JFK's death 44 years later and the big 'what if?'

[Omaha Steve]

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/news/politics/blog/2007/11/jfks_death_44_years_ago_today.html



President Kennedy greets Ft. Worth, Tex. crowd hours before his death in Dallas. Photo credit: REUTERS/JFK Library/The White House/Cecil Stoughton/Handout

by Frank James

Today is not only Thanksgiving but also Nov. 22, 2007, the 44th anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination on Dealey Plaza in Dallas.

Like 9/11 or Dec. 7, today is one of those anniversaries in American history that, for those old enough to remember the tragedy itself, still delivers a certain chill and a sadness. Even for many born afterwards there is a sense of loss, like what we feel for Abraham Lincoln.

It is a feeling only intensifed by looking at the webcam image from the "sniper's nest" from the Sixth Floor Museum in what was the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas. Or by this home movie of the president's motorcade made by George Jefferies about 90 seconds before the fatal shot.

Nov. 22 is a day for private remembering. Evidently, the Kennedy family has never wanted large public remembrances of the assassination. Better to remember the president's life than the way he died.

As Dallas Morning News columnist Jacqielynn Ford noted this week, it's also a day for conspiracy theorists to again get ginned up, with something of a spectacle occurring at the site of the assassination.

But for those of old enough to remember, the Kennedy assassination marked the start of the time of tumult that the 1960s were to become. Vietnam. Riots. Anti-war and civil- rights protests. More assassinations.

FULL story at link.

[hlthe2b]

1. Every year this time, I feel a sense of sadness & loss...

and I was only five at the time.... I would so like to think the spirits of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King are watching over us, sending subtle messages to try to help us get back on track. How different things would have been, if only.....

[southerncrone]

2. Was waiting for someone to mention JFK today. I turned 8 that day.

Birthdays after that day in 1963 were always marred with the sadness attached to that date.

It is THE modern American tragedy. Marked the beginning of this downward spiral in which we now find ourselves entrapped. America still suffers from that fatal blow. It's a wound that can't heal until Americans know the truth. Every year it seems more unlikely to happen.

I suppose the "good" that came out of that event was that people stopped taking everything the govt. did & said at face value. A little bit of healthy distrust is a good thing.

Because of that distrust, the "crooks" had to step up their devious tactics, & as evidenced by the last 7 years, they did just that.

We owe it to JFK to take back this government. He would not have backed down from the challenge; and neither should we.

God bless, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.