|
BEYOND THE VOICE OF REASON
by Dr. Fran Haga A Criminology Professor's
Study Of Waco In her heavily-documented 28-page report, Dr. Fran Haga - a criminology professor at Pembroke State University - wrote of her extensive investigation of what took place during and after the first Waco raid. While the report was submitted to the
congressional committee investigating Waco in 1995, its contents have never had
wide public exposure.
One key factor in the Waco "myth" promoted by
the Clintons Administration is that the Branch Davidians as a whole - and not
just their leader David Koresh - were a bunch of antigovernment extremists.
However, Dr. Haga notes that nearly half of the
women in Koresh's group were British citizens - hardly the stereotype of
a bunch of rural right-wing extremists. Dr. Haga's extensive research led her to the
conclusion that on-the-scene efforts had moved from the realm of law enforcement
to the realm of warfare - with the traditional extreme regard by American police
for the lives of women and children caught up in barricaded-suspect scenarios
disappearing into what she termed wartime "rules of engagement" two years before
the award-winning dissident film on Waco with a similar title came out.
Dr. Haga's view of the result was that
"... unidentified warring groups of men became
locked in
a lethal combat. Focused on each other, they created a lethal environment where the deaths of the mothers and the children were simply collateral damage. Untargeted." Or, as Dr. Haga also put it:
"Legally, the individual rights of mothers and
children
cannot be ignored in a law enforcement operation against a home. Traditionally, homes have been protected because they are historically recognized as the final refuge of mothers and children." Her sharp condemnation of the systematic use of
armored vehicles to cave in much of the home of the Branch Davidians as if all
those inside were now legitimate targets of deadly force.
|
