Abra


David Koresh did not insite bad things. That is what our media who by the way was forced to stay 2 miles away for thier safty. The sheriff of thsat county knew him on a 1st name basis. The ATF did not notify the sheriffs office. Who told a minister friend of mine all he would of had to do was pick up the phone and ask him to come in and talk. Who incited something thier was our OWN Govt. using the ATF.We were being sent a message. David Koresh is who they wanted to be thier scapegoat. So i know you meant no harm. But don't slander a person who was set up..Miles

I’ll be the first to agree with you that the government really screwed up on that one big time. They had no right to approach it the way they did. I’m sure they could have handled the situation much better with just a tiny bit of intelligence.

But at the same time don’t try to make a hero out of David Koresh. The man was a sicko and was fully responsible for what happened to himself and his followers.

There’s no reason that a truly godly person needs to be hiding from the government. There was absolutely no reason not to surrender and come out at the first opportunity. The man was mentally ill.

Don’t make excuses for him. He had nothing to do with the biblical God. Yet it was that mythology that he USED to coerce his followers. He’s still a prime example of how religion and BLIND FAITH can be extremely dangerous no matter who you want to point the finger of blame onto.

Abra

They shot at him. The whole group were scared to death.He kept nobody thier that did not want to be. We have all the tapes from beginning to end. The most intrigueing one was when the firefight 1st started. The ATf was shootong through the compound blindly. They said they were only defending themselves. Well at that fight ABC news showed it live. The ATF was hiding between cars. Now if they were firing at the ATF wouldn't you think you would hear glass breaking. the sound of bullets hitting cars, dust from the ground from bullets. They were not firing back. Abra. Also did you know they said anyone could come out and be safe. Well one man did out the back unarmed and went to climb over a barbed wire fence. What happened they gunned him down and he fell back and they left him thier for 5 days. Would you come out after you had just seen that when they were promiced safty?The what usually happens at a crime scene? They rope it off and check every little thing. No not at waco I bet many reading this can remember bulldozers going in and loading it all up in cluding all the bodies. Don't say what you do not know. AQbra. Just because they called them religioous vfanatics and David was into guns means nothing..Miles

I'm not far from Waco and we had alot of local coverage that many in other parts didn't see and I know some that were as close to it as they could get. He was delusional plain and simple. there was abuse there. and he needed to be stopped. he had nothing to do with christian beliefs only his own.

you can debate all day about who started what. ATF heard a shot fired from in there and the members said ATF fired first.

they taught things illegal and wrong to the children (who were interviewed)

fact is there are radicals in every belief

Just alittle bit more. David had contacted some Yahwists to learn more about what we believe to take it back and teach on it. He did not see himself as some Messiah figure untill the end when he lost it. Now today that group is still going and IMO they are the ones who are dangerous after all that has happened. They claim thier new leader is a end time prophet. They have no church building or anything of the sort. The communicate through the net without anyone paying attention. They will not tell you anything on thier web site. They have what David wrote on it. if you want just to see it and decide for yourselves what you think it is ay www.sevenseals.com notice the copyright year. FYI Miles

yellowrose did you see in your local coverage the guy who was bent over backwards on a barbed wire fence..Miles

I saw it yes. I'm about an hour from it and was in waco at the time visiting a friend. the media spins things one way or another. mistakes were made...i will give you that much. but he was a psycho and i have heard the survivors speak as well as those that escaped from there before that happened that said he was crazy. do you realize what happened on both sides??? yes it was awful to have had happened. but there is more than meets the eye. especially when i saw a child explain on tv that she was taught by them how to put a gun in her mouth so she would die and not be a vegetable.

he started with the 7 day adventists with good intentions then got power hungry or crazy. but like i said...there are radicals in all beliefs etc

the problem started with the ATF trying to serve a warrant after surveilance of them. the media broke a stpry about a possible raid and the ATF had to step it up. the ATF claim the heard a shot..which started it and the members said the ATF started it. he said/she said unless you were there yourself

Yellowrose

Since you live in that area or did could you tell me if thier was even 1 single charge proven against him of what they said was happenening before the raid? Miles

that was the purpose of going there was to serve a WARRANT because of what witnesses and former members have said and after watching them for a while. there were no charges as of yet...it was to serve a warrant and got out of hand because of the media

miles....this might help. it is the closest o what i believe happened from being near it. i'm certainly not saying it was done right but he needed to be stopped

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_Davidian

child services was thier just a couple of days before and found no abuse. So why did they raid?

Jim Jones is another prime example of basically the same thing.

again...it's a radical

the weapons, reports of abuse from former members etc. those things are easy to hide though. but if they weren't guilty of something, why teach a child the proper way to shoot herself?

again...i think mistakes were made and was escalated because of the media running a story that would have tipped them off. it was to serve a warrant to investigate inside etc

why would they want to teach a child such a thing. Former member were usually thrown out for thier immoral behavior and would retaliate by claiming abuse. Child services knew that compound well yet never found anything wrong. We have become a society that has been programmed not to question the govt. I wonder what that is called? Right infront of our faces. Randy weaver the news covered it but then dropped it because of the backlash they would get. Now Randy was a radical. He believed up thier that his land was his and if he did not want somebody on it and they did not leave he could force him. So when the FBI i think went out thier he did shoot at them. But Randy got aquitted and won millions of dollars in a law suit. Why? For the death of his son. Now this is our govt. at it's best. His 14 year old son ran from the house going to a detached garage. A sniper killed him. Is that not at least abuse. I think the guy should be upon 1st degree murder charges myself. If he is that good and could not tell that was a kid something is wrong. randy is going around the country with the money he got and talking about what happened. Now just how much coverage did that get compared to that Holiday girl down in Aruba? Fair press right?

what you need to understand about him was he created his own religion based on power and insanity. he made his own rules and either convinced ot threatened the current members not to talk to the CPS. it was the former members that got out before that told of abuse and the teachings and weapons.

i personally don't care much for the media and take things with a grain of salt and try to learn as much on my own as possible

Ok Yellowrose. Her is the official report. Strikingly they need 400 officers for this family just like Waco. Must be a raid number.
I would say everyone should remember this as it is even proven in the report the FBI tried to cover things up and they were the ones who started it.

You think the chr-stian religion is exempt from something like this. But I would not bet on it..Shalom..Miles


The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 1995, p. A14.

Ruby Ridge: The Justice Report

By James Bovard

The 1992 confrontation between federal agents and the Randy Weaver family in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, has become one of the most controversial and widely discussed examples of the abuse of federal power. The Justice Department completed a 542-page investigation on the case last year but has not yet made the report public. However, the report was acquired by Legal Times newspaper, which this week placed the text on the Internet. The report reveals that federal officials may have acted worse than even some of their harshest critics imagined.

This case began after Randy Weaver was entrapped, as an Idaho jury concluded, by an undercover Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agent to sell him sawed-off shotguns.

While federal officials have claimed that the violent confrontation between the Weavers and the government began when the Weavers ambushed federal marshals, the report tells a very different story. A team of six U.S. marshals, split into two groups, trespassed onto Mr. Weaver's land on Aug. 21, 1992. One of the marshals threw rocks at the Weaver's cabin to see how much noise was required to agitate the Weaver's dogs. A few minutes later, Randy Weaver, Kevin Harris, and 13-year-old Sammy Weaver came out of the cabin and began following their dogs. Three U.S. marshals were soon tearing through the woods.

At one point, U.S. Marshal Larry Cooper "told the others that it was ['expletive deleted'] for them to continue running and that he did not want to 'run down the trail and get shot in the back.' He urged them to take up defensive positions. The others agreed.... William Degan ... took a position behind a stump...."

As Sammy Weaver and Kevin Harris came upon the marshals, gunfire erupted. Sammy was shot in the back and killed while running away from the scene (probably by Marshal Cooper, according to the report), and Marshal Degan was killed by Mr. Harris. The jury concluded that Mr. Harris's action was legitimate self-defense; the Justice report concluded it was impossible to know who shot first.

Several places in the report deal with the possibility of a government coverup. After the firefight between the marshals and the Weavers and Mr. Harris, the surviving marshals were taken away to rest and recuperate. The report observed, "We question the wisdom of keeping the marshals together at the condominium for several hours, while awaiting interviews with the FBI. Isolating them in that manner created the appearance and generated allegations that they were fabricating stories and colluding to cover up the true circumstances of the shootings."

After the death of the U.S. marshal, the FBI was called in. A source of continuing fierce debate across America is: Did the FBI set out to apprehend and arrest Randy Weaver and Kevin Harris -- or simply to kill them? Unfortunately, the evidence from the Justice Department report is damning in the extreme on this count.

The report noted, "We have been told by observers on the scene that law enforcement personnel made statements that the matter would be handled quickly and that the situation would be 'taken down hard and fast.' " The FBI issued Rules of Engagement that declared that its snipers "can and should" use deadly force against armed males outside the cabin.

The report noted that a member of an FBI SWAT team from Denver "remembered the Rules of Engagement as 'if you see 'em, shoot 'em.' " The task force report noted, "since those Rules which contained 'should' remained in force at the crisis scene for days after the August 22 shooting, it is inconceivable to us that FBI Headquarters remained ignorant of the exact wording of the Rules of Engagement during that entire period."

The report concluded that the FBI Rules of Engagement at Ruby Ridge flagrantly violated the U.S. Constitution: "The Constitution allows no person to become 'fair game' for deadly force without law enforcement evaluating the threat that person poses, even when, as occurred here, the evaluation must be made in a split second." The report portrays the rules of engagement as practically a license to kill: "The Constitution places the decision on whether to use deadly force on the individual agent; the Rules attempted to usurp this responsibility."

FBI headquarters rejected an initial operation plan because there was no provision to even attempt to negotiate the surrender of the suspects. The plan was revised to include a negotiation provision -- but subsequent FBI action made that provision a nullity. FBI snipers took their positions around the Weaver cabin a few minutes after 5 p.m. on Aug. 22. Within an hour, every adult in the cabin was either dead or severely wounded -- even though they had not fired a shot at any FBI agent.

Randy Weaver, Mr. Harris, and 16-year-old Sara Weaver stepped out of the cabin a few minutes before 6 p.m. to go to the shed where Sammy's body lay. FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi shot Randy Weaver in the back. As Randy Weaver, Mr. Harris, and Sara Weaver struggled to get back into the cabin, Vicki Weaver stood in the cabin doorway holding a baby. Agent Horiuchi fired again; his bullet passed through a window in the door, hit Vicki Weaver in the head, killing her instantly, and then hit Mr. Harris in the chest.

At the subsequent trial, the government claimed that Messrs. Weaver and Harris were shot because they had threatened to shoot at a helicopter containing FBI officials. Because of insufficient evidence, the federal judge threw out the charge that Messrs. Weaver and Harris threatened the helicopter. The Justice report noted, "The SIOC [Strategic Information and Operations Center at FBI headquarters] Log indicates that shots were fired during the events of August 22.... We have found no evidence during this inquiry that shots fired at any helicopter during the Ruby Ridge crisis. The erroneous entry was never corrected." (The Idaho jury found Messrs. Weaver and Harris innocent on almost all charges.)

The Justice Department task force expressed grave doubts about the wisdom of the FBI strategy: "From information received at the Marshals Service, FBI management had reason to believe that the Weaver/Harris group would respond to a helicopter in the vicinity of the cabin by coming outside with firearms. Notwithstanding this knowledge, they placed sniper/observers on the adjacent mountainside with instructions that they could and should shoot armed members of the group, if they came out of the cabin. Their use of the helicopter near the cabin invited an accusation that the helicopter was intentionally used to draw the Weaver group out of the cabin."

The task force was extremely critical of Agent Horiuchi's second shot: "Since the exchange of gunfire [the previous day], no one at the cabin had fired a shot. Indeed, they had not even returned fire in response to Horiuchi's first shot. Furthermore, at the time of the second shot, Harris and others outside the cabin were retreating, not attacking. They were not retreating to an area where they would present a danger to the public at large...."

Regarding Agent Horiuchi's killing of Vicki Weaver, the task force concluded, "y fixing his cross hairs on the door when he believed someone was behind it, he placed the children and Vicki Weaver at risk, in violation of even the special Rules of Engagement.... In our opinion he needlessly and unjustifiably endangered the persons whom he thought might be behind the door."

The Justice Department task force was especially appalled that the adults were gunned down before receiving any warning or demand to surrender: "While the operational plan included a provision for a surrender demand, that demand was not made until after the shootings.... The lack of a planned 'call out' as the sniper/observers deployed is significant because the Weavers were known to leave the cabin armed when vehicles or airplanes approached. The absence of such a plan subjected the Government to charges that it was setting Weaver up for attack."

honestly i'm sad that the media can't report everything. i didn't know this story though. but i try to take themedia with a grain of salt.

most of the times they are radicals that have lost it and their followers suffer for it. it goes for all sorts of beliefs

Yellow rose

What I am trying to say is David Koresch and his followers were demonized by the press. This was a year before Waco. You would think they would be alittle better at what they do. This stuff was not widely printed or put on the news. Why? They could of covered up anything at Waco and could us also. Shooting a kid in the Back and a Wonam holding a baby in the head. Something is badly wrong Folks..Miles

Oh yea look at what page # the article was on in The Wall Street Journal

miles..preaching to the choir here. i can't explain the media and what they do or say sometimes. can't explain them anymore than i can people