re who s next mormons and jews in article r os hil agate berkeley edu isaackuo spam berkeley edu isaac kuo writes in article c wia hr apollo hp com goykhman apollo hp com red herring writes the fbi claims on the basis of their intelligence reports that bd s had no plans to commit suecide they btw had bugged the place and were listening to bd s conversations till the very end koresh s attorney claims that based on some hours he spent talking to his client and others in the compound he saw no indication that bd s were contemplating suecide the survivors claim it was not a suecide it s not clear that more than one of the survivors made this claim it is clear that at least one of the survivors made the contradictory claim that bd members had started the fire no this is far from clear we only have the word of the fbi spokepeople that a survivor made this claim we have the contradictory word of the lawyers who spoke with the survivors individually that all of them agreed that they did not have a suicide pact and did not intentionally start the fire in the absense of any more evidence i don t see how we can decide who to believe furthermore its quite possible that there was no general suicide pact and that some small inner circle took it upon themselves to kill everyone else with the state of the area now we may never know what happened bd s were not contemplating suecide and there is no reason to believe they committed one no reason how about these two some of the survivors claimed that bd members poured fuel along the corridors and set fire to it the speed at which the fire spread is not inconsistent with this claim again we have only the word of the fbi on this claim the lawyers who have also talked to the survors deny that any of them are making that claim there was certainly a fire which killed most of the people in the compound there is a very very good possibility that the fbi did not start this fire this is a good reason to believe that the bd s did i will agree on your assessment as to the relative probabilities its more likely that the bd s started the fire than did the fbi but there is currently no way to decide what actually happened based on the publically available evidence which is nearly none even if the bd s were not contemplating suicide it is very possible that david koresh was convinced and thus convinced the others that this was not suicide it was the fulfilment of a profecy of some sort there are three possibilities other than the bd s self destruction a they are not dead but escaped via bunker etc from reports of the inadequacies of the tunnels and the bodies found i would rate this as highly unlikely b the fire was started by an fbi accident this is possible but it would be foolish of us to declare this outright until more evidence can back it sure it s possible that the armored vehicle knocked down a lantern which started the fire why was there a lit lantern in the middle of the day near the edge of the complex it s anecdotal evidence that has been contradicted by other escapees c the fire was started on purpose by the fbi this has been suggested by some on the net and i would rate this possibility as utterly ludicrous this is what we in sci skeptic would call an extraordinary claim and won t bother refuting unless someone gives any good evidence to back it up d the fire was an started accidentally by the bds i am truely amazed that i have heard or read of no one suggesting this possibility with all the tear gas and the lack of electical power in the compound and the adults wearing gas masks it had to have been chaotic inside i can easily image someone leaving a lamp too close to something or accidentally dropping a lamp or knocking one over with the winds it would have quickly gotten out of control so we are left with two reasonable possibilities that the fire was an fbi accident and that the fire was started by the bd i find the latter more likely based on the evidence i ve seen so far no i think that d is also quite reasonable i personally can t really asses any relative probablities to either of these probabilities although if forced to bet on the issue i would probably take an accident either fbi or bd over intential setting of the fire i would also like to add a comment related to the reports that bodies recovered had gunshot wounds the coroner was on the today show this morning and categorically denied that they ve reach any such conclusions he pointed out that under intense heat sufficient pressure builds up in the head that can cause it to explode and that this can look very much like a massive gunshot wound to the head which is quite consisted with te reports i ve read and heard in short there s been almost no evidence corroborating any of the many scenarios as to what happened on monday we should remain skeptical until more information is available isaac kuo isaackuo math berkeley edu o twinkle twinkle little sig keep it less than lines big bob garwood
