http://www.enterstageright.com/0999davidian.htm
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Set the Branch Davidians free
By Vin Suprynowicz
Documentary filmmaker Mike McNulty of Colorado, whose "Waco:
The Rules of Engagement" was nominated for an Academy Award, is
prepared to release a sequel this fall, presenting evidence that at least
six spent incendiary mortar rounds and "flash-bang devices" (the kind
that can start fires) were found in the main Mount Carmel church (not
just two, and not just in some outbuilding) following the final assault
by federal troops in Waco, Texas in April of 1993. The new film will
also document the assignment -- illegal without a special presidential
order -- of members of the Army's elite Delta Force to be present
during that final, deadly government assault, against American
civilians on American soil.
What a coincidence that the FBI
in the past week has admitted to
only as much as Mr. McNulty
and the Texas Rangers can
apparently now prove --
"spinning" these revelations with
the bizarre explanation that (only
two) incendiary mortar rounds
were fired, only into an outbuilding, hours before the fatal fire which
killed 80 people (including scores of innocent women and children.)
Of course, it was Mr. McNulty and his associates who first used the
Freedom of Information Act to pry from the federal government the
aerial "Forward-Looking Infrared" footage of the final Waco assault
-- the real assault, conducted on the back side of the building, out of
sight of commercial television cameras -- revealing what several
experts have interpreted as fully-automatic rifle fire into the building
from positions behind the armored vehicles as those converted tanks
moved in to knock down walls and staircases and spray in flammable
and disorienting CS gas, effectively making escape impossible for
most.
The idea that these are the first "Waco lies" to be revealed is mere
wishful thinking. To gain access to military helicopters for the initial
assault (by armed tax collectors supposedly investigating reports of
an unpaid $200 machine gun tax, but in fact mostly anxious to pull off
a dramatic televised raid shortly before their upcoming congressional
funding hearings), government agents had to lie on affidavits
contending they believed the Rev. David Koresh was running a
methamphetamine lab in his church. He was not, and no one ever
believed he was.
The government has long insisted there was no gunfire into the
building from the helicopters during the initial February raid, though
non-Branch Davidian witnesses allowed into the building before it
burned saw downward-splintered bullet holes through the ceiling, and
eyewitnesses have sworn to me they saw gunfire coming from those
helicopters.
Attorney General Janet Reno said the final assault had to be ordered
because of new evidence Koresh and others were abusing children in
the church, though the Justice Department later admitted there was
no such new evidence.
Some might be tempted to dismiss all this as ancient history. But let's
recall that most of the Branch Davidian survivors -- not their
assailants -- were put on trial following the fiery holocaust at Waco,
and seven were sentenced to decades in prison despite being
unanimously found innocent on every major, capital charge.
Yes, they're all still in jail, despite being unanimously acquitted of any
wrongdoing in the deaths of four federal agents -- agents killed in the
initial raid by bullets whose type and caliber the prosecutors were
never willing to identify.
And those sentences were meted out over the written objection of
jury forewoman Sarah Bain, a Texas schoolteacher, who tells me the
jury was shocked at the size of the sentences -- and who wrote to
the judge that the jury assumed the defendants would be released for
"time served" on the few minor, technical charges on which they were
convicted.
Writing in a recent Wall Street Journal, Dr. Alan Stone, who teaches
both law and psychiatry at Harvard University and who was brought
in by the Justice Department to write an independent review of the
handling of the Waco siege, says: "I do not know whether the FBI's
pyrotechnic devices, which the bureau has finally acknowledged,
actually started the fire. I do know that much of the gas was aimed at
the so-called bunker where most of the children suffocated. I do not
know whether Delta Force military advisers drove the tanks; I do
know the tank drivers departed from the agreed-upon plan and, for
reasons never explained, started crushing the compound. As in
Vietnam, the government decided to destroy the village in order to
save it. ...
"But there is one truth that should be obvious by now; the Branch
Davidians were more victims than culprits. ... Mr. Clinton should
pardon them. By now he must realize both that the government made
reckless mistakes at Waco and that those federal prisoners were
motivated by deeply held religious convictions."
Dr. Stone is correct. If Mr. Clinton can justify his recent pardon of a
dozen pro-independence Puerto Rican terrorists who set off of
bombs -- causing one police officer to lose an eye -- how can he
allow breakaway Seventh Day Adventist parishioners who merely
tried to defend themselves and their children when illegally attacked in
their home to continue serving sentences longer than those which we
impose on many a premeditated killer?
Set the Branch Davidians free. Indict their perjury-prone assailants.
[/quote]
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>
Set the Branch Davidians free
By Vin Suprynowicz
Documentary filmmaker Mike McNulty of Colorado, whose "Waco:
The Rules of Engagement" was nominated for an Academy Award, is
prepared to release a sequel this fall, presenting evidence that at least
six spent incendiary mortar rounds and "flash-bang devices" (the kind
that can start fires) were found in the main Mount Carmel church (not
just two, and not just in some outbuilding) following the final assault
by federal troops in Waco, Texas in April of 1993. The new film will
also document the assignment -- illegal without a special presidential
order -- of members of the Army's elite Delta Force to be present
during that final, deadly government assault, against American
civilians on American soil.
What a coincidence that the FBI
in the past week has admitted to
only as much as Mr. McNulty
and the Texas Rangers can
apparently now prove --
"spinning" these revelations with
the bizarre explanation that (only
two) incendiary mortar rounds
were fired, only into an outbuilding, hours before the fatal fire which
killed 80 people (including scores of innocent women and children.)
Of course, it was Mr. McNulty and his associates who first used the
Freedom of Information Act to pry from the federal government the
aerial "Forward-Looking Infrared" footage of the final Waco assault
-- the real assault, conducted on the back side of the building, out of
sight of commercial television cameras -- revealing what several
experts have interpreted as fully-automatic rifle fire into the building
from positions behind the armored vehicles as those converted tanks
moved in to knock down walls and staircases and spray in flammable
and disorienting CS gas, effectively making escape impossible for
most.
The idea that these are the first "Waco lies" to be revealed is mere
wishful thinking. To gain access to military helicopters for the initial
assault (by armed tax collectors supposedly investigating reports of
an unpaid $200 machine gun tax, but in fact mostly anxious to pull off
a dramatic televised raid shortly before their upcoming congressional
funding hearings), government agents had to lie on affidavits
contending they believed the Rev. David Koresh was running a
methamphetamine lab in his church. He was not, and no one ever
believed he was.
The government has long insisted there was no gunfire into the
building from the helicopters during the initial February raid, though
non-Branch Davidian witnesses allowed into the building before it
burned saw downward-splintered bullet holes through the ceiling, and
eyewitnesses have sworn to me they saw gunfire coming from those
helicopters.
Attorney General Janet Reno said the final assault had to be ordered
because of new evidence Koresh and others were abusing children in
the church, though the Justice Department later admitted there was
no such new evidence.
Some might be tempted to dismiss all this as ancient history. But let's
recall that most of the Branch Davidian survivors -- not their
assailants -- were put on trial following the fiery holocaust at Waco,
and seven were sentenced to decades in prison despite being
unanimously found innocent on every major, capital charge.
Yes, they're all still in jail, despite being unanimously acquitted of any
wrongdoing in the deaths of four federal agents -- agents killed in the
initial raid by bullets whose type and caliber the prosecutors were
never willing to identify.
And those sentences were meted out over the written objection of
jury forewoman Sarah Bain, a Texas schoolteacher, who tells me the
jury was shocked at the size of the sentences -- and who wrote to
the judge that the jury assumed the defendants would be released for
"time served" on the few minor, technical charges on which they were
convicted.
Writing in a recent Wall Street Journal, Dr. Alan Stone, who teaches
both law and psychiatry at Harvard University and who was brought
in by the Justice Department to write an independent review of the
handling of the Waco siege, says: "I do not know whether the FBI's
pyrotechnic devices, which the bureau has finally acknowledged,
actually started the fire. I do know that much of the gas was aimed at
the so-called bunker where most of the children suffocated. I do not
know whether Delta Force military advisers drove the tanks; I do
know the tank drivers departed from the agreed-upon plan and, for
reasons never explained, started crushing the compound. As in
Vietnam, the government decided to destroy the village in order to
save it. ...
"But there is one truth that should be obvious by now; the Branch
Davidians were more victims than culprits. ... Mr. Clinton should
pardon them. By now he must realize both that the government made
reckless mistakes at Waco and that those federal prisoners were
motivated by deeply held religious convictions."
Dr. Stone is correct. If Mr. Clinton can justify his recent pardon of a
dozen pro-independence Puerto Rican terrorists who set off of
bombs -- causing one police officer to lose an eye -- how can he
allow breakaway Seventh Day Adventist parishioners who merely
tried to defend themselves and their children when illegally attacked in
their home to continue serving sentences longer than those which we
impose on many a premeditated killer?
Set the Branch Davidians free. Indict their perjury-prone assailants.
[/quote]
------------------
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
