-Caveat Lector-
>From www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol,html
By Justin Raimondo
> September 1, 1999
>
> CRIMES OF THE EMPIRE:
> FROM WACO TO KOSOVO
>
> The news that the FBI has been lying all this time about what happened at Waco
> is not really all that shocking. Only the mainstream media and the elites
> believed the government's story, which is why they were content to bury the
> matter and forget it. After all, Koresh was a Christian nut and possibly a
> child-molester who had an unhealthy interest in guns: enough said, case closed.
> But the animus against Christianity in Washington D.C. and the New York media
> center is not shared by the rest of the country. Americans were skeptical, to
> say the least, about the official story, and the latest revelations have merely
> confirmed their suspicions. Not only the FBI but also the Justice Department
> have now been implicated in a massive cover-up. I don't normally dwell on
> American domestic affairs unless the subject is directly related to U.S. foreign
> policy, but in this case the line between domestic and international affairs has
> become blurred. For what the new revelations indicate is growing evidence of a
> direct role played by the US military in the Waco tragedy. Just as the US
> military was ordered to bomb the Christian Serbs back to the Stone Age and drive
> them out of Kosovo, so the same forces struck the Koreshian Christians on that
> fateful day in 1993. At Waco, the US government went to war against its own
> citizens.- and why should a government that targets civilians in Serbia and Iraq
> be any more merciful toward its own civilians? Waco and Kosovo: two fronts in
> the same war pitting a ruthless power-mad US government against all who dare to
> defy its will.
>
> A FOUR-LETTER WORD
>
> "How dare they say that this is not a free country!" Thus President Clinton, in
> the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, scolded those who see the federal
> government as a tyranny. The only proper answer to our clueless
> Commander-in-chief, then and now, is a simple four-letter word that speaks
> volumes about the age we are living in: Waco.
>
> EMBLEM OF TYRANNY
>
> In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, we were not supposed to talk about
> Waco. Yet the memory of it not only persisted, but grew stronger, in spite of
> the smear campaign against anyone who dared raise the subject. In the minds of
> millions, the Waco massacre is emblematic of the new age we are entering, the
> grisly symbol of a government thoroughly corrupted and even maddened by power.
>
> FEBRUARY, 28, 1993: A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY
>
> On the morning of February 28, 1993, two trailers with no markings pulled up in
> front of David Koresh's sanctuary, in Waco, Texas, known to the inhabitants as
> Mt. Carmel. Although the building was described by the authorities and a
> receptive media as "the Compound," in reality it was an ordinary unfortified
> wooden structure, not a mountain fastness or a military bunker, but a home.
> Within minutes, that home was under assault from more than 70 heavily armed
> bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) commandos. Faces obscured by ski
> masks, they rushed the front door, shouting and shooting.
>
> "GUILTY" OF SELF-DEFENSE
>
> The Davidians' answer to this deadly assault was to fight back, to fight for
> their lives and in defense of their children. When the dust cleared, four BATF
> agents were dead, and several others wounded. While there is considerable
> evidence that some of these causalities may have been caused by "friendly fire,"
> these deaths were deemed "murder" by US Attorney General Janet Reno, and
> Koresh's surviving followers were put on trial. The Davidian defendants were all
> acquitted of the charge of conspiracy to murder federal agents: five were
> convicted of voluntary manslaughter, which the judge in the case defined as
> taking action "in the sudden heat of passion caused by adequate provocation."
>
> THE JURORS SPEAK
>
> For defending their homes and their families against a government goon squad,
> the convicted Davidians were sentenced to 40 years in jail. This was clearly not
> the intention of the jurors. As Sara L. Bain, jury foreman, put it in a letter
> to the judge: "Even five years is too severe a penalty for what we believed to
> be a minor charge." She went on to say that: "The federal government was
> absolutely out of control here. We spoke in the jury room about the fact that
> the wrong people were on trial, that it should have been the ones that planned
> the raid and orchestrated it and insisted on carrying out this plan who should
> have been on trial." Instead of being brought to justice, Larry Potts, the FBI
> official in charge of this murderous operation, was promoted to
> second-in-command of the Bureau!
>
> THE MURDERERS AMONG US
>
> The official BATF report on Waco, a shameless whitewash, is dedicated to the
> memory of the four BATF agents who lost their lives in the initial shoot-out. No
> mention is made of the Davidians who died that day. Perry Jones was shot as he
> stood in the doorway, behind his son-in-law, David Koresh. Jaydean Wendel had
> been nursing her newborn child, and had just put the baby down when she fell in
> a fail of bullets. Pete Gent was shot as he clambered up the water tower, picked
> off by BATF snipers. Winston Blake and Peter Hipsman were killed by gunfire that
> penetrated the house. Michael Schroeder was ambushed on his way from a warehouse
> to Mt. Carmel. Their murderers are walking the streets, not only free but in
> positions of power.
>
> THE AMERICAN WAY
>
> From the beginning of the long siege of Mt. Carmel, the American public was
> awash in a relentless wave of propaganda vilifying Koresh as a latter-day
> Charles Manson and his followers as demonic automatons wired to kill. And yet,
> when the BATF descended on the Davidians' home, Koresh came to the door,
> unarmed, and yelled out: "What do you want?" The simplicity of this gesture, a
> plaintive cry followed by "There are women and children in here," belies the
> Satanic image of Koresh painted in such vivid hues by the Establishment media.
> Instead of a demon, he seems vulnerable, hapless, and all too human as he stands
> there, shocked by the fulfillment of his own prophecy. As if to underscore their
> peculiarly American naiveté, one of the first things Koresh and his followers
> did after the smoke cleared was to call 911! The tape of that call has Koresh
> saying "I don't care who they are. Nobody is going to come to my home, with my
> babies around, shaking guns around, without a gun back in their face. That's
> just not the American way."
>
> A DYNAMIC ENTRY
>
> Not the American way, but a new way, the BATF/Reno/Clinton way. The America
> Koresh remembered did not allow jackbooted government thugs to storm into
> private homes; but we are living in a new era, where such outrages are
> euphemized and even glorified by the Orwellian language of BATF bureaucrats, who
> in a report described their murderous Sunday morning blitzkrieg as a "dynamic
> entry."
>
> THE "CRIMES" OF DAVID KORESH
>
> The official government explanation for the BATF raid has changed so many times
> that it is difficult to keep count: first we were told by Janet Reno that the
> Koreshians were engaged in massive child abuse. It was revealed at the trial,
> however, that a nine-week investigation by the Texas Bureau of Child Protective
> Services in 992 had failed to come up with any evidence of abuse. Then we were
> told that Koresh was stockpiling weapons: but according to the BATF's own
> report, there were no suspected illegal weapons per se on the premises, but only
> speculation that at some time the Koreshians might have the wherewithal,
> equipment, and intent to convert legal parts into illegal automatic weapons.
>
> THE PROPAGANDA BLITZ
>
> The 51-day siege of Mt. Carmel was accompanied by a barrage of propaganda, all
> dutifully echoed by the "mainstream" media, that turned the most blatant act of
> govern-sponsored terrorism in US history into a hostage drama. This was based on
> the fiction that Koresh was somehow holding his devoted followers against their
> will, and much was made by Janet Reno of the alleged danger posed by Koresh to
> the children. On day 2 of the siege, when the FBI took over from the BATF, they
> brought in the "Hostage Rescue Team," and declared that their goal was to get
> the "hostages" out, as if this somehow established the fiction once and for all.
> Somehow the American people had to be convinced that the violent persecution of
> a tiny religious sect was not only necessary, but positively righteous. The only
> way to do it was to smear them as gun-crazy child-molesting fanatics, mentally
> enslaved to an authoritarian leader.
>
> TOUGH LOVE
>
> In fact, the children of Mt. Carmel, as shown in a video made by Koresh, seemed
> well adjusted and happy. Interacting freely and unselfconsciously with Koresh,
> they are clearly not at all frightened or even much in awe of the Prophet. When
> Janet Reno cited them as the motivating factor that led to the raid, she lied to
> the American people – and the media obligingly broadcast this lie far and wide.
> We were asked to believe that it was Butch Reno's late-blooming maternal
> instinct that drove her to mobilize a small army against Koresh and his extended
> family. If so, then the old saw about killing the thing you love applies here,
> and with a vengeance.
>
> TRUTH HELD HOSTAGE
>
> It was, we were told, another "hostage crisis." But the official rationale for
> the siege began to unravel when the first of the "hostages" came out, two
> elderly women. Both were immediately handcuffed and booked for murder. Some
> "hostages"!
>
> THE CRIES OF SLAUGHTERED RABBITS
>
> And what about the children of Mt. Carmel, for whose sake the raid was
> supposedly launched? They were subjected to an endless assault by their alleged
> protectors and would-be rescuers. The water and electricity were immediately
> turned off, as were all phone lines except for a line to the FBI. The children
> were also subjected to loud rock music, glaring floodlights, recordings of
> bizarre Tibetan chants, the cries of slaughtered rabbits, and other sounds meant
> to demoralize, disorient, and deprive them of sleep.
>
> "BIBLE BABBLE"
>
> Out of concern for "the children," Reno's relentless siege employed every tactic
> but that of rational negotiation. But since Koresh spoke the language of faith,
> specifically Christian faith, the militant secularists in Reno's Justice
> Department and the FBI had no way to communicate with them. With Koresh alluding
> to Biblical passages to illustrate his millennialist and specifically Adventist
> theology – FBI negotiators contemptuously called it "Bible-babble" – the feds
> were determined to bring matters to a head as soon as possible. The longer the
> siege lasted, the more it was possible that Koresh might maneuver them into an
> indefinite stalemate – which they would not allow.
>
> NO STALEMATE
>
> The idea of a stalemate was intolerable to the feds for two reasons: 1) it would
> undermine federal authority. If Koresh could stand up to the federal colossus,
> then other dissident groups might get ideas. 2) If Koresh and his followers were
> allowed to live through the siege, their testimony would result in the
> indictment, not of the Davidians, but of their persecutors.
>
> ARMAGEDDON
>
> According to the BATF report, at the end of March FBI officials began to
> contemplate sterner measures, including "inserting tear gas" into the
> "compound." This was duly approved by Reno and the President. As tanks rigged up
> with gas-dispensing nozzles advanced on the cluster of wood-frame buildings, the
> FBI used megaphones to announce; "This is not an assault! Do not fire weapons!"
> For some reason, the Davidians did not believe them. They dared to defend
> themselves against what looked to them like the prelude to the Armageddon Koresh
> had so often conjured.
>
> THE FIRE THAT TIME
>
> The Davidian gunfire bounced off the tanks' heavy armor. The feds succeeded in
> puncturing the walls of the house, and inserted gas into the buildings. Although
> the official line is that the intent was to flush the Davidians out of the
> structure, what occurred was the demolition of the building with the Davidians
> still inside it, and the sudden outbreak of a fire. The blaze spread quickly,
> whipped up by a fierce wind and the puncture holes in the buildings. Who started
> the fire? It is an article of faith in the Justice Department and the White
> House that Koresh immolated himself and his own followers. The survivors of Waco
> say that it was the tanks that started the blaze, as they came crashing through
> the walls, knocking over Coleman lanterns the Davidians used for illumination.
> Bales of straw had been stacked up on the walls, to deflect bullets, and these
> ignited the spark that ended in a fiery holocaust. The FBI's recent admission
> that it used "pyrotechnic" devices, and new evidence that gunfire rained down on
> the Davidians from helicopters hovering overhead, completes the grisly picture.
>
> CONSPIRACY THEORY
>
> Others note that, early that fateful morning, the FBI asked the Parkland
> Memorial Hospital Burn Unit to prepare for several burn victims. FBI agents were
> issued fireproof vests, while a helicopter equipped with a hi-tech
> fire-detecting equipment circled like a vulture overhead. Did the FBI have
> reason to expect the sudden outbreak of a fire that day? To believe this – we
> were told by our respectable pundits on the right as well as the left – was to
> endorse the "conspiracy" view of Waco. It was to descend into the deepest,
> darkest fever-swamp of right-wing paranoia, to wallow in the muck of the
> blackest reaction. Such a thought was a hate crime, a demagogic appeal to
> dangerous and bigoted Angry White Men – and yet, some persisted in daring to
> think it.
>
> JUST IMAGINE
>
> Imagine the reaction if Waco had been situated in, say, Bosnia, and its
> assailants were Serbian separatists instead of BATF and FBI commandos.
> Christiane Amanpour would have been right there on the spot, wailing and moaning
> about the slaughter of the innocents against a backdrop of smoking ruins. Susan
> Sontag would have been on the next flight out, and the United Nations would have
> had a war crimes tribunal up and running before her plane touched the ground.
>
>
> Check out Justin Raimondo's article, “China and the New Cold War”
>
> “Behind the Headlines” appears Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with special
> editions as events warrant.
> Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com. He is also the author
> of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement
> (with an Introduction by Patrick J. Buchanan), (1993), and Into the Bosnian
> Quagmire: The Case Against US Intervention in the Balkans (1996). He is an
> Adjunct Scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute, in Auburn, Alabama, a
> Senior Fellow at the Center for Libertarian Studies, and writes frequently for
> Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. He is the author of An Enemy of the
> State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (forthcoming from Prometheus Books).
>
>
>
>
>
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A<>E<>R
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