I've been lurking on DU for two years and I've finally got to jump in. I'm not able to start my own thread, but maybe someone will cross-post this for me. My personal theory is that R*ve is setting up the assassination theorists and the Dem investigators to be "Rather-ed." Why do you think they're letting Rumsfeld and the other aides suddenly testify? Get 60 million Americans--sports fans--who didn't previously pay much attention to the criminality of the B*sh administration suddenly thinking you've committed this heinous act, and then prove you're innocent. Then those 60 million Americans will be more likely to continue to ignore mass murder in an imperialist energy war, the profiteering of Halliburton, or Plame, Edmonds, Katrina, ad infinitum . . It didn't matter that Rather was right about B*sh going AWOL. It mattered that the public thought the claims were discredited.
I think Stan Goff's brief comments on this (I think more will be forthcoming this weekend) are useful to post here. Since he's been an Army Ranger and has been working on this case for two years, I think his observations are also useful to help put a brake on this.
comments from Feral Scholar,
http://stangoff.com/?p=527#comments, from a discussion thread . . .
"STAN: The army doctors woulld have a point IF (1) the M-4 3-round shot group corresponds to your hypothesis, and (2) there weren’t multiple witnesses to the contrary. In fact, the reason the SAW can fire these groups on full auto and the M-4 cannot is related to the size, stability, and method of fire. An M-4 is a souped up CAR-15, which is a cut-down AR-15/M-16. Very short, very light. The M-249 SAW is a bipod or pintle mounted machinegun — heavier and longer, with a better buffer system. When “free-gunning,” the shooter generally fires low and “walks” the impact signature into the target. The large stone in front of Pat was shot up, then Pat took bullet hits to his body armor (his legs were partly covered by the rock), then the head. As the gunner “walks the fire in,” he also begins to “feel” the gun, that is, stabilize and concentrate the fires by tightening up on the gun. These fires come in ever-more-concentrated bursts of 6, 9, 12, et al rounds. The M-4, on the other hand, has a 3-round-burst, which ends arbitrarily at three rounds, and which cannot be controlled like the heavier, longer gun. No one who was in the Platoon, including Pat’s brother, has ever suggested that Pat was intentionally targeted because he was Pat. This attention to minutiae is very unfortunate; because it is a huge red herring. Read O’Neal’s statement to Congress. Pat died within a foot of O’Neal… who was crazy about Pat, and is still very close to the family. People watch waaay too many movies."