re waco survivors april in article c sira pew hawnews watson ibm com strom watson ibm com rob strom writes in article c segz mwr dscomsa desy de hallam dscomsa desy de phill hallam baker writes in order to reject the word of the fbi and batf it is neccessary to beleive the words of a man who has just murdered children and ordered the suicide murder of his other followers according to the account given the batf attempted to serve a warrant upon koresh at the ranch and were met by gunfire in a deliberate attempt to murder them the koresh gun supporter claim that the batf started shooting simply does not stand up if the aft had gone there to start shooting they would have gone with heavier grade weaponry than standard issue handguns for all practical purposes they were unarmed the b d followers had automatic weapons the people who do not want gun control must obviously discount the entire government story this is simply rationalisation it is not enough for them to simply dismiss the government as incompetent that would require them to come up with a solution themselves instead they have to come up with a government conspiracy theory whereby the government decided to set out to murder people just to set up some sort of scare to alow them to get gun control legislation through i must object to the characterization of those opposed to the government s handling of the waco situation as gun supporters your argument tries to paint the batf critics as right wing gun nuts and just mixes up two issues i am one of the batf fbi critics and yet i am a liberal and just as anti gun as you are i just happen to believe that everyone has civil rights even religious crazies they re all human beings not some nest of wasps that you re trying to exterminate the batf created the crisis situation by the way they handled the original raid it was well known that koresh regularly went jogging outside his property he could have been served with a search warrant then he could have been arrested if he had refused to comply instead officers armed with grenades invaded the property this escalated into a shooting war with tragic deaths on both sides those were the first two mistakes the bad judgment of asking for a no knock warrant and the bad and probably illegal way the already unwise warrant was served at this point the situation escalated to where it was described as an armed standoff and a hostage crisis that s when the government started covering their traces sealing the warrant revising their reported history of the incident etc things were already building up to disaster now the government could have simply closed the supply routes and waited but according to janet reno that option had never been seriously considered so supposedly because the agents were frustrated and fatigued and because there supposedly were no backups they felt they had to go in yes the govt handled it in the rambo hollywood type style with extreeme machismo perhaps thats not the way to handle it it is a completely different thing to start asserting as many have done that the government is primarily to blame the comparisons with the nazis in particular are purely gratuitous since you have provided a constructive opinion on the issue your post desreves to be taken seriously peter nelson also made some very good points about how a low key approach might have been more effective the point is though that you learn through mistakes the govt played the wrong card and lost thats not a big deal they had had four guys murdered at the begining and maybee they just were not prepared for wuite this situation who could be if the same thing were to happen all over again we might perhaps be able to castigate the govt if they used the same tactics and failed in the same way as it is i can t say that i would not have made the same mistake maybee i wouldn t because i don t as a rule go in for a confrontational situation if i can avoid it maybee i would because with all those press about its very difficult not to try the macho stuff the fbi had information from within the compound we had no access to they may have calculated that the b d followers resolve was cracking based on their listening devices within the compound they knew that koresh had chickened out of one suicide attempt this may have been the reason why they considered that fear might have been a weapon for breaking his resolve again in panama they had used the heavy rock music to great effect during bush s invasion funny that few of the koresh supporters and appologists complain much about the death of several thousand pananmanian civilians while the us govt attempted to arrest their former ally and please let s not turn this into a pro gun vs anti gun discussion anti gun people do not believe that gun owners deserve to get frontally assaulted by armed government agents and koresh s civil rights exist whether his guns were legal illegal illegal but should have been legal or whatever koresh negated his civil rights the minute his followers fired on the police helicopter no matter whether the warrant was or was not technically valid the guys who were carrying it out thought that it was thus the assault on them was completely inexcusable no matter what rationalisation people might wish to employ of course we have to consider the guns issue that is the whole core of the question everything else is a diversion phill hallam baker
