The ATF was coming up on re-budgeting time; they wanted to have something recent and highly visual to showcase their enforcement proactivity.
Though Koresh was in the daily habit of jogging through downtown Waco totally unescorted, the ATF still insisted on an armed assault.
To legally qualify for the most recent CQB tactics from the military, they lied about the Davidians, claiming they were bank-robbers and machine-gun dealers. These were important exceptions to “Posse Comitatus”, the legal principle by which US law enforcement is walled-off from domestic US military training and operations. In this way the ATF commandos could legally get the military support they craved, the better to feel like SEAL Team 6 Operators.
The Go-Code for the assault was “Showtime”. Like liquored-up Boy Scouts on a rare trip away from home, to document their glorious victory over The Weird Christians they brought along a local TV film crew.
The point at which the ATF stopped their fire during the initial shoot-out was the point they ran out of ammo. Even so, they were permitted to withdraw under no fire (though they were suddenly less enthusiastic about having it all on film).
The enormous metal front door of Mt. Carmel was later “lost” by the ATF, an item that would have shown the majority direction of Davidian/Police fire exchanged.
After the Davidian dead were buried Government Commandoes safe inside Armored Personnel Carriers carefully, repeatedly and wantonly drove over the well-marked graves of the Davidians.
During the protracted stand-off, the seige team repeatedly shone kleig lights into the complex, denied them sleep and loudly played the sound of rabbits’ death screams.
The seige team adopted a “Carrot-and-Stick” approach —sounds great, right..? The Stick part of the equation was composed of Law-And-Order military Commandos, while the Carrot faction was cerebral academics schooled in sociology/psychology, etc.
The two teams loathed one another and barely communicated, leading to an eery, schizophrenic duality from the negotiators; the Davidians would be deep in phone talks with elaborate reassurances, only to have raucous gunfire suddenly shower down on them from overhead.
This actually strengthened Koresh’s admonition that the “Outside World” was ruled by deceiver devils who wished them harm and sought to test them.
—> 17 kids burned to death at Waco and NO ONE got in trouble for it. <—
WHAT IF IT HAD BEEN A MOSQUE...??
Fire and ambulances were held back.
The media was held back MILES, the better to avoid witnesses.
The first thing law enforcement did on-scene after the flames died down was to FILM them raising the ATF flag over the still-burning embers of what remained of the Mt. Carmel complex.
If you read the autopsy reports, nothing adds up except this was a government operation to dispose of a bunch of bodies.
One point: none of the dead whose cause of death was attributed to a gunshot wound had the bullet that killed them inside their body. Not a single one.
In a lot of cases, the only remains found were pieces of skull, etc.
A mosque???? Not in the same universe, press, CAIR and rest of them great propaganda, never hear the end of it.
I certainly wouldn't encourage any violence against a mosque or any other group going about what they do peaceably.