Waco

side story, while i was going through force protection training I worked with Gary Noesners son Rusty. Rusty was a Navy SEAL he left and started a service to help vets cope with ptsd at walter reed. he now runs "warpaints".

on topic: about 3 episodes in and enjoying it so far.

Wait, you're on the side of the crazy fucking prophet from god that kept a harem of teenage wives?

a c i d.f l y said:

I had just moved to Austin from Waco when this shit went down, and still had a lot of family who lived in Waco. I was maybe 11, my parents on the brink of divorce, we'd just gotten into an accident that totalled our station wagon, shit was fucked for our family and yet this shit took center stage. After Desert Storm and watching CNN all day when that became a thing.

Man it's fucked up how the media spins shit. Worse when it's twisted by the government.

If anything, I feel like I need to buy more guns and say "fuck tha poh leese" more often.

Side note, John Carter of Mars puts up an amazing performance. Ruth is forever going to be Ruth (from Ozark). And Supergirl, holy shit. Leguizamo, incredible as always. And Michael fucking Shannon, get that guy a fuckin medal.

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Did they acknowledge Bill Clinton ordered the strike and Janet was made a patsy and disposed of?

We know from white house leaks and records that Janet threatened to blame Bill if she wasn't given tenure.

Just wondering if that made it into the movie? Janet was pretty beside herself when she realized White House insiders were leaning toward saying she had final say on the raid.

She ended up pushing it back on Bill and then threatening to go further with details if she wasn't kept on as Atty General.

Fun history lesson.

Was it in the series? doubtful.

ronne said:

Wait, you're on the side of the crazy fucking prophet from god that kept a harem of teenage wives?

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David Koresh was absolutely an asshole, but the ATF was the bigger asshole here. Its possible for there to not be right and wrong, and simply be two wrongs. As despicable as Koresh's polygamist bullshit was, it skirted legality thanks to Texas law and shitty parents. In addition, the ATF had zero jurisdiction over it. They rolled into a compound with women and children, rather than quietly taking Koresh at numerous opportunities, because they wanted a PR coup (I mean, literally--they brought cameramen. They wanted to literally put out a skit of them playing soldier)...And they put all those people in danger for a bunch of low rent weapon charges that ended up not even being true. (The courts vacated the weapons charges...lol. So the only thing the ones arrested for were guilty of was defending themselves against ATF agents who, potentially, fired first).

And what's worse, they were completely incompetent during the raid itself--ignoring their own intelligence, and numerous other factors. The series is actually kind to them (The real reason there was a cease fire is because they essentially ran out of ammo and had to beg the cultists to let them leave). Like, I can't even begin to describe in a post how stupid, and belligerent and wrong the ATF was here. They are a horrible organization that never should have survived this. Koresh could have been handled by sending the Sheriff over to pick the guy up. Instead, nearly a dozen die in a shoot out the ATF clearly started for no reason. (As said, they didn't have jurisdiction over potential polygamy or statutory rape charges--these narratives were developed after the fact to help try and cover up the massive fuck up the ATF had birthed here).

Yea yea yea I get it, government agencies bad.

I'mm not saying tear gassing a building full of children was the right call, but if you think for a second that the outcome of all this wasn't exactly what the dude wanted when he started stockpiling weapons and brides then I don't know what to tell you.

Brings up the question of what does the govt do in the case when a cult leader has amassed arms and convinced his flock that these are the end times and they are staging to fight an apocalyptic battle. Nothing, I guess? Being a fucking weirdo isn't against the law.

I haven't seen this or even heard of it, wild as fuck, I'm down. Watched part of the first episode and saw the Ruby Ridge parts. That's hard to watch. So I haven't really seen how the series treats the Waco incident, but they are extremely kind to the feds in the Ruby Ridge incident. When you think about how much harm that incident alone has caused in our society over the years, it's kind of shocking. It's fucked up how every white supremacist douchebag in the world quotes Ruby Ridge as an influence, even more fucked up that they aren't wrong.

Guurn said:

I get it, bigomy bad and that is a crime, but not one you start a firefight over and certainly not one you burn their world to the ground over, killing children as an aside. There is nothing illegal about having hundreds of guns of all sorts as long as you didn't steal them. Even if he wanted his world to burn all they had to do is arrest him on a trip to town, not that they had any jurisdiction to do that.

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Not sure you understand how these cults work if you think he, as the leader, would just "go to town" by himself and make it easy to arrest him. They make their followers do anything that might expose them. They don't leave. And the problem is even people who want to defect can't. They are held their against their will.

It's not like there isn't good reason that law enforcement treats cults like these with extreme prejudice. Not sure where all this bigomy talk is coming from. Is that really what some of you think was the catalyst for this? These cults are human slavery. That's why they get targeted. Not because some guy has a few wives.

These people are maniacs and cannot be reasoned with. And they will kill every one of their followers before allowing any of them to leave, and maybe even a US congressman and some cameramen and reporters. Jonestown is the reason Waco escalated the way it did.

Regime said:

Lol he repeatedly went to town and drove to other cities by himself. When he was with people he was with a few band mates. It was a publicity stunt because the ATF were about to run out of funding.

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Mistakes were made but this level of conspiracy theory is a bit much.

Khane said:

Not sure you understand how these cults work if you think he, as the leader, would just "go to town" by himself and make it easy to arrest him. They make their followers do anything that might expose them. They don't leave. And the problem is even people who want to defect can't. They are held their against their will.

It's not like there isn't good reason that law enforcement treats cults like these with extreme prejudice. Not sure where all this bigomy talk is coming from. Is that really what some of you think was the catalyst for this? These cults are human slavery. That's why they get targeted. Not because some guy has a few wives.

These people are maniacs and cannot be reasoned with. And they will kill every one of their followers before allowing any of them to leave, and maybe even a US congressman and some cameramen and reporters. Jonestown is the reason Waco escalated the way it did.

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I'm not an expert on the situation. I know the fed's after action report showed that the group did indeed have a bunch of illegal weapons, which was suspected previously, and we definitely know the group's "end times" rhetoric. But it also found that yeah, he did actually go to town himself quite often, and the feds had numerous opportunities to take him alone. Would taking him alone have defused the situation? Fuck no, they'd have gone bananas. But the way it actually worked out is like worst case scenario. Maybe they would have turned into Jonestown or maybe worse, but instead their own govt set them on fire and burned children to death because the adults were suspected of crimes.

as an aside, that Jonestown stuff, there's an episode of Sword and Scale podcast that plays the tapes. Those tapes are really difficult to listen to. You can hear children screaming as the adults force them to drink the poison, mothers crying as their children die, people trying to get away, it's so bad.