> The real world is messy, and conspiracy theorists will always be able to find things to stoke their suspicions

One of the things I have noticed over the years is that conspiracy theorists will often latch onto one detail that they think is odd, that doesn't quite jive with what you would expect from the official account, and use it as the basis of saying that the official account is a lie.

(Expect for a hyper-sentitivity to weirdness, that ignores the messy reality of reality..) So far, so good. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with finding a reason why the official story doesn't fit the observed facts. The problem occurs when they fail to ask themselves why that weirdness makes any more sense in their version of events.

Since what I just said there might not ring true, I'll give an example:

(The best example of this I have is "Why wouldn't they just actually shoot him from the book depository? It would be far simpler, shooters from different locations buys them little and seemingly serves to do nothing other than raise the suspicion of people like yourself.")

For various silly reasons, some "9/11 Truthers" think that empty remote controlled planes, probably controlled by the CIA or some other shadowy organization, were used in the 9/11 attacks. What they can never explain to me is why the CIA, or other shadowy organization, would use empty remote controlled planes instead of actually just hijacking planes.

Why all the stagecraft to imitate something that you could just actually do?

I don't really disbelieve the official account of 9/11 in any strong sense, but your reasoning here seems silly. Why not hijack a plane and crash it into a building? Maybe because you'd really rather not be in a plane that crashes into a building!

If we are assuming a shadowy organization of conspirators, the lead conspirators don't have to be in the plane themselves. The idea that the CIA, able to find people that are willing to remotely fly a plane into a building full of people, cannot find somebody willing to actually get onto that plane with some box cutters (or barring that, cannot coerce somebody into doing that) is silly. Hell, they could keep it simply and just find some radical muslims to do it...

Remotely controlled planes are needlessly complex with too many opportunities for failure or discovery. Any weirdness surrounding the planes and their alleged passengers is far better explained by "reality is weird". Furthermore, that weirdness isn't resolved by "empty planes" since you are now supposing that the conspirators introduced those weirdnesses while inventing fake passengers. Why would they do that? Is that them tipping their hand to the conspiracy theorists?

Remotely controlled planes is done all the time. I don't see how that's got a significantly greater chance of failure or discovery. It also potentially reduces the number of people needing to be involved.

The problem isn't remotely controlling the plane. The problem is all the problems not actually doing it introduces. You now have more, many more, people that need to be involved because you now need to fake grieving families for 246 different dead people who never died (or never existed, depending on who you ask). You also need to ensure that nobody notices missing drone'd 757s (or worse, make sure that nobody notices the planes weren't 757s...), you need to ensure that nobody notices the planes are empty, and need to somehow get those empty planes into the airlines systems without anyone becoming suspicious of that, or trying to sell tickets for them. On top of all of that, you then still have a few live pilots who are witnesses you wouldn't have to otherwise worry about.

It is simpler to just find a few lackies to actually do it.

Oh, right, missed the "empty plane" in your original. I agree that would be far more difficult. "Spooks crashing plane by suicide" vs. "spooks crashing plane by remote" don't seem too radically different in likelihood. "There weren't actually planes full of people" is unlikely even compared to these.

None of these, I should note, seem terribly likely.

Aye, rigging a real plane with a real schedule to be remote controlled would make a great deal more sense.

The stabilized version of the Zapruder film is instructive:

[WARNING GORE] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTBInhsKW3E

Of course, that then leads to the conspiracy theorists claiming that the Zapruder film has been altered too. In fact, they believe that, incredibly, all available evidence was tampered with.

I am willing to accept those videos but why is the bullet not deformed?

Let's say that a "non-deformed" bullet was actually suspicious and present.

Why would the conspiracy plant a non-deformed bullet? Do they lack bullet deforming capabilities? Are they blithering idiots who, despite being idiots, have somehow managed to not get caught? Is the conspiracy of people who presumably just killed the president guilty of lazy or having poor planning?

A "non-deformed" bullet is better explained by weirdness inherent in the real world than some sort of conspiracy.

Here is how a competently run conspiracy would go down:

  1) *Actually* shoot him from the book depository.
  2) Enjoy success.

There is no reason to throw in an intermediate "plant a weirdly non-deformed bullet" step.

The bullet was deformed:

http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u320/ranb40/firearms/Notp...

Oswald used full metal jacket ammunition designed for piercing targets, and post-impact deformations for such bullets are often slight. (Incidentally, such ammo is not the best choice for an assassination, as hollow-point bullets that explode on impact are much deadlier. This is yet more evidence that Oswald wasn't a pro.)

ok, thanks. so the only conspiracy remaining is the secret pluto landing. which is so secret that even you haven't heard of it.

here is the video which finally convinced me: JFK Beyond the Magic Bullet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-5xfTKqf1A

Now back to George ... de Mohrenschildt ;)

It is. Here's the bullet head on.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/ce399.gif