The Secret Rulers of the World: The Legend of Ruby Ridge

BBC Channel 4 Video Documentary ^ | ? | Jon Ronson

[DainBramage]

Wait.....you are proud she arms her children and teaches them to hate the government and repect her as a mother and wonder how the children could get hurt when the government comes calling. Wake up lady.

[bkepley]

What are you talking about?

His congressional testimony was completely different after he had grown up a little.

[Grizzled Bear]

do not blame Hourrachi, he was a sniper that was following his instructions. His superiors are guilty of murder. They issued the orders and rules of engagement.

---

That argument didn't work at the Nurenberg (sp) trials. It does not work here either.

I have refused to follow orders that were ill advised. Fortunately; I usually had support higher up on the chain of command

[Oztrich Boy]

The truth is that the Weavers stole from their neighbors

That's hardly a Federal offence.

[Smokin' Joe]

With Weaver....set up a scout team or two at a distance and wait a month, or two... or what ever.... until he comes out of his little compound and then pinch him when he's on his way back into town on a dirt road out in the middle of bubble-fook.

Aside from the original entrapment and subsequently sending Weaver notice to appear, then holding the hearing onthe original charge a month earlier than the notice said, they did have the hill under surveillance.

Apparently the family dogs smelled the team, and thinking it was a deer, Weaver's son and a dog took one route down the hill after meat for the larder, Weaver and Harris took another (with rifles to hunt with).

The kid and dog came across the surveillance team, the dog was shot, the kid allegedly returned fire, kiling a US marshall. The kid was fatally wounded in the firefight--according to most accounts--shot in the back.

Now, with all that,would you be willing to trust the government?

Had it not been for Bo Gritz and a host of protestors, Weaver would have been Wacoed.

Too many witnesses, even locals videotaping parts of the operation from adjacent ridges, made things sticky for even the FBI.

They learned, though, and controlled the press when the Waco operation went down other than they (ATF) intended, and moved the press off a couple of miles where they could control access on entirely different terrain.

In Weaver's case the argument can be made that the original entrapment was to pressure Weaver into turning 'snitch' for the FBI, attending seperatist group functions in the region, and reporting on them . When Weaver would not turn informant nder pressure, things started getting really ugly.

[Dante3]

What nonsense you are saying. His crime was minor.

Lon Horiuchi shot a woman holding a child, something not everyone was willing to do - and nothing has been done to him.

In the tragic story, Weaver comes out looking far better than Horiuchi, et al.

[PajamaTruthMafia]

Or didn't want to give them another reason to finishe the job.

I'll take a link to that testimony if you have it.

[labette]

"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."

And if that isn't bad enough, There was a FReeper on an earlier thread who said, "I look forward to the day when one of them{i.e. militia / groups who distrust government} starts playing the fool and have to be punkslapped back to the stone age.

[proudofthesouth]

I agree with you. Just look at Bush not doing anything about protecting our borders and the North American Union that has been planned and slowly implemented for decades.

[cripplecreek]

The neighbor who accused weaver of stealing even ended up supporting weaver in the end.

[taxed2death]

I applaud you. It must be a hell of a bad situation to have been in.
One must remember that one still has to answer to "the big guy" upstairs. War sucks. Killing sucks... but there must still be some (moral) rules. Whacking innocents has happened in the past and will unfortunately continue to happen.
I REALLY feel for our soldiers who defend outposts / traffic stops over in Iraq. They just have to go with a gut feeling and rely on instinct as to whether to smoke a car full of civilians or not.... on a daily basis. Sure one can try to rationalize "it's me or them"... but it still has to be a damned terrible feeling if you just greased a car full of civilians women / kids. My heart goes out to the professional soldiers and their unfortunate "victims".

[AnnGora]

I didn't say I was "proud" of her. As I said, she was the strong one in the family because she had to be. Randy was not the best provider (he was rather shiftless) and it was she who helped the family become almost self-sufficient. She learned to raise food, can, sew all the clothes, and home-school the kids while Randy bummed around at Aryan Nation meetings. That, in my opinion, makes her a good mother. And a remarkable woman.

I and most of us do not agree with the Weavers' beliefs, but they were not harming anyone up on that mountain until the government came along.

And you would be proud if she had taught her children to love their government and that guns are bad? You wake up.

[albee]

"Mismanagement at the top by Rambo types always leads to this same scenario."

Yeah.....it was all Bill (Rambo) Clinton's fault!

[taxed2death]

Thanks for your post. You shed more light into the mess. I still feel the Government was trying their best to "set up" Weaver. They really screwed up bigtime and apparently made numerous mistakes all along the way. The ROE were way out of line (imo). As I said... they could have done much to diffuse the situation and REALLY come out of it smelling like roses and looking like professionals all around. They didn't.

[the808bass]

You can discount every source cited. That's quite a talent. You might have missed the government report which was cited earlier in this exchange. Feel free to discount it.

Did Mr. Weaver do some stupid things? Absolutely. Does the government bear a large share of the blame for the deaths of all those involved? Abso-freakin-lutely.

Do Randy Weaver's actions justify the actions of the government? Let's say he didn't pay his taxes? How much did he owe? Seriously. Let's say he did saw off that shotgun (at the government agent's request)? What's the penalty for that? What should have been a commensurate reponse? Obviously shooting his kid and his wife is the correct answer.

For some reason, you have an inability to assign any blame to a government who deserves plenty in this situation.

[Grizzled Bear]

Weaver had plenty of opportunity to have his family surrender to the FBI.

---

You could also surmise that the Jews had plenty of opportunity to have their families surrender to the Gestapo.

Weaver was a bit paranoid. In this case I'd say the paranoid man was right.

[Poincare]

Oh now NPR is a credible source. (snort)

NPR is a whore to the government just like some posters on this thread. But the higher ups at NPR are slow and sometimes news from the field, like an interview with members of Weaver's defense team, gets on air uncensored.

Similarly just after the 1994 elction results came in NPR reported that a large number of blacks had defected to the GOP (true). That story was replaced hours later by the "angry white man" myth. So it goes.

[ScubieNuc]

The original crime that he was eventually convicted of brought him less than a year in jail.

His original crime, as I remember it, was buying modified guns, (shotguns I think) with shortened barrels from FBI agents. They set him up, because they could find nothing else on him, and they wanted information on the Arian Nation.

When he tried to settle the gun thing, the government stalled because they wanted him to spy for them on his Arian Nation neighbors. He refused, so they applied delaying tactics. He made the long drive to many court appearences only to be told "Oops, can't do it today. Maybe next week." He finally said Screw this, and didn't appear.

Now that just pissed off the agents trying to get him to spy for them more irate. A new warrent was issued for his arrest. They tried to snag him on a back road, feigning engine troubles, but failed. He felt penned in, and just hunkered down.

Then comes the FBI assasins squad, and the rest is history. I'm not saying that he made all the right moves, but the majority of the blame goes onto the governments shoulders. The scarey thing is that these kinds of people still exist in these agencies, and under a different administration, we WILL see this kind of thing again.

Sincerely

[freedomfiter2]

For some reason, you have an inability to assign any blame to a government who deserves plenty in this situation.


Citizens who refuse to hold the government in check deserve the government they get. Unfortunately the rest of us get the same one.

[karnage]

If you look into the case more thoroughly, you will retract your post. The government targeted Weaver, entrapped him, and murdered his wife in the coldest of cold blood. No American worth the name would blame Weaver for what happened. A tyrannical, unchecked government is entirely to blame.