72 years ago (in some time zones, yours as well) Warsaw Ghetto Uprising showed Europe that even futile resistance is worth lives and inspired people in whole Europe to face the Nazi occupant. Never forget!

This guy^^^

Both guys actually.

I mean, doesn't this (Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) deserve more attention than some madmen dying in a fire they set themselves? Wako siege... More like wacko siege...

Yes sir.

BTW, a lot of people in Poland are extremely angry after the director of FBI said poles were partially responsible for the holocaust during ceremonies in the museum.

"some madmen dying in a fire they set themselves?"

Yassem, with all due respect to the courageous men and women who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (who definitely deserve a thread of their own), the reason I post this thread every year is because the misinformation you state as fact and hostile attitudes like yours persist - more than two decades later - despite all the evidence that has come to light over the years exposing the innumerable lies and acts of downright criminal misconduct perpetrated by the ATF and FBI against the Branch Davidians, who were thoroughly demonized by the government and the media and never had an opportunity to speak publicly in their own defense.

Kinda like the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe, now that I think of it.

I wanted to start another thread, as yours reminded me of this anniversary but didn't want to be (again) wrongly accused of creating parody threads.

I will gladly discuss your conspiracy theories tomorrow, as now I have to sleep.

except jews died in systematic unintentional murder, and the branch davidians died in, at worst, a horrible accident.

At the same time, the lives lost are worth remembering and the lessons as applied to the police force should be heeded.

*Intentional murder not unintentional

" the branch davidians died in, at worst, a horrible accident."

So if someone pumped flammable tear gas into your house for four hours, then fired pyrotechnic rounds to ignite the tear gas, and then shot you as you tried to escape while holding the fire trucks miles away from the fire (the "at worst" interpretation of events), you would call that a "horrible accident"!?

^

except that wasn't what happened...

^

Huh? Are you saying that the FBI didn't pump tear gas into the Branch Davidians' home? Or that they didn't hold the fire trucks back? The FBI stated publicly as it was happening that that's what they were doing. While the FBI initially denied using pyrotechnic rounds, it was eventually discovered by the Texas Rangers that they DID, in fact, do so - and lied about it. The only "controversial" claim in my summary (that is, the only one the government hasn't admitted to yet) is that the FBI (or someone) fired on Mt. Carmel the day of the fire; this claim was refuted by Congress' own expert who reviewed the FLIR tapes taken by surveillance aircraft that day, the testimony of the only Branch Davidian survivor of the massacre who escaped from the north side of Mt. Carmel who clearly heard a gun battle going on as he escaped by crawling under the smoke of the fire, and the existence of spent shell cases in the "Sierra 2" FBI sniper nest (the FBI maintains that its agents never fired a single shot throughout the siege). Also, many of the deaths from gunshot wounds were not what you'd generally consider consistent with suicide (we might know more on this point if the FBI hadn't deliberately allowed the bodies to rot by unplugging the refrigerated trailer they were using to store the bodies in the Texas sun for a few days and later raided the offices of the medical examiner who performed the autopsies).

I'm saying that the Branch dividians dumped gasoline all over the living quarters and set it on fire. I am also saying the Pyrotechnic rounds were fired four hours before the fire started and downwind of the fire. I am honestly very glad you posted this Tolstoy, because I actually believed that this tragedy was caused by an accident. Thankfully, before I embarrassed myself in front of logical people, I have now had the opportunity to review the facts and determine that this was no accident, the Branch Davidians did it.

#ATFAgentLivesMatter
#ChildAbuseVictimsLivesMatter
#GoodRiddanceDavidKoresh

"Thankfully, before I embarrassed myself in front of logical people, I have now had the opportunity to review the fact"

Wow, you learned everything there is to know to make a conclusion about Waco in all of 40 minutes? Wiki Warrior in action - awesome! I'm also impressed that you can watch a 2.25 hour documentary in that time period while doing all that speed-reading.

</sarcasm>

I may not know everything, but let me debunk the two claims you're cutting and pasting:

"the Branch dividians dumped gasoline all over the living quarters and set it on fire."

The source of this claim is the FBI's own arson expert, who was of course about as far from impartial as you can get and miraculously managed to conclude the investigation of the most significant arson fire in perhaps the second half of the 20th century in just a couple of days. The chief evidence cited was the presence of kerosene throughout the complex, but this would be no surprise if you knew that the Branch Davidians had been using kerosene lanterns for illumination at night since the FBI cut off all the electrical power to the building (which, of course, the FBI knew about). Some of these lanterns were run over by the tanks as they punched holes in the building to inject the flammable tear gas. None of the survivors - even those who were not charged with a crime - knew or heard anything about a plan to set the building on fire. On the FBI side, you curiously have the FBI negotiator asking the BDs if they have any fire extinguishers a few days before the April 19th assault and telling them that any attempts to surrender would no longer be accepted. Also a few days before that, you had someone at the FBI headquarters at the site snidely remarking to the BD attorneys that he hoped "they [the BDs] were up on their fire insurance".

As for the claims about audio tapes ("pour the fire"), I'm not the only one to've listened to them and not been able to hear what the FBI 'experts' claim they hear - and God only knows what manipulation of the tapes the FBI's experts may've done before releasing the excerpts of the surveillance audio they recorded.

" I am also saying the Pyrotechnic rounds were fired four hours before the fire started and downwind of the fire."

Aren't those the same rounds that the FBI maintained for years that they hadn't fired at all? After the spent rounds were finally found, the FBI came out with this cover story that yes, they had been used, but only well before the fire. How many times does someone have to lie to you before you stop believing them? Apparently, more than once.

"#ATFAgentLivesMatter"

If you really thought that, you would be even more pissed off at the ATF site commanders than at the Branch Davidians. However, none of the ATF commanders faced any kind of punishment - criminally or careerwise - for negligently ordering a military assault that relied on surprise while knowing that the element of surprise had been completely lost.

"#ChildAbuseVictimsLivesMatter"

Claims of child abuse were 1) a matter for local authorities, not the federal government, and 2) investigated by local authorities, who found them unsustained. I must say personally that it is truly disappointing (to put it mildly) to read of someone claiming to care about child abuse while rejoicing over the death of nearly two dozen children.

I don't think anyone rejoices over any of these deaths here. I truly hope the cultists that clearly caused their death by setting the building on fire suffered before their own deaths

We didn't start the fire. It was always burning since the world's been turning.

Santa, maybe you should google up a list of the victims and find that a goodly number of them were children. If you're worried they didn't suffer, you can go read their autopsy reports and you can be reassured that they did, in fact, suffer a great deal before they died.

Absolutely, I don't think that is at issue, but it was at the hands of cultists.

If the ATF had never decided to attack the Branch Davidians for their attention-getting "Operation Showtime" (there were actually three or four proposed targets for the ATF - the BDs were chosen because, in light of their past cooperation with local law enforcement, were considered the least dangerous), those children would be alive today. Even if you believe the BDs started the fire themselves, no one could deny that that wouldn't have happened had there been no initial ATF raid and 52 day siege that seemed deliberately designed to provoke the besieged at every turn and drive them crazy.

Funny, I put more blame the individuals that poured gasoline everywhere and lit the place on fire, directly causing the deaths, more than the group that started the chain of events, no matter how bone headed.

or excuse me, kerosene

I'm genuinely curious, Santa. Why do you choose to believe the FBI claims about the cause of the fire when they have already been caught in scores of other lies in the same incident, and the supposedly impartial investigator had several serious conflicts of interest?

I find the Danforth report findings are more believable than the account that you are trying to build

Okay. Why?

And does the wikipedia page mention that Danforth was on the short list of of Dubya's veep candidate during Danforth's investigation? Talk about being able to pull a string...

Because it provides multiple strands of evidence that all point to the fire being started by Branch Davidians, the tapes, the accelerants on clothes, the arson investigators starting concurrently in three different areas of the compound. I can't help that you think all three are lies.

"And does the wikipedia page mention that Danforth was on the short list of of Dubya's veep candidate during Danforth's investigation? Talk about being able to pull a string... "

Or since he was given the most controversial investigation of his day, he had a reputation that dubya thought would benefit his campaign. Oh yeah he was also a former senator from a state that had gone democrat for two elections in a row. Complete mystery why he ALMOST got chosen for the VP.

Ok, I'll catch up as soon as I can, but two very important points so far to both of you gentlemen:

@SantaClausowitz,

"except jews died in systematic unintentional murder, and the branch davidians died in, at worst, a horrible accident."
mistake or not, from now on till the end of the Internet, somewhere, in the deepest guts of this forum will be the one post in which you denied the Holocaust. Isn't you nick the Jewish version of Santa?

@Tolstoy

"Wow, you learned everything there is to know to make a conclusion about Waco in all of 40 minutes? Wiki Warrior in action - awesome! I'm also impressed that you can watch a 2.25 hour documentary in that time period while doing all that speed-reading.

</sarcasm>"

The use of </sarcasm> here is incorrect. You can use self closing tag (i.e. <sarcasm/> , though it is invalid in many languages and doesn't really express what you meant, so the proper way would be to first have the opening tag.

Not ^

'At Worst' - we now all agree the worst case scenario wasn't an accident.

But intentional seige by ATF/FBI and intentional fire starting (by whom we can't agree) thus Arson.

The other side being the intentional non cooperation of the BDs.

Were they right to resist law enforcement in the first place? Is the law enforcement to military in their tactics? Should this kind of culture be allowed/encouraged (both in law enforcement and home protection)?

What happened was many cult members and children died. This is not the reason we have law enforcement, the system failed. How do you go about improving the system?

@ Tolstoy et al

Why don't you expend your faux outrage on a really outrageous event? The Ruby Ridge Massacre was hundreds of times more illegal and immoral than the Waco Siege, despite the lower body count.

http://minglemediamarketing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Family-Guy-Right-to-Bear-Arms.jpeg?95c97e

Massacre? In scale the three killed don't really appear to compare to Wacco.

But gun you do highlight the issue of militarised policing is not just an isolated incident.

@ orathaic

Sometimes it's not all about body count. I personally find the Ruby Ridge Standoff to be more atrocious because it was cold-blooded, unequivocal first degree murder committed by federal agents against law-abiding American citizens.

Waco was another horrible and tragic consequence of police militarization, but there's too much ambiguity in the details for me to completely support the Branch Davidians' version of events. To that end, I prefer to cite Ruby Ridge in lieu of Waco whenever this topic arises.