The Republicans who were already starting to bleat about how much money was being spent on the siege would have been up in arms and really screeching if the siege had lasted more then another month.
On this interview I saw they had one of David Koresh’s ‘wives’ and her son who was Koresh’s favorite and was being groomed to take his place.
The woman was saying that the thing she most regrets is that she went along with the child abuse. Koresh would give her a large paddle and tell her to beat her son when he was a small baby.
It’s hard for me to have any sympathy for this man.
I dunno… if you ask me waiting would have been perfect. IMO Koresh and his ‘doom and gloom’ followers were ready to see aggressive action on the part of the government as the fulfillment of prophecy. Waiting defuses things and takes the fire out of the situation. I mean, really, how close to Armageddon could they feel after being holed up for a year while the local PD has a BBQ in the parking lot? Cults expect calamity. Just don’t give it to 'em.
Didn’t Koresh and his followers regularly go shooting with Waco LEOs? I also remember reading somewhere and can’t find it now that Koresh or one of the others was an FFL and local law enforcement was well aware of the nature of firearms in the compound. Anyone know about that?
Also, I’ve got to wonder why, if the idea was to use CS and other agents to get the Davidians out of the compound, snipers were posted to cover all the exits. And for what reason was the ATF investigating child abuse charges? Child abuse doesn’t seem to be under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Safety. The people who came out might not be coming out peacefully. Also, the snipers weren’t just covering exits, they were covering any portion of the building that could be used to fire on federal agents. It’s kind of like how when a LEO is conducting a felony stop, and commands the person to step out of the car, they keep their guns trained on the person.
The BATF were brought in because of the suspected cache of illegal weapons. The FBI was the one doing the investigating. IIRC.
Thanks, but I remain concerned that someone would think our politicians have anything to do with religious freedom. The government is able to grant privileges, such as a driver’s license but rights are unalienable. Government does not confer these rights upon the people, they are inherent in our country’s founding. The freedoms granted in our bill of rights are intrinsic to this nation’s structure and success.
As I mentioned, it is utterly critical that people have a fundamental understanding of law. It is the price of living in America. Razorsharp may need to better distinguish what makes this nation so great. Of late, it certainly does not seem due to our politicians. My money is on our constitution, it’s been doing a pretty fine job for centuries. The Branch Davidians were even allowed to exist because of this noble document. It’s been protecting the widest swath of human rights in history and doing it rather well.
I suspect that Razorsharp may be confusing the Shrub administration’s loathsome melding of church and state with the more pristine nature of our civil rights. The smarmy, pious utterances emanating from Capitol Hill and the Oval Office besmirch our nation’s character and threaten far worse abrogation of liberty than any administration in recent history. Perhaps this is where the problem arises, I cannot be sure. All I know is that freedom of religion and freedom from religion make this the best nation on earth.
Doesn’t seem to me that anything done in Waco was done with the survival of the Davdians in mind.
I rate the whole thing as a 4.5. It would be a “2”, because individuals are responsible for there own actions, & the shooting of Federal officials during the warrent search was unjustified.
But the Feds blew a golden opportunity to take the compound in a near-bloodless fashion after the siege began!
The worst blizzard of the 20th century took place during the siege. If the Feds had waited until the storm grew intense, a overwhelmingly successful assault would have been possible. But they blew the chance.
The Clinton Adminsitration does not deserve all the mindless “dittohead” criticism it receives, but I must admit that they were totally incompetant at applying force.
Another thing about “waiting Koresh out,” and why it wouldn’t have worked. koresh had promised to come out more then a dozen times and each and every time, when the appointed hour came, he lied and refused to do so. He would never have come out, and more importantly, he would never have let anyone else come out alive. Which, sadly, is how things turned out in the end.
On the initial raid, none of the agents going into the building had even a copy of the warrant with them. For that reason, under Texas law, the execution of the warrant and the entry were illegal and the residents had every right to defend themselves.
And you missed the point of my post.
:rolleyes:
Oh, BTW–Texas State Law has no validity in terms of a Federal Warrant. Federal law supercedes local law. So your “point” is both invalid & irrelavant.
And federal agents aren’t required to actually have a copy of the warrant with them when they raid your house?
Even they have to abide by the Fourth Amendment.
Wow: Alchemy is still alive!
from Daoloth’s cite:
I’m surprised no one else has pointed out that the only way to get carbon monoxide from hydrogen chloride and chlorine is by transmutation.
I think that a more probable cause of the high carbon monoxide levels would be ** the fire that the Branch Davidians set themselves!!!**
Hmmm…thanks for informing me of that.
In response to the OP, 1. I would go lower if I was allowed to.
I find it rather incredible that some people are stilll attempting to deny that there was child abuse in the compound. There are over thirty people who made sworn statements about that issue and yet still Razorsharp insists that all of them must be lying, though he’s unwilling to give us a cite on the claim that Kiri Jewell’s testimony was a lie. Running a campaign of character assassination against a teenage rape victim might seem a little extreme even for the Limbaugh crowd, but nobody ever joined the Forbes 500 by betting that conservatives would play nice.
Koresh’s writings and the testimony of his followers and former followers make it very clear that Koresh viewed himself as engaged in an Apocalyptic battle against the forces of the United States, and that his mission was to kill as many Americans as possible. If the ATF had chosen some tactic such as apprehending Koresh while he was away from the compound, his followers might have reacted by arranging a mass suicide or by organizing an attack against some government or civilian target in the area.
Recommended readings: Massacre at Waco, Texas by Lindecker and Messianic Revolution, by Popkin and Katz. There is ample evidence that Koresh intended to carry out a terrorist attack against civilian targets. He was unable to fulfill his goal of murdering thousands. Thus, the government action against him was a success.
They didn’t have a warrant?
Cite, please?
And please, one from a source unaffiliated with any organization advocating the violent overthrow of the Federal Government Of The United States of America… if that’s possible.
I’d also like to add that, even if they didn’t have copies of the warrant on them (And I’d like a cite on that, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the breach team members didn’t have copies, but I really doubt that nobody had a copy) you do not shoot the police and then ask them to present a warrant.
I’d say 4 or 5, in that the Davidians were the bad guys here, but ultimately it was the incompetance on the part of the ATF caused this to become the tragedy it was.
The ATF, frankly, was not qualified to make this raid. It are primarily a revenue collecting organization under the department of the Treasury, not Justice. It did not have the resources or experience to perform what had to be one of the most difficult tactical assaults possible outside of Rainbow 6 games. If they hadn’t have let the eagerness for a big, high profile bust out from under the nose of the FBI get to them, they might have actually considered that this is a heavily armed group of doomsday cultists in a location that would be damn hard to surprise. It was gonna take a hell of a lot more than a group of weekend SWAT guys to pull this off.
After the initial raid was botched, I don’t know what the FBI could have done to prevent the immolation. Granted, they made some bizarre if not outright bad decisions (like the gas-pumping tank) but I seriously doubt they could have ever talked those nutbars outta there.
And from all appearances, it looks like the Davidians didn’t have their own survival in mind either.
I’ll reiterate. Placing your fate in the hands of a apocalyptic wing-nut like Koresh pretty much guarantees you’ll get booted out of the gene pool.
Whatever point the BD’s had, they lost when they shot at officers trying to execute a valid search warrant. You must allow the search.