luser awesley wrote that was the entire point to you what exactly did i claim i ve heard eye witness descriptions of tanks using their main guns to respond to sniper fire quite effectively i wasn t wrong i ve heard those descriptions if you re paying attention i ve mentioned that i saw the tanks with my own eyes but the main gun firing was an account i heard that helps people judge whether or not to kick in the to use your words bullshit filters stating that i claimed this is a falsehood later in the same post another part of my memories was that while most damaged building were burnt some were in rubble based on what i remember i was and am inclined to believe an old sarge or two fine now you are stating that you believe their claims or that you are inclined to see below for a stronger statement of your beliefs those claims are still ludicrous however previously awesley had written you can also read of the troops using grenade launchers prompting me to write to fire fragmentary grenades i doubt that as well to fire concussion grenades perhaps to fire tear gas certainly but you would be perfectly willing to let us believe they fired frags wouldn t you since it makes your other claim seem more plausible to which awesley replied john again strawman techniques do you feel you re losing it so you have to stretch what i said and knock that down what i read said nothing about what they fired and so i put nothing in there if you need some help let me know and i l take your side of this for a while you re not scoring here you re boring here but why did you mention grenade launchers at all because it supports the notion that the tanks shelled buildings and it supports that notion because it conjures images of troops launching fragmentary grenades but that too is ludicrous i wrote if tanks had fired their main guns in detroit people would have been screaming about it for the past two and half decades i would know about it awesley relied glad to know you re such an expert nice to hear some an authority i especially appreciate your basis of knowledge if it had happened you would have know it since you are such an authority you probably know that people did scream about an alleged massive cover up in the number of people killed in the detroit riot some claimed dead others said the offical number is but the concise columbia encyclopedia says it was several i ve also heard some things about that but i won t dare repeat them you d assert that i claimed they were truth yes if it happened i would have heard about it everybody would have army tanks don t fire their cannons in american cities in the s without it becoming common knowledge without minority leaders seizing on it and condemning it over and over again without civil libertarians saying this has gone far enough so yes my never hearing of it was the basis for my disbelieving the claim now i have more reasons to disbelieve it not one poster has written to say yes i lived in detroit at that time and everybody knew that the tanks had fired shells this is the usenet if it had happened somebody here would remember it furthermore your own research failed to come up with any support for the claim the claim is extraordinary and it has no supporting evidence extraordinary or not unless you count the brags of a couple of guardsmen shooting the shit i do not i wrote unless you also claim that the national guard managed to cover it up awesley wrote taking the tour after the riots it was pretty easy to tell the difference between army and guard troops or so i recall from years ago and i seem to recall it was the army running the tanks so it would have been an army cover up quibble fine it was an army cover up six years in the reserves has taught me the difference also but do you think that in two and half decades not one guilt ridden participant has come forward and said yes i shelled americans or i gave the orders to fire the cannons or i helped cover it up i wrote if your mind is open enough to believe that well good for you i prefer to live in reality and here in reality i find it hard to believe that those tanks even had any shells much less fired them awesley replied given the level in destruction in detroit i m quite willing to believe that they did fire their guns good then we can drop the junk about you not claiming that they did your belief fails a basic reality check why isn t it known awesley concludes now then we ve bored the shit out of anyone whose bothered to read this far and all you ve managed to say is that you don t believe the account i cited actually now we have established that i don t believe what you believe as well as why i don t believe it and if it s boring then i yield the last word to you if you want it you may say anything you like with impunity i am dropping the subject john l scott
