re waco in article c u a bfh cbnews cb att com ddn cbnews cb att com david d nason writes thirdly it seems incredibly hypocritical to place blame given the benefit of hindsight something that those who made the decisions did not have the benefit of why not give them the courtesy of acknowledging that they did the best they could with the data they had in a very very difficult situation what is your proof that they did the best they could unless they had strong evidence that the children were in immediate danger then the best they could have done was to show restraint some of us did predict this outcome or at least suggested a strong possibility of it i for one said that in the event of an assault against the building the children were the ones in danger either from the assault itself or from a jonestown my phrase a week after the seige started style suicide and as i pointed out then and repeatedly over the objections of people on the net who disagreed with me an adult may freely choose suicide but they have no right to impose this choice on their children now while i don t expect the fbi to pay any attention to what i have to say on this i do expect them to figure it out on their own or to take the advice of experts the cult specialist inter viewed in yesterday s boston globe said he was repeatedly stonewalled by the fbi when he pointed out to them that their confrontational tactics played perfectly into koresh s mad view of the world and so increased the chance of a tragic outcome some responses have gone so far to suggest that the actions were done without regard for the lives of the people in the compound give me a break give us a break pumping teargas for minutes into a compound filled with children this doesn t seem to show much regard for their lives or safety nontoxic teargas is an oxymoron children have tiny respiratory passages which are easily blocked by the secretions induced by teargas moreover teargas can easily cause fatalities in anyone subject to laryngospasms asthma or heart disease if a madman is holding a gun to a hostage someone who provokes the madman by attacking him bears nearly as much repsonsibility for the death of the hostage as the madman himself these kinds of situations have to be handled delicately not by surrounding a place with tanks and heavily armed personnel and blaring rock music from loud speakers at all hours that approach is idiotic be part of the solution not the problem the solution is to greatly reduce the authority of the the authorities the feds showed themselves here as they have so many times in the past to be a gang of trigger happy impulsive yahoos who cause more trouble than they prevent their confrontational approach reinforced every single message koresh was giving his followers virtually guarantee ing that whatever crazy solution koresh proposed would be followed willingly this was pointed out here on compuserve in the press just about every place except in the justice department where it seems a n i h philosophy prevails peter
