An eye opener

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2011)

This is a great film of historical significance. Stone and Garrison are to be commended for their courage in pursuing and presenting a plausible alternative explanation for what occurred in Dallas nearly 50 years ago. Both were attacked savagely. Their motives, characters,mental state,objectivity and patriotism were repeatedly questioned. They were both dismissed,scorned, and derided by a tag-team parade of critics,journalists,politicians and bureaucrats.
Many point at Clay Shaw having been found not guilty by the jury in less than a half hour as proof the Garrison never had a case against Shaw and that Garrison was just grandstanding. Before the trial, Garrison presented his case to a three judge panel that had to decide if they thought there was sufficient evidence to warrant bringing the case to trial. The 3 judge panel felt that there was sufficient evidence. Then Garrison presented his case to a Grand Jury and the jury felt there was sufficient evidence to proceed to trial. Had either felt there was not enough evidence to proceed, Garrison's case would have stopped right there.
Garrison's case was severely hindered by the fact that corpses tend to be somewhat limited in their ability to respond to a subpoena, much less to be able to actually testify. Garrison's witnesses who were still breathing were mostly Blacks (who were not exactly highly regarded in the deep South during the 1960's)and homosexuals.
I think this film presents a scenario that is as close to the truth as we're ever likely to see. One life is cheap compared to the billions of dollars made by defense contractors over the course of the war in Vietnam.