re waco survivors april in article apm apr hpopdlau pwd hp com apm hpopdlau pwd hp com andrew merritt writes path dscomsa dxcern mcsun uknet pipex uunet think com sdd hp com hpscit sc hp com apm from apm hpopdlau pwd hp com andrew merritt in article apr vms ocom okstate edu chorley vms ocom okstate edu writes i note with insufficient emotion that amongst the five survivors of the waco debacle there were two brits and an aussie the anglo saxon persona really doesn t lend itself to martyrdom for a spurious messiah i don t see how you draw that conclusion around of the inside the buildings were british one quarter two out of the eight latest count i heard survivors were british one quarter anyhow british doesn t equate to anglo saxon what exactly are you trying to say and why were there no fire engines within a mile of the compound because the gun loonies were firing on vehicles with mm amunition that has a range of meters next question the problem is of course the laws that allow a bunch of raving nutters to collect a huge stack of arms in the first place the sequence of events meant that there really was no option but to attempt some sort of breakthrough via an intervention if the fbi had had the stomach for it they could have mounted a commando type raid and attempted to save the children by shooting all the adults it really was a no win situation koresh had plenty of opportunity to give up and stand trial for the murder of the atf officers instead he ordered the murder of the children 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 b d seige could not be allowed to go on indefinitely the b d were quite capable of commiting mass suicide and murdering the children at any time a commando assault was the only other likely action that could have achieved that objective that would have been very risky orders of magintude harder than antebbe or the iranian embassy seige airplanes and embassies are not designed for defense against attack ranch apocalypse was terrorists are far easier to disloge without casualties than allowing the siege to go on was not an option either besides the serious risk that koresh would proclaim armageddon at any moment there was the question of the difficulties of keeping the emmergency team on standby over a prolonged period the longer the siege went on the more mentally prepared koresh and his followers would be for a prolonged siege rather than go in prematurely the mistake was probably to go in too soon can you think of a better way of getting the children out a certain way 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 this conspiracy theory assumes that the batf deliberately got of its agents killed and that the fbi etc actually enjoy sitting out in the middle of texas being shot at by religious nutters still the conspiracy theory is comforting it allows them to pretend that waco proves nothing except about how incompetent the government is in resolving a hostage crisis no govt in the world has ever faced a comparable situation quite probably there was no manner in which it could be peacefully resolved the blame does not rest on the fbi it rests on the fact that koresh was allowed to get so far in particular the person who tipped the b d off in advance has the murder of atf agents and children on his or her conscience there are a large number of people in the us who predict the end of society preach salvation through armed security the fact is that these are the very people who pose the threat to society in the first place the next waco may not be religious nutters but a political movement a splinter group of the klu klux klan taking over a schoolhouse in a black area for example and holding several hundred children hostage the only possible solution to such situations that can work is to prevent them arising no other government in the world has faced such a situation this is because no other government has so carelessly allowed high power weaponry to become avaliable to any little hitler or would be messiah to set themselves up as dictator in their own little empire phill hallam baker
