20 years after Ruby Ridge, there's forgiveness

AP ^ | 08/19/2012 | By NICHOLAS K. GERANIOS

[rabidralph]

KALISPELL, Mont. (AP) — When Sara Weaver saw her father Randy struck in the shoulder by a government sniper's bullet in the Idaho wilderness in August 1992, she began to sprint back to the family's cabin on a mountaintop called Ruby Ridge.

As the 16-year-old closed in, her mother, Vicki, opened the cabin door and stood behind it, holding Sara Weaver's 10-month-old sister in her arms. Just then, a sniper's bullet struck her mother in the head, killing her.

[x1stcav]

I was being sarcastic. I shouldn’t have expected all of you to be mind-readers, though.

I hope the POS rots in hell.

[rabidralph]

LOL! Sorry, I missed it.

[Monorprise]

Everyone deserves forgiveness at some point, but what those murders need is to face justice.

The Sniper and the men that orders his shots need to face prosecution for murder. Only then will they be worthy of forgiveness. Instead the Government just gets away with murdering unarmed women & children in their own home.

The very though of what happened is sicking.

[Smokin' Joe]

Yep.

[Smokin' Joe]

I wonder how meaningful it is to “forgive” someone who doesn’t ask for forgiveness and with whom you have zero contact. It all seems a little impersonal and abstract.

At least it stops them from living in your head rent free.

She can move on. The unrepentant will get their reward as well.

[fr_freak]

OTOH, all military people with families live on base or in the communities where they’re stationed. It would not be beyond the government to threaten their families to make them active duty member carry out unlawful orders.

True enough, but I think that strategy would backfire severely. Most service members are single, young men. It would be bad enough to be ordered to kill your own people when you specifically signed up to protect your own people, but when these guys found out that the families of their fellow soldiers were being threatened or harmed by the command structure, all HELL would break loose. Don't forget, generals and even presidents have families too. Guess who guards them?

[stansblugrassgrl]

I’ll have to look for the book. I had dreams about teenage boys being shot in the back, and other weird things after reading the book. We followed the stand-off closely. But reading about what actually happened affected me very deeply, for some reason. There’s no need to be sorry. If a person is not disturbed by the story, something is wrong with them.

[Smokin' Joe]

I saw a grainy video of a helo dangling something about the size of a 55 gallon drum which was claimed to be an incendiary device by the commentator, who was on another ridge with the camera. The tape was given to me by a friend. The commentator claimed it was the same type of device used against M.O.V.E. in PA.

Apparently the Feds had been trying to get the cameras away from the area, and had interdicted news crews, but the guy said they didn't know those hills like the local folks and he could get some pictures.

Other, on the ground accounts after things settled down indicated that the Feds had set up machine gun positions in the treeline across the creek and field from the protesters who mainly stayed on the road down by the bridge. If people had tried to come up the hill, who knows what would have gone down and how the Gov't would have spun the story?

[Smokin' Joe]

Gen. Partin also pointed out that the column failure distribution did not make sense with a point source blast. Columns failed in the far corner while closer structural elements remained intact.

Air is a lousy shock coupler and the force decreases by an inverse cube, so those columns should not have failed if the truck was the sole explosive in the equation.

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

It’s the right thing to do. The Amish publicly forgave Roberts for killing 5 girls at the school. Then, they visited his widow to offer help. Then, half of the people at Robert’s funeral were Amish. Forgiveness is a good things. Bitterness and anger will consume those who possess both.

[Jacquerie]

I think you are right. What a man. /s

[Jacquerie]

I suppose not everyone is going to remember, “Duty, Honor, Country.”

[napscoordinator]

I notice that the article makes no mention of Bill Clinton’s role in these government-sponsored murders, but continues to try to shift the blame to unidentified right-wing hate groups.

Could it be that Bill Clinton had ZERO to do with this. What makes you blame him? He was busy campaigning for President which he won in November 1992. What on Earth are you talking about????????????

[napscoordinator]

“And as far as Janet Reno is concerned, may she burn in hell.”
For the blood of the murders at Reno Ridge.

You guys can’t be this out of touch. Did President Bush I have Janet Reno anywhere near his administration????????

[Monorprise]

All that may or may not be so, but I doupbt any president would do anything more than simply dismiss any military officers that refuses to follow his unlawfull orders untill he finds one that will.

You have to remember Linclin fired a lot of generals until he found one willing to invade the south. It would probably be easier for a modern “president” with linclon’s example, and far fewer virtuous military officers.

The other thing they changed was they started moving all the military officers around a lot and frequently so they did not form any attachment to any community they might be ordered to suppress and/or attack.

The Federal military post-Lincoln has really been transformed into an insidious institution designed to uphold and defend Federal control over the people & their States.

This is why we conservatives are going to have to start seriously looking at letting the Federal military collapse, transferring most of their assets to the state National guards, and then reasserting State Control over officer selection in the National guards.

[SuperLuminal]

You say that like it’s a bad thing."

Yep!

First it is: "An eye for an eye."

Then it is: "Forgiveness."

Just for completeness...Since I can still vividly recall the events of the 40's and 50's, I also think:

• "The only good Jap is a dead Jap" ;
• "The only good commie is a dead commie"; and,
• "Better dead than red"

(Of course, with this Nation rapidly embracing communism, I'll probably have a problem the last two items before too many years.)

To old to change...Still believe in the original Constitution and the freedoms & liberties it was to protect...Like feedom of speech (and thought, by implication)

[rabidralph]

You’re correct.

[PGalt]

couldn’t believe it’s been 20 years. I was overseas when it happened so I don’t remember much about it.

I was here (metro Detroit) and one of the best radio talkers of all time (Mark Scott RIP) was all over the story. He warned us about the dangers of BIG GOVERNMENT and introduced a lot of us to Ayn Rand.

OUTSTANDING thread BTW! Thanks to every poster. BTTT!

[rabidralph]

I appreciate everyone’s insight and thoughts on this incident. It was just a glimpse of what was to come.

[Billthedrill]

This is Vicki Weaver as the FBI saw her on her last day of life. Shortly thereafter Lon Horiuchi shot her husband in the back as he was checking on the body of his murdered son, and a few minutes later shot her in the head.

The Rules of Engagement in the case were absolutely unprecedented, "shoot-on-sight" as a Congressional investigation concluded. Horiuchi's second shot was outside even them.

Weaver was (1) set up by the BATF to sell them two shotguns that he thought were legal and that they knew he thought were legal, (2) prosecuted as an outrageous manipulation of the legal system in order to turn him into a government spy, (3) made a federal "criminal" by a change of court date that he did not know about, (4) hunted by federal Marshals who were incompetent enough to get found by a dog and two boys and who ended up shooting them for it, (5) cornered in his own home by a small federal army under "shoot-on-sight" instructions. His son was murdered. His friend, later acquitted of all charges, was shot. He was shot. His wife was murdered.

I'm not the only one who thinks so. Here is what FBI Deputy Assistant Director Danny Coulson wrote two days afterward:

OPR 004477
Something to Consider
1. Charge against Weaver is Bull Shit.
2. No one saw Weaver do any shooting.
3. Vicki has no charges against her.
4. Weaver's defense. He ran down the hill to see what dog was barking at. Some guys in camys shot his dog. Started shooting at him. Killed his son. Harris did the shooting [of Degan]. He [Weaver] is in pretty strong legal position.

Yes, I'd say he was, and so did the court. If the SPLC pretends to be surprised that this case engendered a resentment against a thuglike, heavy-handed, out-of-control, shoot-to-kill federal government with a view of its citizens as sheep and targets, then the SPLC is a little out of touch, because nothing has happened to the murderers. Nothing.

Yes, I'm still angry. This was not simply a case where events spun out of control, they were deliberately set up, deliberately manipulated, and culminated in a show of force so disgraceful and unnecessary that one honestly has to wonder if its principal actors are insane or outright evil or both, because stupid doesn't explain it.