Posted on 11/28/2003 4:06:52 PM PST by drypowder
The photo is from one of the links I found searching google.com using these search terms "Waco tanks" in fact the first photo that is displayed using just a search for "Waco" the first image displayed shows the Branch Davidian compound burning. The photo I posted is identical to all the other ones returned by my search. You can verify this by following the link.
I really wish some of the boiling water IQs he groupies for, would come in and tell us where we are possibly mistaken. On other threads, all the folks saying the government is on the up and up on this one, all more or less plagerize from the soft side of our media and have nothing to add them selves.
Posse Comitatus restricts the use of active duty military personnel to enforce the law; normally interpreted to mean involvement in searches and seizures and arrests. It does not restrict the loan of equipment or providing logistic support or training. Further, Posse Comitatus does not apply to the National Guard--the state's militia.
Most of the equipment and armored vehicles came from the Texas National Guard. No federal military personnel operated any of the equipment and most was run by civil law enforcement agents who had been trained by the military.
The active Army equipment and training came primarily from Fort Hood. In accordance with normal procedures, the requirements went up from the civil agencies on the scene at Waco to Washington and then down through standard channels to the closest military base owning the equipment--Fort Hood, Texas. III Corps HQ, the headquarters responsible for Hood and all units on it, received the tasking. Based on equipment availability and training and deployment schedules and such mundane considerations as who had to support the last tasking, the III Corps staff would then designate one of its subordinate elements to meet the tasking. This procedure is followed every day for literally dozens of taskings. Clark commanded the 1st Cavalry Division--one of several subordinate commands to III Corps. If III Corps designated the 1st Cav to handle one or more parts of these taskings, Clark's staff, not him, would normally receive and take care of the action. And there is no reason to believe anything other than that took place.
Clark's Assistant Division Commander(ADC) was Brigadier General Pete Schoomaker (newly appointed Chief of Staff of the Army by Rumsfield). Schoomaker was special ops who was back out in the field army getting "re-blued" as we say. He had recently commanded Delta Force. Because of his experience, somebody in Washington asked for him by name to comment on the Waco plan. Again, this had nothing to do with Clark--he was not in command at Hood & did not have the kind of experience that would cause anyone to seek out his input. It is Schoomakeer who is said to have made the comment "We can't grade your paper" to Reno. BTW, with Schoomaker at the meeting was another recent newsmaker--then Colonel Boykin. Obviously, Schoomaker would have said something to his boss after he returned from his Reno briefing in D.C., but that is as close as Clark got to Waco.
The active duty military had very little involvement at Waco, did nothing unlawful, and Clark was not involved. Other than that, you guys are all over it.
Most of these arguments would have applied at Sand Creek, 130 years ago. That doesn't make the babies killed there any less dead, or the armies complicity any more excusable.
YOU: Most of these arguments would have applied at Sand Creek, 130 years ago. That doesn't make the babies killed there any less dead, or the armies complicity any more excusable.
A typical display of conspiro-logic. You link two completely unrelated events and then based on that false relationship, establish a conclusion that would be unwarranted even if those two events were linked and then hide your lack of an argument behind emotionalism about dead babies.
The army was, at least, engaged in supplying the operation, and providing advice, or oversight to the planners, a fact about which we have submitted-to-court requisition documents, and spent ammo casings on the ground to verify. Your long-winded argument is twaddle, as, for example, when you make such a grand point about the TANKS being guard tanks. When the army pays for, trains, and deploys ANY part of the guard, say, for years at a time overseas, the guard is the army. In the face of hard physical evidence, in the form of requisition forms and ammo picked up off the ground, the army has conspired in the death of those children. The 7th cav didn't do this one, but that doesn't leave the army off the hook by a very large measure. My contentions are not hysterical icon-rattling, they are very tangible and specific legal accusations. Those children didn't die symbolically, they were murdered by out of control federal employees who are not facing the music, and that most definitely includes the commander of the suppliers of the material used, if he thinks he can run for president without this coming up.
Blood calls for blood, not mealy-mouthed political wallpaper spread over all the participants, nor 5 minute presidential spots. Clark should be facing a grand jury inquiry for conspiracy to murder, not presidential reporters.
I believe it's called the US Constitition, which, if memory serves me, is supposed, at least by conservatives, to apply to everyone. I'd like to suggest someone else to you that lived in a commune, of sorts, espoused the sharing of wealth with the poor, and fell into disrepute in his community for doing so--Jesus Christ.
Exactly. When federalized, such as the National Guard units in Iraq are now, the Guard is under the control of the Army. Otherwise, the National Guard in its Constitutional role as the militia is under the control of the states. The Guard units at Waco were not federalized.
The army was, at least, engaged in supplying the operation, ... a fact about which we have submitted-to-court requisition documents, and spent ammo casings on the ground to verify.,
So what? Law enforcement agencies requested military equipment and supplies in accordance with federal laws and the Army provided it as they were obligated to do. What's your point? Should we have called the Psychic network first to find out how it was all going to turn out?
The 7th cav didn't do this one, but that doesn't leave the army off the hook by a very large measure. My contentions are not hysterical icon-rattling, they are very tangible and specific legal accusations.
The 7th Cav didn't do Sand Creek either--looks like your reference to them in this case is a little more of your hysterical icon-rattling. You don't have facts so you throw out a reference to that nasty 7th Cav to substitute for your lack of an argument. So what exactly is the Army on "the hook" for at Waco? What are your "specific legal accusations" for the Army? What act was committed that violated what law? And what exactly did Wes Clark do?
You don't know the difference between the National Guard and regular Army. You don't understand Posse Comitatus. You have a space-time continuum problem as you mix Waco, Sand Creek, Wes Clark, and the 7th Cavalry all together. You equate the Army providing equipment and supplies in response to a request from law enforcement with "complicity" and "conspiracy to murder".
I'm sure any response will be just as factual and logical as your previous posts.
Exactly. When federalized,
To a lawyer, maybe. Not to a grieving mother. If my child is killed by a bullet the army, in any manner, bought, paid for housed, and shipped, and advised on the deployment of, I really don't give a tinker's poop whether it was "federalized" at the exact moment it was fired.
such as the National Guard units in Iraq are now, the Guard is under the control of the Army. Otherwise, the National Guard in its Constitutional role as the militia is under the control of the states. The Guard units at Waco were not federalized.
This is legalistic BS, put in place to avoid addressing the embarassing fact that a Guard that is substantially paid for with federal funds, & can be deployed at any time by "federalizing" it, isn't the state's militia the constitution allowed for at all. If the army pays for a substantial part of it, and can control it at will, it is the army. And a standing army on domestic soil is not provided for in the Constitution.
.The army was, at least, engaged in supplying the operation, ... a fact about which we have submitted-to-court requisition documents, and spent ammo casings on the ground to verify.,
So what? Law enforcement agencies requested military equipment and supplies in accordance with federal laws and the Army provided it as they were obligated to do.
Right. And the FBI only came in because the DEA requested help. So the FBI must be off the hook as well, right? In fact--isn't the DEA press secretary that scheduled the initial attack the only blameworthy party here?
What's your point? Should we have called the Psychic network first to find out how it was all going to turn out?
No. What they should do, especially if they are smart guys like Clark, is understand that this is a weasily way of skirting around the intent of Posse Cometatas and exercise adult levels of care about servicing such requests.
.The 7th cav didn't do this one, but that doesn't leave the army off the hook by a very large measure. My contentions are not hysterical icon-rattling, they are very tangible and specific legal accusations.
The 7th Cav didn't do Sand Creek either--looks like your reference to them in this case is a little more of your hysterical icon-rattling.
Oh, give it a rest. The 7th was little big horn, a direct result of the action at Sand Creek, and more than a little connected, historically, with the militia at Sand Creek. This is an argument, not a history test. You cannot make an argument for the defense by grouching about my rhetorical bombasts.
You don't have facts so you throw out a reference to that nasty 7th Cav to substitute for your lack of an argument.
You don't have an argument, so you substitute caviling at any rhetorical irrelevancies you can desperately grasp at.
So what exactly is the Army on "the hook" for at Waco? What are your "specific legal accusations" for the Army? What act was committed that violated what law? And what exactly did Wes Clark do?
Wes Clark, a very smart guy, was in command of the unit that supplied help to WACO--a many month's long siege of US citizens on domestic soil using tanks high caliber ammo, and flashbang grenades, broadcast over the airwaves on national television. Even a hedgehog could have figured this one out, and no amount of legalistic weaseling can change that.
You don't know the difference between the National Guard and regular Army. You don't understand Posse Comitatus. You have a space-time continuum problem as you mix Waco, Sand Creek, Wes Clark, and the 7th Cavalry all together. You equate the Army providing equipment and supplies in response to a request from law enforcement with "complicity" and "conspiracy to murder".
What a hot air merchant. For Wes Clark not to be aware of what was being done with his equipment with such a public display, day after day, going on over the public airwaves, is beyond credibility. It is, in fact, patent, apparent, absurd BS. Wes Clark was the commander, and the buck stops at Wes Clark's desk.
We believe that the Feds committed crimes at Waco; that they subsequently covered them up; and that you can clearly see evidence of these crimes from the FLIR.
But what do we know? We just enforce criminal laws for a living.
As for the National Guard, you simply have that wrong. There is no command relationship between the regular Army and the National Guard until they are federalized--and that was not done at Waco. The chain of command for the guard goes from the individual soldier through his unit commander and the state Adjutant General to the governor. And it stops right there until and unless that soldier or his unit is ordered to federal active duty.
"My money is on the former."
Mine too.
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