When I heard about the shooting, I only had two predictions.
1) As soon as the results were out, a lot of people would say, “As soon as I heard about the shooting, I knew it would mean disaster for the XX Party.” (I had no prediction about whether XX was the KMT or DPP.)
2) Almost everyone would insist that the incident had a major effect on the election result.
Many of my expectations for the election were wrong (no big surprise), but not these two. It may not shock you to hear that I think both of these arguments are a bunch of baloney.
Before the votes were counted, I had no idea what the effect would be. On the one hand, the story that most people are telling now is that the incident was very advantageous to the KMT. The shooting inspired sympathy for Lien, and mobilized lots of otherwise lethargic blue camp sympathizers to come out and vote. Maybe it reminded them of the 2004 shooting incident and aroused their sense of partisan indignation. Also, the news completely wiped away all the media coverage of the DPP’s big events on the last night, so any atmosphere of a huge DPP wave was destroyed.
On the other hand, who would be sympathetic to Lien Sheng-wen? When he bandied about the idea of running for a seat in the legislature a few years ago, the DPP salivated at the thought. They thought that Lien Sheng-wen might be their best (only) hope for winning the Da-an District seat. The KMT nominated an uncontroversial party footsoldier instead. Also, it seemed pretty clear within a few hours that the incident had something to do with organized crime. If the incident shifted voters’ focus to organized crime, that would be a big help to the DPP.
On the third hand, did this thing really change anyone’s behavior at all? Apparently this only had an effect in Taipei and Xinbei, but not in Taichung or the south. (Well, those people in the south are more rational and less emotional. What?) Uh, the media is national; it should have an effect everywhere. As Jason Hu said through tears to his rally in Taichung, “We condemn all violence and hope no party will use this incident for political advantage. Now let’s all have a moment of silence for Sheng-wen.”
Even if it did change a few people’s behavior, was it enough to influence the outcome? Hau won by 13%. Did all (or even most) of that margin come from this? No way! I can’t believe this would even be important enough to swing the Taichung election, which Hu won by 2.2%. (If everything had turned out like the Taichung election — with the DPP doing better than expected, we would be hearing the other story.)
There are always people who will tell you that something affects “those people.” Until I hear someone tell me it affects their own behavior, I’m not going to believe it. Believing that other people are unreasonable or irrational sheep is usually a sign of lazy thinking, and it tells you more about the speaker than about the people he is talking about.
[edit]
There is one other reason that the DPP loves this narrative: it absolves them of responsibility for their losses. They can say, we were going to win until the last moment. We were just unlucky. (Or, Damn KMT and their dirty tricks.) The DPP did quite well in the elections, but the expectations were extremely high. The shooting gives Tsai one more reason not to resign as party chair and makes both Su and Tsai look a bit better as they reposition themselves for 2012.
Frozen Garlic 
November 29, 2010 at 7:02 am |
Disappointing article.
Before the election, both sides showed many signs (including polls) that Tsai was winning Chu in Xinbei. Not a single sign showed Chu was winning;
Right after the shooting, the KMT and pro-blue media made use of the shooting to ask their voters to “come out to punish the shooting”, even though it’s nothing to do with their opponent;
After the election, both blue and green camps (in the blue camp, 吳伯雄 吳敦義 … to name a few) acknowledged that the shooting boosted blue’s voting by a significant margin. In Xinbei the margin was large enough to turn the election around. Note this came from both camps, not just the green.
Having all the info, it would be a more reasonable deduction to argue that the one bullet did have a huge impact, which may not have been huge enough to get the KMT victory in Taichung and Taipei, but most likely it turned Chu from losing to victory;
While your article did mention the possible impact on Taipei and Xinbei, when you followed it by asking “is it enough”, you focus solely on the less-likely-enough Taipei (Hau) and Taichung(Hu), but skipped the most-likely-enough Xinbei completely.
By ignoring the most sigificant case and judging based only on the less significant cases, it is sure much easier to lead to an impression that the DPP and her supporters are unreasonable.
And there’s more. When you mentioned “it seemed pretty clear within a few hours that the incident had something to do with organized crime,” which in your view is in favor of the DPP, you also forgot to mention that the entire KMT camp — within the few hours of the shooting — put full force trying to deny the news you mentioned (吳敦義 said that it’s unconvincible; 丁遠超, Lien Chan’s speaker, said it is definitely not; an anonymous(again!) aid of Sean Lien claimed that the shooting was aiming at Sean Lien so is not a gang crime). The manipulation of the KMT on this issue created an overwhelming effect redirecting the incident from organized crime to a planned attack on Sean Lien. It was by no way favoring the DPP.
Your observations had been neutral in the past. But this article, making judgement by missing key situations twice, is very far away from that standard.
In my observation, green supporters behave mature, reasonable, passionate, and calm in this election. They had expected a win, but when that didn’t come, and most likely due to one single bullet, they didn’t go out to the street to vent anger like what blue supporters usually did when their expectations fall apart in the past couple of major elections. The green supporters do whine, but that’s about all. They analyze the situation in order to pave the way for the next battle. I don’t know what else we could have asked for for a group in a democratic society.
Will you be able to see that good part of humanbeing ? This article of yours did raise that doubt.
In fact, denial might be even stronger when one has to think about that the long proclaimed “reasonable” blue supporters did come out to vote because of an election-unrelated bullet.
“Believing that other people are unreasonable or irrational sheep is usually a sign of lazy thinking, and it tells you more about the speaker than about the people he is talking about.”
Very interesting comment in your article. May I suggest that “ignoring two key parts” be categorized as “lazy thinking” ?
November 29, 2010 at 10:44 pm |
I’m sorry that you disagree with me.
On Xinbei, there certainly were some signs that suggested Chu could win. You might look at the polls on my survey page. All of the polls in the two weeks before the blackout show the race as either tied or Chu with a slight lead. Remember, these are polls from the DPP, China Times, and Liberty Times. All three of these survey centers tended to produce results that were slightly more favorable to the DPP than TVBS or UDN.
I wrote a long post on how inexact it is to translate survey results into election results. I think it is safe to say that these election results did not clearly indicate that Chu would lose. Lots of outcomes were within the realm of possibility, including Chu winning by 5%.
On organized crime. My statement was, “it seemed pretty clear within a few hours that the incident had something to do with organized crime.”
I was very careful in writing that particular statement because I did not want to take a position on whether Lien was or was not the target. Police reports were quite clear that the shooter was part of a crime gang.
Both blue and green commentators have argued that the incident changed the election outcome. They don’t have any evidence for this belief. It is just an opinion of theirs. It also happens to be a very convenient opinion. To me, it is similar to commentators explaining why the stock market went up or down on a particular day. If it went up, they find some good economic new and attribute the stock market’s behavior to that news. If it went down, they ignore the inconvenient good economic news and find something that looks bad. In general, they grab the first plausible explanation.
I don’t have any hard evidence to that the shooting didn’t matter much. Neither you nor anyone else has any hard evidence that it did. We just express our opinions on whether this suggested causal logic is reasonable. I don’t think it is reasonable logic. You do. So until someone produces strong evidence one way or the other, we are going to disagree.
On DPP reactions: Tsai Ing-wen’s concession speech was one of the most inspiring messages I have heard in years. She said something like:
We believed in democracy yesterday, and after losing this election we still believe in democracy. Now we will go back, regroup, and try again. And if we lose again, we will try another time. Eventually we will win.
November 30, 2010 at 3:48 am |
I am totally fine with any disagreement. I appreciate your insistence on not following the flow without solid evidence, which, I reckon, is in line with the spirit of this blog.
So, my disappointment didn’t come from how different our opinions are, but from how you came to a conclusion based on selected truth. It seems to be a little spin on what happened out there. You probably didn’t get my point. Maybe I wrote too much which might have confused you.
Anyway lets move on.
November 30, 2010 at 5:41 am |
Tsai Ing-wen’s concession speech was one of the most inspiring messages I have heard in years.
Found a partial translation:
Tsai Ing-wen: the Turning Point (台灣政治的新起點) http://justrecently.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/tsai-ing-wen-the-turning-point-%e5%8f%b0%e7%81%a3%e6%94%bf%e6%b2%bb%e7%9a%84%e6%96%b0%e8%b5%b7%e9%bb%9e/
That’s indeed an inspiring one. She has improved a lot on speech performance, not as boring as before.
November 30, 2010 at 6:48 pm |
That’s not the speech I remember. I must be thinking of something else she said on Saturday night.
November 30, 2010 at 10:06 pm |
Could be due to that JR skipped some part that I think is important. For example, in the first paragraph, Tsai said that her mood was exactly the same before and after the election. Unlike some candidates who would chant “unfair” and lead crowds to the street when losing, she took the beating very well. I think I know exactly why she is able to do that.
December 2, 2010 at 11:50 pm |
Take it easy Echo. The incident happened at around 8:30 P.M. and the news was out in full force a little while afterwards. The poll I checked with the day of the election done on the last night from 6-10 P.M. indicated Chu would win 53-47 in Xinbei City unlike the DPP polls that said he would win. The DPP polls are often fake if you didn’t know. Chu was ahead the entire time albeit not by much at certain points. But by the last day, he was ahead 53-47 and he actually won the election by something just less than 53%.
In Taichung, the polls had Hu ahead by quite a bit and he only won by 30,000 ballots. It is very unlikely that the shooting changed the result of any of the 3 races that the KMT won in.
Also, green people are not more reasonable than blue people as you guys would like to believe. When the KMT rigged elections in the past, Green supporters were also very upset and protested like in 2000 and 2004. In 2000, they protested because Lee Tung-Hui wouldn’t allow Soong to run with Lien so he essentially manipulated the election. There were also reports of election fraud in 2000. This is not irrational behavior but very normal behavior out of being cheated out of an election by the KMT chairman and president Lee.
In 2004, the Chen Shui-Bian government handles the shooting incident in a very mysterious and misleading way and uses underground radios and campaign trucks to spread rumors of a KMT-CCP conspiracy to assassinate the Taiwanese people’s president. This is much more serious than anything the KMT said the night Sean Lien was shot. They used the incident to garner support but they did not say in any way that the DPP had done it. Suggesting organized crime targeted Sean Lien is not a suggestion the DPP had done it.
The day after March 19, 2004, the DPP government prevents military from voting with an illegal National Security Mechanism and reports of fraud come in all over Taiwan from the South, Central, and Northern parts of the country.
This does not suggest in any way that blue supporters are sore losers and green ones are not.
After the DPP lost the 2008 presidential election by 2.2 million ballots because their bag of tricks was up and they failed to rig the legislative election just months before, all the DPP supporters could say was that they could lose elections without making a fuss.
You guys are just fooling yourselves if you think you’re the better ones in Taiwan. Neither sides likes getting cheated out of election and both the KMT and DPP have cheated elections from each other in the past. It’s just that the DPP never admits to cheating but blue people have basically admitted (unofficially) that some elections have been rigged by the KMT.
There have been close elections won fairly by both sides and both sides have accepted losses by narrow margins. Therefore, both sides are reasonable. It’s just green people that say they are more reasonable because they haven’t gotten cheated out of an election recently and want to put themselves on a pedestal.
Seriously, the whining over losing Taichung by just 30,000 ballots is pathetic. I wish the KMT would just give the DPP Taichung just to get them to stop complaining. Hu was expected to do much better than 30,000 ballots and the DPP beat him straight up in Taichung County and that was why the result was close.
In 2004, Lien and Soong were expected to win the election by 1.5 million ballots and then Chen pulls a fake shooting incident to reduce the gap to 800,000 – 900,000 ballots and then rigs the rest of the ballots the next day. I’d say that’s a cause for complaint. Jason Hu was expected to win by much more than 30,000 ballots and holds on for a small victory and the DPP is saying the election outcome changed. I don’t think so.
How could the DPP supporters not care at all about how unfair 2004 was and then say these election were unfair when the KMT was slated to win those 3 elections anyway. So impact or not, the result did not change and yet we are hearing complaints of overturned elections. It’s more of an excuse by some DPP people to hold on to their credibility. That’s all.
The DPP got half the vote approximately. That’s pretty darn good for the DPP. Stop complaining and just compete in a normal manner.
December 3, 2010 at 1:27 am |
Chen pulls a fake shooting incident
The incident has been thoroughly investigated by both sides but no proof was found for any fault play.
So, when we read people state that as an unquestionable fact, we could reasonably argue that he talks based on speculations. So I would take your words as such.
December 3, 2010 at 4:46 pm |
My blog is not going to be the forum for statements like “you are pathetic” or “my side is right; your side is wrong.” If you want to make those types of arguments, I’m sure you can find somewhere else to take them. The internet is a big place. However, I don’t have an “anything goes” attitude toward comments on my blog. If I feel that comments are degenerating into name calling, I will delete them.
Do not respond to this comment. My rules are arbitrary and not open for discussion.
December 3, 2010 at 9:45 pm |
The incident has “not” been investigated by the KMT even though it has had direct access to the evidence for at least a couple of reasons. A main reason being that they don’t want to offend the U.S. which sent experts to Taiwan to say that it was real when they knew full well that it was fake, and on a less honorable note, Ma Ying-Jeou benefitted from the incident in that it paved the way for him to be president in 2008 and he endorsed Dr. Henry Lee’s report.
The physical evidence in 2004 could only be accessed by the DPP government and experts pre-approved and pre-paid by the Chen government. And Dr. Henry Lee was a paid expert at the time in 2004 although he might be personally pan blue. The man works for money as indicated by cases before and after 319.
The pictures of the physical evidence already suggest that the incident was staged as anyone with a basic knowledge of external ballistics and blood stains from wounds such as the one on Chen’s belly.
However, the Criminal Investigation Bureau controlled by Chen Shui-Bian “said” that it was all real. What is real or fake is based on who is in power and not the actual truth of the incident.
There have been many murder cases the KMT is believed to be behind and only the Henry Liu murder has been proven that the KMT was behind it. But does that mean that that is the only murder the KMT has been behind? No green supporter would agree with this line of logic that no proof means innocence.
However, Chen was given this benefit of the doubt by green supporters that he’s innocent of staging an assassination attempt without hard evidence.
Well that’s awfully easy to say when his government controls all the physical evidence and released its own pictures and video to the media to tell its own version of the event which they had designed themselves.
It also helps that the U.S. supports this sort of thing to help keep its party in power in Taiwan to help make sure China stays separated and the U.S. can keep its aircraft carrier afloat to continue spying on the mainland.
But getting back to the incident itself-a deeper look at the physical evidence and the story put forth by the people in the jeep does not add up to an assassination attempt made by a shooter(s), but points in the direction of Chen, Lu, and security personnel creating an incident that would look like an assassination attempt.
Of course the 319 incident was only the cover story to the election fraud prepared well in advance that the DPP government was going to do in order to stay in power for another 4 years and hopefully forever.
Thank heavens for the Pacific Fleet that’s here to protect us right?
Of course these events nearly led to the PRC taking Taiwan by force in 2004/2005 which thankfully didn’t happen.
FrozenGarlic – I will watch my attitude and comments on your site since this is your site and its a great site.
December 4, 2010 at 3:54 am |
Jason Lee: “Dr. Henry Lee was a paid expert at the time in 2004 although he might be personally pan blue. The man works for money as indicated by cases before and after 319.”
You are not suggesting that he should have worked for free, ain’t you ?
Dr. Lee’s expertise in the forensic sciences, as well as his professionalism, are worldly recognized and respected. He was the president of Lien-Song supporter group in the east coast of USA at that time, and was invited to investigate the 319 incident under the strong insistence of the blue camp.
It was only after his investigation result didn’t please the blue camp’s taste did the blue camp legislators started spreading rumors of him taking bride to discredit him.
No idea why those unproven rumors are often taken as facts.
December 5, 2010 at 12:03 am |
If Dr. Henry Lee had told the truth according to the pictures of the physical evidence, it would have been fine, but if you referred to the details of what he said and how the public should view the case, he was obviously protecting Chen Shui-Bian’s government.
When I say he was being paid, I mean illegally behind the scene’s by the Chen government and not pro-bono like he was saying.
Even if the blue camp had asked him, it doesn’t mean that they have to accept his comments as the truth.
Basically what Dr. Lee did was he framed the physical evidence in a way where it could be possible that the incident happened as it was suggested by the government.
Then he made other manipulative statements like saying that Chen didn’t shoot himself because he had no gunpowder on his clothing. Later when asked if this means if Chen didn’t shoot himself or it doesn’t mean that Chen’s people didn’t shoot him, he could only say that Chen himself didn’t shoot himself. This statement basically could be interpreted that the incident was not staged when in fact all he said was that he himself didn’t shoot himself because of lack of gunpowder.
We need to judge Dr. Lee by what he said and did in this case and not his “impeccable” credentials. Dr. Lee is a blood splatter expert and not an external ballistic expert. The 319 case was a case of external ballistics so he isn’t the final authority on some of the things he said.
When asked about the lack of blood on Chen’s underwear, Dr. Lee could only ask us to accept that slim possibility that Chen didn’t bleed enough for the wound to flow down to his underwear. We are supposed to accept Chen’s excuse that he wore his underwear low.
I can assure you that if anyone cuts open their belly with a wound like that with a knife or a grazing gunshot or both, that your underwear will soon be soaked in blood but Chen’s underwear had no blood on them. It does not take a forensic expert to know that he should have blood on them and Dr. Lee’s opinion is just an opinion. He did not prove anything but just made opinions.
Once again, the actual facts of what Dr. Lee said instead of just quoting his credentials which is all that the DPP party does.
When Dr. Lee was a prosecutor, he said in his books that if evidence should logically be found in a place but it is not found then that means there is a question mark.
In other words, even though it’s logical for there to be blood on Chen’s underwear, Dr. Lee is saying that that is not a question mark because he is not a prosecutor anymore. He is a defense witness for the Chen government as he was for the O.J. Simpson case where he made comments and gave scenarios where the evidence could have been planted or tainted by LAPD cops.
So Dr. Lee’s principals of investigation changed once he switched from prosecution to defense. I am not questioning his expertise or saying that I know better than him. I am only questioning his integrity.
There are no unproven rumors or whatever in terms of what I am writing. The presidential office released pictures of Chen with a belly wound and no blood on his underwear. That’s suspicious.
That’s not an unproven rumor. It’s the DPP government hiring a paid witness to make statements to protect them and to tell us that it’s reasonable for his underwear to have no blood.
Another big thing he said which influenced the investigation of the so-called shooter was that he suggested to the CIB chief that he should chase after the shooter with the 2 bullets found. One in the jeep and one in the clothing.
The 2 bullets led to a bullet maker and a whole big story about a dead man found 8 days after the election or so.
Those bullet casings found on the street from supposedly discharged bullets were found 3 1/2 hours after the street was cleaned of firecrackers. The public believes that those casings were most likely planted there. The government made the effort to round up any video and pictures in that area right after the incident occurred but didn’t look for physical evidence related to a shooting incident of a head of state. Does that make sense? Does this have anything to do with Dr. Henry Lee? It doesn’t. It’s just suspicious and does not make sense.
Instead, 2 casings pop up later and we are supposed to accept that a shooter shot 2 bullets.
Dr. Henry Lee was asked if the origin of these 2 casings is important. He said it’s not his job to question the origin of the physical evidence. He is only there to examine the physical evidence only.
Is that really the truth? He said on a talk show that there has to be some trust that the physical evidence is real. In other words, Dr. Lee is going beyond his expertise as a forensic scientist and asking us to believe that 2 casings found on the street 3 1/2 hours later after a president it shot and the CIB or the local police make no effort to seal the area to find evidence.
Regardless of how the casings came to be, Dr. Lee says trust them.
However, in his books as a prosecutor he says that the first job of a forensic scientist is to first establish the origin of the physical evidence or else it could have been planted.
Really? So now that he’s being paid by the other side, the rules and principals have changed? Now we are supposed to believe any physical evidence brought before us regardless of how unbelievable the sequence of events are?
Yes, because he’s Dr. Lee and the KMT wanted him originally and were unable to accept the truth because he didn’t say what they wanted him to say because he only wanted to get into power.
Or was Dr. Lee’s comments suspicious and biased? Not to mention in conflict with his previous comments made in his books about being a good prosecutor in Connecticut.
So the 2 bullets and casings lead to a dead man and Dr. Lee endorses it for the society. He asks us to accept the truth according to the so-called evidence.
If anyone spends the time to interview or talk to the family of the dead victim or shooter, you will know that he was not in the least bit worried that he would be caught for committing a crime. He was not worried at all and was going about business as usual and even had a birthday lunch with his favorite daughter the day before disappearing. Would a happy and content man commit suicide on the his favorite daughter’s birthday?
It doesn’t prove he was there or not there, but it’s cause for suspicion.
But Dr. Lee says use the gun and bullets to find the shooter.
Okay fine. So this dead man is it. However, there’s another issue that Dr. Lee cannot answer.
Hou You-Yi, the CIB chief already showed us a video on June 27, 2004 well before Dr. Lee’s report came out and it showed that there was no shooter or any person even close to the description of the dead man in the area the 2 casings were found. Keep in mind that Chen and Lu both claim to having been shot in that area also.
So not only is there no shooter matching the general description of the dead man, there’s no shooter period in that area just before the jeep passes by that area.
So from the video evidence, the 2 casings and 2 bullets do not address how a windshield hole was made and how Chen and Lu have wounds on their bodies. They were not made by a shooter on the street wielding a gun obviously. They were made by other means and the video strongly suggests it.
And another thing about those 2 bullets. Anyone with a basic understanding of ballistics can look at the close up pictures of those 2 bullets and can see clearly that they are old bullets. There is not scratches on them showing fresh copper or lead like there should be. The old bullets basically prove that they weren’t used for at least 6 months before the pictures were taken. And the pictures were taken before Dr. Lee arrived which was April 9, 2004.
So they are old bullets not fired. And Dr. Lee and his team of American experts didn’t say anything about that. Is it because they don’t know what they are doing? I don’t think so. I have showed that report myself to enough experts around the world who are not paid KMT experts and they agree on this point 100%. They are old bullets.
And of course, it’s too dangerous to shoot someone in a moving jeep right? They DPP government was saying this and it fooled many people into assuming that a wound on a belly means it happened in a moving jeep.
But did any of those believers look at the pictures of Chen’s belly in the hospital. There are obvious white and square bandage marks on his belly wound suggesting that they were bandaged up and therefore also further suggests why there is no blood on the underwear.
And by the way. Those white bandage marks were removed by Photoshop by the CIB in their final report release August 2005. Is that reasonable and honest? I guess it is for the sake of Taiwan Independence.
And also about the clothing that Chen wore. The holes in the undershirt, the dress shirt, and jacket do not match up. His jacket originally had 2 holes in it but they got rid of the 2nd hole because he was only shot once right?
The dress shirt has several holes in it which could have happened by folding the shirt up. However, they are not in a straight line and his wound is in a straight line. 11 cm to be exact. The holes are also up and down and not in a straight line. Some are higher. Some are lower. The only way Dr. Lee’s team could explain this is with a tumbling bullet theory which the DPP government adopted.
Well, that sounds cool. Maybe not. The wound is straight. How can we have a tumbling bullet that creates holes on a dress shirt where some are higher and some are lower and the wound is straight. The dress shirt and wound do not matchup.
The undershirt in Dr. Lee’s report has 2 holes in it. However according to Dr. Henry Lee’s forensic ruler, the distance between the 2 holes is 7.5 cm. Not anywhere close to 11 cm. How come Dr. Lee didn’t raise a fuss about that? No big deal huh? You can’t really get a wound 11 cm long with an undershirt 7.5 cm apart between the holes. On top of that a dress shirt with a bullet bouncing up and down to make holes higher up and lower up.
And don’t forget 2 separate holes in the jacket suggesting 2 entry holes.
So do you still trust Dr. Henry Lee or do people choose to take what he says at face value without looking at the details? You don’t need to be a forensic or ballistics expert to know that the articles of clothing and his wound need to match up all at once for there to be a chance at the shooting being real as it was reported by Chen Shui-Bian.
All we have is an incident set up by the Chen and Lu jeep that day with NSB security covering up and the Presidential Office secretary general as well as future foreign minister Peter Huang laughing in front of the camera the day of the incident because it’s too hilarious for the to hold back their laughter.
Look at the video that day. Peter Huang is laughing with his eyes during the Chi-Mei hospital press conference in the late afternoon and the Chi-Mei chief is suppressing his laughter also. Chiou I-Jen smiled at least twice after he said the bullet was on his body or in his body.
But of course Dr. Henry Lee is a mainlander supported by the KMT people so they just can’t accept the truth.
How come people who think the incident was real never talk about the physical evidence down to the details? How come?
December 5, 2010 at 2:31 am |
All your suspicions on the case are understandable and I would be fine with any of them based on the spirit of speech freedom. I would have made the same questionings if I were in your position. Even your questions on Dr. Lee’s judgment (but certainly not his integrity) are acceptable to me.
The difference is, before I could prove anything, I would treat my suspicions as just that. You treat your suspicions as facts.
You said, “Dr. Lee’s opinion is just an opinion. He did not prove anything but just made opinions.”
It is convenient for you to think that others’ opinion are just opinions, but yours are the truth.
I can raise counter arguments one by one against yours, but I guess that will bring us nowhere, ‘cos you already decide your truth, that leaves no space for the possible real truth to emerge.
I believe that “questioning everything” is the spirit to seek the truth for a better world. We are blessed to have the opportunity to express our suspicions in any imaginable way (people in many parts of the world don’t), which is the basis of a vivid society in Taiwan. Without the “questioning everything” spirit, we are deaf, rigid, dull, no alive, and the society not moving forward.
I saw that “questioning everything” spirit in you, until you stop questioning yourself.
December 5, 2010 at 11:25 am |
Like I said. The details of the case. If you are going to state that my opinions based on precise measurements from a ruler are just one opinion then you are saying that 7.5 cm of distance between 2 holes is an opinion. That is not an opinion but a fact that can be confirmed from the photo in Dr. Lee’s report. The fact that his wound is 11 cm long is also a fact that all sides agree with. These are simple measurements and not my opinion vs. another expert’s opinion.
It has nothing to do with me personally. These questions were raised by a lot of people and basically Dr. Lee said that we should trust the government. In other words we are supposed to take evidence of a questionable nature based on faith and the fact that it doesn’t match together to produce one shooting incident of Chen.
When holes on clothing don’t match up, it doesn’t mean it’s my opinion. It means objectively speaking, they were put together separately to make it look like Chen was shot all at once. The clothing itself and the wound do not match up which proves he was not wearing those clothes at the time his belly wound was made. Therefore, he was not shot or cut during the jeep ride because he was wearing those clothes. Or at least he allegedly was.
In terms of ballistics, Dr. Lee also said the bullet came from the outside of the jeep because he could find no glass powder or shreds on the outside of the jeep but only the inside.
This purely laughable and even Dr. Lee’s expertise can be called into question at this point.
Anyone who has done testing on glass will tell you that regardless of where the direction of the projectile or bullet came from, there should be glass on both sides of the windshield and not just one side.
Also, Dr. Lee did not clearly photograph the windshield hole to show us if the exit side of it was really the interior side and not the exterior side. That is the real issue. When you look at a windshield hole, you can tell where the exit and entry side are based on the hole and which side it is protruding on.
If the windshield hole is really hit from the outside, a clear picture of the windshield hole showing the protruding cracks on the inside of the windshield hole would prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the windshield hole was hit from the outside.
However, Dr. Lee and his team of professional photographers as well as the entire CIB and DPP government cannot show us even one clear picture of the windshield hole that really shows which direction it was shot in.
All the pictures are flat pictures where you cannot really tell which direction it was shot in.
Since Dr. Lee could not explain or prove with photographs the direction of the shot, he just used a simple explanation to mislead the public by saying that there was glass on the dashboard so it was shot from the outside.
And this is a fact not an opinion. Glass on the dashboard does not prove 1 way or another which direction the projectile came from.
It has nothing to do with the direction and for Dr. Lee to make such a statement is not only unprofessional but downright false.
Therefore, if one to quote Dr. Lee’s credibility and integrity to say the 319 case is real, that person is essentially quoting a forensic expert making untrue statements regarding at least the windshield hole which is one of the biggest problems in the 319 evidence.
Because it wasn’t hit from the outside by an unknown gunman.
It’s not on the people who suspect that the thing was staged to prove it was. We don’t have possession of the physical evidence. It’s the government’s job to prove to us in a reasonable sense that it was real and to this day neither the DPP or KMT government can really show us clear pictures of that windshield hole.
When I say clear, I mean from the side view which shows where the exit side is and not a flat shot of a hole.
So please don’t suggest that my observations are biased and we could go on arguing forever. When DPP people have done that on TV, they have raised unbelievable scenarios for how the evidence could have turned out like that and finally they couldn’t think of anything to say so they just said “I don’t understand what we are talking about.”
In my experience with debating with people who think the whole thing was real, they start making unreal statements about the evidence one by one but forget that all pieces of evidence need to match for it to be real.
December 5, 2010 at 3:08 pm |
@Jason,
My criticism at you is the way you approach it. I haven’t even got to the creditability of the evidence itself yet.
I didn’t want to go deep into it, for that if one doesn’t have an open mind, then both sides would be like singing own untuned songs for the hack of it and then go home still empty handed.
Unfortunately, my point didn’t get through.
If you were free to decide that Dr. Lee is not expert enough to make correct judgments, then why would you think that anybody would believe you are expert enough to decide what the truth is ?
As you already decide what the truth is, I can see that a conversation is not what you come here for. Then, why bother? A closed mind can’t convince anyone but please himself.
There are lots of self-righteous guys in both the extreme green and extreme blue ends of the spectrum. Both believe they are godly enough to determine the supreme truth, leaving no space for any other possibilities. In my opinion, that’s why a society goes polarized. But I guess we will have to accept that as a norm.
For whatever it’s worth, I would strongly suggest that you study how Frozen Garlic talks. It earns my respect, and sometimes helps me tune in to the same neutral tone he insists.
Lastly, I rest my case, for it goes nowhere.
December 6, 2010 at 10:59 pm |
Just look at the report yourself friend.
It has nothing to do with me but the incident itself. I might be biased against the whole thing because I know all too well what they did or allegedly did, but it is possible to look at the physical evidence from an objective point of view.
Some things seem unlikely to have happened and some of the evidence clearly by measurements do not add up to Chen having worn those 3 articles of clothing and having been shot.
How is my approach bad or biased?
Instead of talking about my so-called biased approach, why don’t you look at the pictures yourself? I don’t think you want to because its hard to rationalize how it could be real.
It’s like taking several unlikely and some possibly impossible scenarios and evidence and putting them together.
And please don’t use the whole thing about how could an ordinary person know better than Dr. Lee. Because I never said I knew better than him and this isn’t an academy examination.
My point is that I agree with Dr. Lee when he is saying things that make sense when he was a prosecutor, but he apparently changed his values and begin to distort the truth or the probable truth once he became a defendant witness.
So its not about me claiming to know better than him. The Green camp has been using that line of argument for a really long time and no one ever claimed to know better than him. It’s like Dr. Lee came to Taiwan and said 1+1=3 and everyone has to be quiet because he is the great Dr. Lee. Is 1+1=2 or is 1+1=3?
If I raise my hand and have the courage to say that I think it equals 2 then somebody who needs for 1+1=3 in order for their side to be right is going to point the finger at me saying that I think I know better than him and he is the great Dr. Henry Lee.
What if Dr. Lee said the shooting was fake? You guys would label him as a pan blue paid expert with mainland sympathies or something.
So there has to be some objective way of looking at things.
If I say that according to the ruler with cm measurements on Dr. Lee’s ruler shows that the distance between 2 holes is 7.5 cm and the wound is 11 cm long, then is my approach biased or is it that Dr. Lee did not raise the issue for some reason?
At least answer my question on this one point. If you are really trying to help me be more objective in my tone then please tell me why I am so out of line for scratching my head for looking at his own report with a ruler with the measurements clearly labeled showing the distance of the 2 holes.
Do centimeters look different to people of different political beliefs?
Do we need green and blue centimeters or do we not want to talk about centimeters?
So please help me be more objective at least on this issue and I won’t force you to go look at the report because I don’t think you want to. I think has always been the same thing going on with 319.
The side that supports the DPP and Chen Shui-Bian just banks on Dr. Lee’s credibility and says others who think 1+1=2 are people who don’t know as well.
I don’t need to be a forensic or ballistic expert to look at a report and notice the distance between 2 holes on an undershirt.
It does not take a ballistic expert to notice that the holes on the dress shirt do not match with a straight wound.
And I was pointing out Dr. Lee integrity, not his ability as a forensic expert. I respected his ability when what he said was making sense. When he was putting away murderers and such.
Why are people always criticizing people who think its fake for apparently having made up our minds already?
I gave you and everyone here more than just a few reasons for believing that the evidence has been put together from pieces and doesn’t match up.
Why can’t we talk about the evidence itself? Why does this have to be an attack on me personally for being “biased”? Is looking at centimeters on an undershirt make me biased? Apparently in the world of Taiwan politics it is. Because only someone looking for something wrong would bother looking in the first place therefore making them biased. Everyone else who thinks its real just threw the report in the drawer and never bothered to use their own brain or math skills.
And for your info, I didn’t make up my mind right away about the case before I researched it. I actually looked the report, the official CIB report, asked different kind of experts on what was iffy evidence and what the thought was very conclusive evidence. I did windshield testing on the same windshield on the jeep they were riding in to get a better idea of what kind of damage is done on that kind of windshield with a slow projectile.
All of this helped me come to the conclusion that their evidence does not add up to a real shooting incident.
So I did not assume without doing any research that it was fake.
This is about the issue itself and not me or you, but you want to attack me personally for being biased and this feels like a law school argument.
If you can’t argue the facts of the case then you state the law. If you can’t state the law then you bang on the table.
Criticizing the person speaking for being biased instead of discussing the actual issue at hand is basically the last resort of a lawyer whose job it is to never admit that his side has any wrongdoing.
Did I say anything about you personally? I talked about the case itself and then I talked about it some more.
Why can’t we talk about the case itself? Do you really care about me that much to keep responding to these messages or do you actually care about the case itself.
I do have my faults of course, but it doesn’t have much to do with elections and so-called assassination attempts against the president.
So if you would like to actually discuss the case or the elections themselves, then we can do it.
I can keep going on for a long time by the way. 🙂