If one reads my first post in the thread Robot Arm links to, my primary point was that it is now pretty common for federal agencies to have field offices in upscale commercial buildings rather than on federal premises. I assume that this is because of what happened in Oklahoma City. That my post was seen as a justification for McVeigh’s actions is interesting; I was merely pointing out that it is pretty cowardly to hold federal law enforcement offices in urban concealment.
Why anyone would label me as a Waco “Truther” is beyond me: it’s common knowledge that innocents died at Mt. Carmel (even if you don’t think any adult Branch Davidian could be innocent, children were also killed under highly suspicious circumstances).
Sure, as long as you remember that I am not speaking for McVeigh. The point was that some citizens, if sufficiently upset with the federal government, can and will react with excessive and devastating violence.
Just as the point made by FBI at Waco, Ruby Ridge and elsewhere was that if citizens sufficiently upset the federal government, the federal government can and will react with excessive and devastating violence - but the fed will also get away with it.
It’s not clear that the Feds acted with excessive and devastating violence at Waco. They certainly appear to have done so at Ruby Ridge, but they had no reason to be particularly upset with Randy Weaver.
He was a half-assed white supremacist who they tried to lure into a trap to get him to snitch on Aryan Nations. However, since half of all white supremacists are already federal informers, it’s not like his refusal really did any harm.
Sammy Weaver wasn’t seven years old. He was fourteen, armed, and shooting at the agents as well. I’m not defending what happened to Vicki Weaver, but Sammy wasn’t an innocent victim.
Sorry, 14. Accounts differ regarding the shooting but Kevin Harris was acquitted of any wrongdoing at his trial, and the marshals certainly shot Sammy Weaver in the back while as he ran away.
No, it’s just cheaper that way. Federal courthouses and FBI and such are usually housed in a Federal building (Such as in San Jose) . But stuff like the IRS is put where ever is cheapest.
Do you have a cite that the Feds are now putting large actual Law enforcement HQs in upscale office buildings? In SF, San Jose, Oakland and every other major burg around here, the real LEOs and Courthouses are in a real Federal building.
I agree that they did – just that you made it sound like they just shot at a child at random. The whole thing was a collosal fuck-up from start to finish. (Ruby Ridge, that is)
I’m having a hard time deciding which is more crazy: that you think the federal government is cowardly putting offices in urban concealment for nefarious purposes or that you think McVeigh was somehow concerned about blowing up innocent people having jack shit to do with Waco or the Weavers.
Urban concealment? Really? Should federal offices all be located at least 200 yards away from anything else so that should some future NWO/ZOG/UN/Black Helicopter fearing lunatic decide to set off 2 1/2 tons of explosives they won’t have to worry about killing innocent people? Anyone blown up will be guilty of something like being a government employed secretary or child of one in the daycare center ala Oklahoma City?
If this is true, why the fuck did you use the term “being held accountable”? That’s what kicked off this whole pitting, because it certainly sounds like you think the FBI and it’s workers got what was coming to them.
Unless, of course, you don’t think the ATF is a “real” law enforcement agency (granted, I could concede that point myself).
It’s not. But it isn’t very surprising for an individual who feels harmed by people that he has no means of directly retaliating against to choose a proxy for his outrage.
I’ll stand by the first thought you attribute to me, but you’re horribly misrepresenting me on the second. Of course McVeigh wasn’t all that concerned about innocents, but he did consider it necessary that his bomb kill both ATF and FBI employees.
Whether McVeigh’s primary goal was to blow people up or to retaliate for Ruby Ridge and Waco is something that we can never know. However, it is a hell of a lot more reasonable to believe his stated intent rather than to make shit up about what his motives might have been.
Perhaps “being repaid in kind” would have been a more appropriate phrase. IMHO, the FBI and ATF employees responsible for Ruby Ridge and Waco deserve to be severely punished but unfortunately (and not surprisingly) they were not punished by the legal system. McVeigh probably understood that he could not harm those people himself, so he chose a substitute. Further, it seems McVeigh understood that if he wanted his message to be heard nationwide that he needed a lot of substitutes.
His actions were morally reprehensible but they were not illogical given the value (or lack thereof) McVeigh afforded innocent lives.
Sure, if you ignore the fact that he was an ardent fan of the Turner Diaries, the leaderless resistance movement within the racialist/militia communities, and sovereign citizen ideologies.
Ah, I forgot that a person’s political leanings and the contents of his bookshelf were the best means of divining his true intentions in any given situation.
They can certainly give us insight. Did you know that sometimes people dissimulate their true intentions in statements that they give about their actions, especially when it might gain them some advantage, as when they are trying to justify their criminal actions at sentencing. We even have a term for this kind of deception: self-serving.
In these scenarios, we look to other long-standing inclinations to see whether they corroborate or belie one’s stated justifications.
I know you militia-types like to seclude yourself from the rest of society and so we shouldn’t presume that you are acquainted with these truisms that we call “basic knowledge of human interaction.”
How many wheelbarrows will you need for all that straw?
The Turner Diaries describes the violent overthrow of the United States government by white supremacists, beginning with the bombing of FBI headquarters and three other federal buildings.
I’m curious. Do you think the people killed on 9/11 were “repaid in kind”? How about the people on the US Cole? Were they “repaid in kind?” Was the US held “accountable” by having thousands of its citizens murdered in cold blood?
No, McVeigh was a fucking coward who didn’t have the balls to attack the people involved directly (if you buy your nonsense about the attack being motivated by Ruby Ridge/Waco) so he slaughtered the innocent. No matter what grand rationalizations you have about his murder of innocents, they were not a repayment in kind, nor an accounting.
Again “illogical” like “reasonable” has two different meanings. One a simple objective statement, but the other, a subjective judgment of the whether the actions were, in actually, logical or reasonable. They weren’t. And, unless you want people to think you’re somehow attempting to blame the government for the attacks of terrorists, you may want to make that more clear in the future.
That cite does no such thing. There’s no way to tell by looking whether or not those are federal buildings. The Seattle field office address has “Federal Building” in the title, but Boston, as the one example I’m familiar with just has an address and suite number, but the address is the address for the Tip O’Neill Federal Building. San Francisco seems to be not a federal building and is out in the suburbs. I’m not about to look into all the rest. I suspect some are federal buildings and some aren’t.
As far as I’ve seen, some government offices are in federal buildings, with no particular pattern of which one goes where. Heck, the IRS around here has offices in both the big federal buildings in Boston, but the office I’ve had to deal with for my own problems is in a suburban office building. The Census Bureau has offices in an office building in Back Bay, but I think most of the Commerce Department’s offices are in the Tip O’Neill Building. Senator Kennedy had his office in the JFK Federal Building, Senator Kerry has his in an office building a block or so away. The US Attorney has most of their offices in the Federal Courthouse, and some other offices in the Coast Guard Building. It really all seems to be a matter of what’s available, certainly not any deliberate plan to hide law enforcement offices.
The second followed from the first. The only reason to describe federal offices as being nefariously placed in urban concealment is if you think they are legitimate military targets in a war, and this placement is designed to put innocent civilian lives at risk. I guess your belief is that this is to increase public outrage in future bombings rather than to discourage bombings. The flaw in this whole thought process is that federal offices aren’t legitimate targets in a war, and outside the minds of militia loons and such everyone McVeigh blew up was an innocent.
Certainly. McVeigh’s political inclinations do corroborate with McVeigh’s stated intent: it proves a long-standing dissatisfaction with the US government; a dissatisfaction that must exist before one could justify to himself the bombing of a federal building. Does McVeigh’s interest in the Turner Diaries or the sovereign citizen movement belie another intention behind what happened in Oklahoma City? Probably; but that other intention may or may not be primary.
In other news, I am glad my posts belie me as a “militia type,” anything I might say to the contrary must be disingenuous and self-serving.
I don’t think you read my statement in carnivorousplant’s thread. If federal agencies do “shitty things to people” (something yet to be disputed here), then being repaid in kind would be having something shitty done to a federal agency. If bombing the Murrah building wasn’t a shitty thing to do, then what was it?
Nevertheless, the answers to the first two questions you pose are both no. The answer to your final question is yes.
Why yes, it does. You stated so yourself. The San Francisco ATF field office is not in the San Francisco Federal Building, contrary to DrDeth’s post.
One can cross-reference the ATF address with the addresses of federal buildings in the corresponding cities to discover whether or not these field offices are in federal buildings, as you have already done.
Certainly. McVeigh’s political inclinations do corroborate with McVeigh’s stated intent: it proves a long-standing dissatisfaction with the US government; a dissatisfaction that must exist before one could justify to himself the bombing of a federal building. Does McVeigh’s interest in the Turner Diaries or the sovereign citizen movement belie another intention behind what happened in Oklahoma City? Probably; but that other intention may or may not be primary.
In other news, I am glad my posts belie me as a “militia type,” anything I might say to the contrary is disingenuous.
I don’t think you read my statement in carnivorousplant’s thread. If federal agencies do “shitty things to people” (something yet to be disputed here), then being repaid in kind would be having something shitty done to a federal agency. If bombing the Murrah building wasn’t a shitty thing to do, then what was it?
Nevertheless, the answers to the first two questions you pose are both no. The answer to your final question is yes.
Why yes, it does. You stated so yourself. The San Francisco ATF field office is not in the San Francisco Federal Building, contrary to DrDeth’s post.
One can cross-reference the ATF address with the addresses of federal buildings in the corresponding cities to discover whether or not these field offices are in federal buildings, as you have already done.