Posted on 03/17/2007 7:32:42 AM PDT by amchugh
People don't want to believe in the NWO, its impossible most say.....but you see, thats how this was all planned.
The frog is in the pot and the heat is being turned up.....
Why was Ruby Ridge so important to many conservatives?
I think part of the appeal fo the story was the issue of race. In the early nineties when the Ruby Ridge case broke, we had a lot of scary examples of race relations in the U.S. Black people in Los Angeles didn't like a verdict so they rioted and attacked white people who got in the way, and we were told we had to "understand." O.J. Simpson kills two white people, and many black people and their white sympathizers didn't even seem to care that he was obviously guilty.
And here was this loan white family who just wants to be left alone. They were racist and anti-semitic, but so were many of the urban leaders across the nation that we were supposed to "understand." Nobody tried to "understand" Randy Weaver. The Federal police spent a huge amount of resources to take Weaver down and then changed the rules of engagement, had a sniper kill his wife, and said he deserved it. As a white person, I felt very insulted by the whole event.
The problem with viewing an event as a symbol of a larger problem is that it becomes easy to twist the facts of the event to fit the symbol. The truth is that the Weavers stole from their neighbors and didn't make an effort to resolve a situation at an early stage. On the other hand, the government behaved in a reckless and criminal fashion.
The good news is that Ruby Ridge was atypical behavior. Even if we believed the worst about the government at Ruby Ridge and Waco, we haven't seen any evidence that such behavior is the norm for federal policing.
The copious number of 'LEOs are always right' folks we have on this forum can twist and apologize and spin all they want, but it doesn't change this one indisputable fact: the federal government murdered his wife and son and got away with it.
After the Marshals killed his son he really felt he had no choice, after all the Government had killed his boy on his land. To this day it is not clear that he knew he had missed a court date - which was a trumped up deal over an AFT stool pigeon taking years to talk him into sawing off the shotgun - which the ATF NEVER proved was actually illegal.
The sniper from the FBI Lon Hourichi took a bad shot. I have been to Ruby Ridge and stood on the exact spot where he fired from. I wouldn't take that shot on a bet and I'm not bad with a rifle. Hourichi later drove a tank at Waco and murdered more women and kids. He's a trigger happy scumbag.
Randy to this day lives with the ramifications of his choices. When I met him for the first time about 9 years ago the pain in his eyes was clear. He still has it today.
No an out of control government killed his family. They didn't do their homework. The FBI believed the ATF crap that Randy was violent and dangerous. The rules of engagement were crap and the guy that wrote them was reprimanded. He tried to claim he didn't instead of standing up like a man and taking it.
when i was in texas i saw a texas ranger braving the 100 degrees and 90 percent humidity, standing in his lee jeans, badge, straw hat, and smoking a marlboro.
i asked him: sir, i'm from out of state. i was wondering how the clinton administration got away with running military tanks over those civilians at waco?
pause.
he got really angry! saying, "when you figure that out, let me know"
Weaver was set up by the, "Government," and refused to go along with the setup. The FBI, (Fumbling Bumbling Idiots)are the problem here not a man who decided he no longer wanted to part of the socialist society he was witnessing. Just as the FBI not picking up their target in Waco on the street instead of attacking they are entirely the source of the problems.
On trumped up charges of illegally sawing off a 12ga shotgun wasn't it? Didn't it turn out that the gun was still legal after he modified it at the undercover agent's request?
After the Marshals killed his son he really felt he had no choice, after all the Government had killed his boy on his land. To this day it is not clear that he knew he had missed a court date - which was a trumped up deal over an AFT stool pigeon taking years to talk him into sawing off the shotgun - which the ATF NEVER proved was actually illegal.
You've done a good job of summing up the key elements of the story. Randy had done nothing to make the government set out to get him.
>>>>Why? because he failed to show up for court. <<<
I seem to recall that the reason he did not show up for court was because he was given the wrong date. Is that correct?
Just knowing you took the time to go look around ruby Ridge and meet Weaver tells me alot. Ive already watched show after show and read story after story on this and I would never trust the BBC to be truthful.
Lon Horuchi didnt drive a tank at Waco. He was in a house across from the compound. He may have ridden in an apc at times, but he didnt drive a tank. Like I said JMHO.
I think it ended up being a sixteenth of an inch too short.
You only say that because you don't know the facts of the case, DB. It's that simple.
Not when Janet Reno was attorney general. The Waco incident was at least as bad, possibly worse. And, sadly, republicans are slowly moving in the directions of dems when it comes to police state-like behavior. They aren't there yet, but tomorrow's another day.
That is the biggest reason I will never vote for Rudy.
Race had nothing to do with it. It was about abuse of Federal power.
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, "[B]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."
>>>He had no business getting his family involved in such a thing.<<<
Yea. Weaver should have known from the beginning that if he exercised his Right to Keep and Bear Arms the government would kill his family.
He had no business getting his family involved in such a thing.
Yeah, Randy should have known that living by yourself,minding your own business, is a capital crime.
"Why was Ruby Ridge so important to many conservatives...."
This little drama has in it all the elements of why this country was founded....by independent thinkers tired of playing pissy little power games with the King's men in Scotland and England in the 17th and 18th centuries...
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