Don, those may be good discussion points, but what does all that have to do with the legality and extent of Army involvement?
If a mother gives her son the keys to her jag, knowing he is dead drunk, is the mother in any way liable for his wreck? Your contention that the army did nothing, if correct, while the siege dragged on and on over national television, using military tanks and helicopters in front of a huge national audience, is disgraceful, if not technically indictable. And, frankly, unlikely in the extreme. I can't prove there were military on hand, and you can't prove their weren't, and I think it does not square with common sense to think there weren't, under the circumstances. "operational" participation is a matter of interpretation. Are advisers "participants"? Are the army instruction manuals in the flashbang boxes participanting? If the army gave weapons to gangbangers in the bronx, under a city-sanctioned, legal program, and they subsequently flashbanged someone's home, should the army be free of concern? The fact that the army might have a "get out of jail free" card signed by the Attorney General, or the congress, does not mean they are actually morally sanctioned to give matches to idiots in a woodshed and walk away.