Sirhan was grabbed by another person after firing two shots, after which he fired aimlessly. Sirhan has been the scapegoat for a sophisticated assassination in which the real assassins fled the scene and left Sirhan behind with a gun whose bullets never hit any of its victims. Considering that Sirhan was about three feet from Senator Kennedy, he must have been an exceptionally poor shot. Or he was brainwashed into appearing at the scene and firing blanks. It is time to free him. For almost fifty years, researchers of the JFK assassination not convinced that our government has provided satisfactory answers about this event have petitioned representatives for satisfactory answers. But no one has provided those answers.
Officially, our leaders still believe in the long-discredited single bullet theory, the guilt of an innocent man, Lee Oswald and have not released information such as Oswald’s last tax returns, which would likely confirm his status as a government informant. Other controversies have come up since then as well, such as the events of 9/11. But the government has done no better in providing information requested by the public than it did with the JFK assassination. Authorities have still not released video footage of the Pentagon, which could help determine what really struck the building that day. No one can seriously regard our leaders as honest partners in their informal contract with us. Those of us who work, pay taxes and better our society deserve something more than reports that whitewash what really happened. We deserve, at the very least, a dialogue with those who serve us. Not a ten second “meet-and-greet” handshake from our representatives, not a form letter from the White House thanking us for our concerns or assurances from anyone who won an election that they will work for us. These things have their place but we need to know that we have recourse if we are not satisfied with what those who govern us say. A single person could serve as our liaison to the government. They could be appointed by Congress or the President. And every Friday, they could be required by law to stand in a city hall or other public building anywhere in the United States and answer questions that people ask them. Undoubtedly, the liaison may well be tempted to dismiss questions about Oswald or the 9/11 Pentagon on the grounds of “national security.” But it would be much harder to give this answer in front of hundreds of people in person (and, perhaps, television cameras). Especially when they know they are going to hear it over and over again. The liaison could also be requested to provide documents, tapes, photographs, etc. And they could explain what they are able to release and what they are not. And the public who attend the meetings could ask why. A dialogue, not a monologue like the speeches we have been given about lone assassins who fire more bullets than their guns have available. A real person to approach, not a report to mislead us into accepting whatever our leaders tell us. Answers, not just questions that merely assure us we are on the right track. Appointment of a Public Liaison will not answer our questions by itself, but it would give us the standing to ask the right questions and to continue to stand until we are given the respect we deserve and which we give to our leaders. As a child, I heard about the Vietnam War. A television program told me that the United States lost the war. Because I had believed my country always won, I disbelieved what the program said for quite some time. Instead I went to a trusted source: my grandmother. She would never lie to me. She told me that we had, in fact, lost the war and why. Because I trusted her, I reconsidered the subject and later researched it and ascertained facts which confirmed what she said. It could be said that my analysis of whether we won the war became a contest of trust in my grandmother's logic and honesty versus trust in my prior belief. My belief simply gave way to the facts. This same battle between logic and conviction divides the public and keeps us from understanding the society in which we live and its history.In the debate over the John Kennedy assassination, facts emerge. Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been at the alleged crime scene because he did not have the time to run from there to where he was positively seen soon after. No one saw him bring a rifle to work that day and the rifle allegedly used was not the same size as the one he allegedly ordered. The only witness who claimed to have seen him shoot a rifle at the president, Howard Brennan, changed his point of view several times and was not thought a reliable witness by the Warren Commission. I could go on. This set of facts (and others) makes for a completely different story than the official one given by the Commission. But others with whom I discuss this matter cling to their belief in the official version of events and look for ways to explain my facts to suit their conclusion. It seems they cannot bring themselves to believe that our government lied to them about who murdered a president. Belief can assist a person in feeling better about themselves and their future. But belief itself is not the same as the truth. The truth is like a set of dominos that will fall only in one direction when all relevant facts are known. The battle between belief and truth continues today. There is a wall of belief that our government would never do anything as horrible as murdering anyone or lying about reasons for starting a war or rig a presidential election. This wall is really one of denial. Facts again tell the true story that government agents participated in 9/11, that the Bush Administration lied about the lack of threat Saddam Hussein presented to the U.S. in starting the war in Iraq in 2003 and that the Supreme Court used false logic to give the 2000 election to Bush. Instead of reconsidering and possibly accepting the truth, there are those who hold on to the wall. This is the wall that must come down before we can make wise decisions as to the future of our country. The sooner we quit denying truth, the better off all of us will be. |
AuthorDean Hartwell keeps pursuing the truth about those who govern us. Categories
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