Waco

Breakdown said:

I don’t even want to read past page one with you edgelord faggots defending a cult leader.

do you fAggots remember this was a few years after Jim Jones? You don’t think the piles of dead kool aid bodies played a part in this? You don’t think the government saw another cult leader amassing guns and building a giant compound off the grid and think, fuck we better get ahead of this before CNN is filming a bunch of dead kids?

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One way to stop a mass suicide, teargas and kill them all including kids for good measure so no future dividians stockpile legal weapons and fuck each other. Way to get ahead of the bad news.

Breakdown said:

do you fAggots remember this was a few years after Jim Jones? You don’t think the piles of dead kool aid bodies played a part in this?

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15 years is a few? Are you thinking of Ruby Ridge maybe? This was a few years after that.

And I think it was 100% ego that caused this. David's and whoever was calling the shots with the FBI.

LiquidDeath said:

I wish we could know who was telling the truth in all this,

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I am going to go out on a limb with this and say no one.

So I haven't watched this for a variety of reasons but I spent the middle to late 90's working as a research assistant to one of the nation's leading academic authorities about what happened at Waco, Dr. Stuart Wright. Dr. Wright's area of specialty was New Religious Movements, more colloquially known as "cults". We were consulted by the defense of Tim McVeigh because of how important Waco was as a point of origin for his actions leading the OKC bombing. I had at one time wanted to be in Federal Law Enforcement but this work changed that. I think everyone has covered everything pretty well here.. I also wrote and deleted a huge post earlier in the thread because who wants to read pages about this bullshit. Let me see if I can keep it succinct and finish it this time:

• Militarization of Law Enforcement was a process that occurred because of the confluence of the War on Drugs and the end of the Cold War; you had a bit of escalation on the cartel side plus all of this surplus equipment and hardware, all of these trained personnel and mind space. Lots of people didn’t know what to do next, and the War on Drugs provided operational space to practice what they had been training.
• The Initial ATF raid was planned as big and flashy as possible. There were budget hearings going on in Congress, and the ATF were trying to justify their SWAT team; at the time, there were like 17 different Federal agencies with SWAT teams. It’s why they didn’t talk to Koresh when he offered through another member to let them come inspect everything and why they called it “Operation: Showtime.”
• The raid also plays exactly into Branch Davidians (not who the folks at Waco were at the time of the raid but the name has stuck) eschatology. The ATF/FBI shows a continued, most likely deliberate, ignorance of these folks religious beliefs, literally the most important thing in their lives, throughout the entire event. Big Government, little people.
• No one in the thread is apologizing for Koresh, who isn’t *exactly* a pedophile but was still sexually abusing children because of his [super weird] religious beliefs. Even if you are the human messiah, wait until you are the actual last man on earth before “spreading your seed” wack-job.”
• It seemed clear at the time we were working that the first shots came from the ATF agents shooting the dogs in the kennel. This was standard operational practice at the time and set off the gun battle to follow.
• When the FBI took over, it seems clear to me at least that there was an unspoken agenda to kill the Branch Davidians in revenge for the ATF LEO deaths; at the least they had a Western (tactical) approach with the hostage negotiations, using them to set up a tactical advantage on the hostage takers, not an Eastern/NY approach of using the negotiations of trying to getting the everyone, including the hostage takers, out alive.
• There was also two major theories of police corruption, top-down and bottom-up; we had to develop a man-in-the-middle theory of ‘corruption’ to explain how we felt the SAIC, Bob Ricks, was channeling the situation towards a tactical result: They were ordering events on the ground to provide the results they wanted, and then feeding information back to Janet Reno to get go ahead/permission to do the things they already had planned.
• The recordings of the actual FBI negotiations are terrible and clear they aren’t trying to get the Davidians to walk away but instead trying to wear them down (as if the blaring rock music and sounds of rabbits being slaughtered weren't enough): the clear Western/Tactical Approach. They say the most offensive things, and are obviously just trying to offend Koresh. It really sounds like they are trying to keep him in or wear him out; He is already wounded, and he is trying to buy time to get his message down, because he realizes he isn't going to walk away from this. I wish I had kept them, or copies of them so they could be released in full on the internet. We got them from a guy in New England who had them from a FOIA request, IIRC? This more than anything was what broke my desire to be an FBI agent, the whole package, realizing they were just maneuvering this guy so they could get clearance from above to kill him and his followers.
• The final day has been walked over to death; I think the Davidians probably set the fires, I think it was hugely irresponsible to try to force them out, I think when you have the Texas Rangers walking away because you are destroying evidence you have done something terribly wrong, and I think it sets the stage for more narrative-controlled operations in the years to come.

Vandyn said:

It's ok to say that both sides were at fault. Unfortunately it resulted in people dead, including little kids who were the most innocent in all of this.

There's a old documentary for this on Prime that more covers the investigation and hearings. Some of the stuff in that is eye opening (FLIR footage proves gunfire coming from the tanks during the final raid for example).

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In that documentary, they think that there are sharpshooters behind the compound shooting down into Mount Carmel on the side from which the press was kept away. Many of those died in the fire actually died of bullet wounds rather than smoke inhalation or burns. The coroner decided in these cases that they were self-inflicted, however, IIRC.

Lithose said:

Best way to prevent mass suicide is to shoot a house with women and children in it for 2 fucking hours.

Breakdown has ATF logic down perfectly. What an enormous faggot you are.

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He is one Google away from finding out Jonestown was in 1978 and this was in 1993, literally two different epoches apart, and there was no threat of suicide from the Branch Davidians at all. Did Breakdown think that punching holes in the windy building and then filling it full of flammable CS Gas (not what I believe set the fire, btw) was a way to stop mass suicide? That's a special kind of stupid.

The ATF has been known for at least 40 years as the lowest tier of Federal Law Enforcement; they do all kinds of stuff that no one else wants to do, and accept(ed) all kinds of candidates no one else wanted because of that kind of street-level work with gangs and guns. They needed a kind of street trash that just wouldn't do at FBI.

a c i d.f l y said:

Me. That's who wants to read pages. I appreciate this insight. Very cool.

What makes you think they set the fires? Would you say these folks were more or less the same mindset as the Jonestown Massacre? The show definitely portrayed them more in the light of "we really don't want to die".

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The Davidians weren't a suicidal group. I don't think they didn't set the fires to burn themselves to death; I believe they set the fires defensively to keep the APCs back.

There is reportedly audio snippets captured from the Davidians about "pouring the gasoline" etc. and with the holes punched in the complex on a windy day in central Texas, its a wind-tunnel fire hazard death trap. I also believe that is confirmed by one or more of the Davidian survivors that they set the fires. I understand the impulse to believe something larger and more sinister at work but down that road there be 9/11 jet fuel dragons.

I always figured they 'set the fires' in that they were using candles and lanterns for light because the power was out. Then didn't extinguish them when the feds threw in flammable gas. But I also thought the flash-bangs into a house full of flammable gas can't be ruled out. Maybe they both set the fires.

jayrebb said:

Such as... shelling of a residential building with military tanks.

Give me a fucking break.

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Well, of course; do we really need to talk about how horrible it is that they senselessly murdered almost a hundred people, including 25 (fake edit: Google says 26) children (IIRC? I get the number of kids between Waco and OKC mixed up, its eerie how close they were to each other, among other things)? The "larger and more sinister" things I am talking about are the proposed snipers at the back of the compound, or faking audio evidence of the Davidians setting the fires themselves, or threatening the surviving Davidians into saying things to exonerate the Feds.

There is a whole line of conspiracy that starts/picks up here, with the Texas Rangers angrily leaving the joint task force because the Feds are destroying too much evidence for normal criminal prosecutions, except the front door, which is probably locked in a Raiders-of-the-Ark style warehouse with the Ark of the Covenant and leads straight to OKC with John Doe #2 and so much stuff about that case (bit of Trivia, FBI SAIC Bob Ricks from Mount Carmel stand-off was also in charge of the OKC Field Office in the Murrah Building and was also SAIC for the OKC bombing investigation).

The horrible, tragic nature of what happened at Waco is a stipulated fact and not what I was trying to mention without specifically giving voice to them. Any time you have an event like this, involving the government, things spring up and never die: JFK, the Moon landing FFS, 9/11, all of these events develop their own mythology and there is no point in breathing more life into them than necessary.

What actually happened is gruesome and terrible enough on its face, for just the reason you state.

Hoss said:

I always figured they 'set the fires' in that they were using candles and lanterns for light because the power was out. Then didn't extinguish them when the feds threw in flammable gas. But I also thought the flash-bangs into a house full of flammable gas can't be ruled out. Maybe they both set the fires.

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Arson investigators found they started in three different places almost simultaneously. Its a far more neat narrative if the government set the fires but that's not what I believe happened in this case. I think the Davidians thought they were being overwhelmed by the APCs, which were modified Gulf-War era Bradleys (It was noted by Tim McVeigh they were the same vehicles he used to drive) and lit the fires to hold them off. It can be determined what accelerant started the fires and where, and if CS Gas started the fires vs. poured gasoline/kerosene, the investigators coming after the fact would be able to tell the difference. I carry no water for the government; they are the antagonists in almost every way but they didn't start the fires. They just didn't care who lived.