"WHY oh WHY did the Davidians resist a lawful order and allow law enforcement officers to proceed with the carrying out a lawful order? i>
Newsmax Paul Craig Roberts 9/1/99 "…If Smith permits the evidence to be used in the wrongful death suits brought by relatives of the Waco dead against the federal government, we might eventually find out what really happened. If the meantime readers have asked why federal agents would have killed so many people. The answer might be as follows: For budgetary and public relations reasons, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms needed a PR gimmick. The Branch Davidians were an odd-ball religious group living in a compound, about whom rumors could be spread. One rumor was illegal weapons. Another was child abuse. The ATF obtained a warrant, but instead of knocking on the door and serving it, the agency staged a paramilitary armed attack with TV cameras in tow. The ATF intended to show that it had captured a dangerous group that was armed to the teeth. Thus would the agency endear itself to the public and lawmakers. Instead, the attack was beaten off, with deaths on both sides. The ATF's actions were illegal. (A jury refused to convict the surviving Davidians of homicide.) To cover up the federal agency's abusive use of force, the U.S. Justice Department used the deaths of the ATF agents to bring in the FBI. The FBI, having branched out into counter-terrorism, has a militarized or semi-militarized unit that was itching to try out its new aggressive techniques and show what it could do. This unit got out of control, and the Branch Davidians were gratuitously killed……"
It's unfortunate that too few people know what actually happened ten years ago today.