re: Waco - the FBI should be razed to the ground

Maybe this fiasco is why the FBI now focuses on college basketball and Aunt Becky.

If you are bored working at home, can listen to this old book promo tour from David Thibodeau. Youtube link

LINK

My takeaway from that Thibodeau video is that Koresh was a master people manipulator on the level of Charles Manson.

Right....BUT my inclination is to take everything he is saying with a huge grain of salt because he is still spewing the rhetoric that he heard every single day from Koresh.

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it seems you are just as guilty of bias for the government.

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Not really...obviously it wasn't a well run operation. BUT one of his first points against the government was that the undercover op to verify the weapons was an overreach....it really wasn't.

Now the way the "knock" warrant was executed was done 100% incorrectly, BUT what would you have done. They ATF agents literally thought going in that is was going to be a fire fight...which there was evidence that it could be. Also he says the first fire was at the dogs....I have a hard time believing that the ATF agents were that stupid, but it could have happened I guess....again no proof either way. He says the first part of the plan on the ATF side was to neutralize the dogs....I'd have to see that plan for myself....I'd guess the dogs were an after thought and probably were dealt with if/when they posed a threat.

The FBI sat outside of the compound for 2 months and gave them that long of an opportunity to walk out and end it peacefully.....which Koresh chose not to do (which I 100% believe is because he would have went to jail beyond a shadow of a doubt...so that was basically the last act of self preservation with no thought to his followers). Sure you can debate the psychological tactics they used during those two month, but on the other hand it was literally a couple of weeks where they were just sitting out there talking to them on the phone daily and Koresh's cultists did nothing. So again I'm not sure what they were supposed to do....hell they could still be sitting outside the compound today I suppose.

The fire that tragically ended the situation is certainly up for debate.....there isn't any hard evidence that leads me to believe 100% that either side for sure started it. I find it hard to believe that the FBI would have started that fire intentionally....especially with the current state of affairs between Americans in general and the FBI at the time. On the other hand it wouldn't be a stretch to believe that a cultist leader on the level of Manson or Jones could start it intentionally. Like I said there isn't compelling evidence either way for me to determine that though.

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Psychiatrist Bruce Perry, who volunteered to help counsel the children, told ABC News that it was immediately clear that the children were afraid. He said their resting heart rates were twice as high as expected for a normal child.

“While we watched them, we learned a lot about the belief system of the Davidians,” Perry said. “One of the things that all of these kids had learned to do, even the really young kids, was march and handle a gun.”

Former Davidian Joann Vaega, 6 years old at the time, was one of the children released early in the standoff. Once she was on the outside, she said, “Everything was different.”

“Trying to understand what it’s like to take a bath just seemed very scary to me, flushing toilets scared the bejeebers out of me,” Vaega continued. “I had no idea what the heck a basketball was.”


Former Davidian David Bunds said Koresh wouldn’t let his own children go. Believing himself to be the next messiah, Bunds said Koresh saw his children as “special” because they were “born from the message of God.”

On April 19, 1993, federal agents decided to make their move. An FBI agent got on the loudspeaker and told Koresh that this was his final chance to surrender. Then, agents began moving towards the compound with modified tanks and firing tear gas.

“The tank came into the front doors, the two double doors… and they just blew everything back,” said Thibodeau, who was inside the compound when the agents stormed in. “It was amazing to see a tank come through your living room.”

“There were no gas masks for the children so the parents were soaking towels in buckets of water,” said Clive Doyle, another Davidian inside during the siege.

Around 12 p.m., four hours into the tear gas operation, a set of fires broke out within the compound. The fire moved quickly engulfing everything in flames.


Davidians can be heard discussing “the lighting of fires” in bugging devices that the FBI had smuggled inside. An overhead aerial infrared camera shows the fire starting simultaneously in three different locations and a Congressional investigation concluded that Koresh and his followers set the fire themselves.

Despite this evidence, speculation over whether federal agents or the Davidians are responsible for the fire continues. Conspiracy theorists are likely spurred on by government missteps during the raid and the subsequent standoff. Thibodeau and others are still adamant that the fault remains with the FBI.

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Butchered from this article.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/survivors-1993-waco-siege-describe-happened-fire-ended/story?id=52034435


Yes, things got mishandled.

No, a cult raising kids to be "soldiers" is not harmless.

No, the government did not set these people on fire.

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Now the way the "knock" warrant was executed was done 100% incorrectly, BUT what would you have done

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Maybe a good idea for the ATF when they raided Henry McMahon (local gun dealer that dealt with the Davidians a ton) and he called Koresh while the ATF was there and Koresh invited the ATF over. Hey, maybe the ATF could of just went over and talked to them without a convoy and blood type written on their arms. Local sheriff did it all the time without even a weapon. Imagine that...

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The FBI sat outside of the compound for 2 months and gave them that long of an opportunity to walk out and end it peacefully.....which Koresh chose not to do (which I 100% believe is because he would have went to jail beyond a shadow of a doubt...so that was basically the last act of self preservation with no thought to his followers). Sure you can debate the psychological tactics they used during those two month, but on the other hand it was literally a couple of weeks where they were just sitting out there talking to them on the phone daily and Koresh's cultists did nothing. So again I'm not sure what they were supposed to do....hell they could still be sitting outside the compound today I suppose.

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FBI redid a lot of their negotiating tactics because of this and Ruby Ridge. They knew they were wrong.

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The fire that tragically ended the situation is certainly up for debate

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I'm more on the side it was probably a combination of the two. Maybe some were set by the CS, some set by the Davidians, probably more on the side of the Davidians setting it though. The CS though, I don't understand how anyone thought that was a good idea. The kids broke their backs from what happened to their bodies from the gas. They pumped in so much so fast, they literally ran out almost immediately when it was supposed to take a very long time period to pump it in. This is a gas we can't use outside in warfare and we used it indoors on children. The government also lied for a number years that they didn't use incendiary devices to deliver the CS, they finally told the truth in like 1999 that they did in fact use them.

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I can't see the ATF leadership doing that....they figured, correctly might I add, that this group was anit-establishment and anti government. They figured it could be a real hotspot that they would be walking into and the cult would be prepared if they did it on Koresh's terms. It's not hard to understand why they didn't do that.

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Oh this ATF definitely wouldn't of wanted to do that, they wanted Operation Showtime. They didn't involve local sources, they didn't want to take him in town, they went after media for doing stories on the compound and ruining their surprise. It was mismanaged to the fullest.

The part about neutralizing the dogs was true. That’s in all the reports and evidence. Now whether those were the first shots fired is up for debate.

I think a lot of what gets lost in this is that we are defending the Davidians and that's not it. It's that we expect more from our government than what they did here. They need to be held accountable and most of them simply were not besides a slap on the wrist. They were even defended by others in the same government.