534 women and children removed from Fundamentalist LDS compound

Re: 200 women and children removed from Fundamentalist LDS compound

Holy shit.
What a fucking loon.

 

Re: 200 women and children removed from Fundamentalist LDS compound

He usually is, but his research was limited, and the source material he used was largely written by anti-LDS authors.

 

Re: 200 women and children removed from Fundamentalist LDS compound

Might need to adjust the thread title, since the actual count is 133 women and 401 children ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23993440

 

Ugh. The list keeps growing. 1 person would be too many in a case like this.

 

I can't speak to the sources, but it was a damn good read.

 

Whenever anything negative is written about the LDS, the authors are immediately described as anti-LDS despite having performed legitimate research. It is nothing new with that church.

 

Re: 200 women and children removed from Fundamentalist LDS compound

They'd been waiting for what ... almost two months? There had to be some concern that Koresh and his band of crazed idiots were going to pull another Jonestown. Certainly they were planning something --- Koresh called the place "Ranch Apocalypse" and the children removed from that location had detailed knowledge of automatic weapons and paramilitary tactics but almost nothing about age-appropriate concepts. (Those children were also subjected to physical abuse and brainwashing techniques (as were their parents), while girls as young as age 10 were frequently molested by Koresh himself.)

"Freedom of religion" is not a shield to allow nutcases to do whatever the hell they want while wrapping themselves in the Bible.

Fortunately, Mount Carmel is in the middle of a place called Nowhere, rather than "in the middle of Waco." To get there, you go well out of town, turn onto a dirt road for a couple miles, then turn onto another dirt road.

 

"Almost two months" is not near enough. The place was surrounded. The BD's weren't going anywhere. But the FBI knew -- or dammit, ought to have known -- what an attempt to storm that compound would have meant to the people running things inside. Any half-bright theology professor could have told them, but there was no expert on apocalyptic eschatology on the ground there, just guys with guns and tanks, sweating and getting pissed. And I'm not sure that forcing the hand on a mass suicide is the way to prevent, you know, mass suicide.
A botch, all the way around, and that's not to defend Koresh at all.

 

Storm the compound ... don't storm the compound ... wasn't going to matter. Koresh made it clear he wasn't going to surrender. One way or the other, they were going to kill themselves.

 

So you storm the compound?
Why?
So the people die sooner and your agents can get out of the heat?

 

As far as I'm concerned, there were four significant mistakes. One was using pyro grenades, as discussed; that said, the Davidians had poured gasoline all throughout the house, as was recorded on the surveillance tapes. Another was the April 19 decision to tell the idiots, "Ready or not, here we come!" Why do you tell them you're coming? Key error. And the thing with the M728s poking holes in the walls ... seriously?!?

The mistake I saved for last (and this is a critical mistake that FUBARs everything else) was the first mistake: the timing and setup of the initial raid on Feb. 28. Why are you coming at 9 o'clock in the morning? Makes no sense. Come in at 3 a.m. when they're sleeping. And why the hell do you have a mile-long convoy rolling out a rural dirt road on a Sunday morning? Crash team goes in first, three vans (one crew goes in the back way), subdue any sentries, knock down the front door, use flash-bang and CS grenades to pacify the people in the compound. The rest of the crew stays at another location and waits; they come in only when the scene is secure.

EDIT: Oh ... one other thing ... YOU DON'T LEAK IT TO A REPORTER BEFOREHAND, SINCE THE REPORTER'S GOING TO GO DRIVING AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD ASKING THE MAILMAN (who's Koresh's brother-in-law) WHERE THE COMPOUND IS!!!

Back to original text.

So yes, you storm the compound. But you don't do it like a bunch of yayhoos trying to get on CNN.