From: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com (roc-digest) To: roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: roc-digest V2 #253 Reply-To: roc-digest Sender: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-roc-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk roc-digest Thursday, July 8 1999 Volume 02 : Number 253 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 09:46:10 -0700 From: Chris Ferris Subject: OT: U.S. Army Soldiers Magless and Muzzled Way Down in Kosovo Say it ain't so, Senator Robert "Cool Ranch" Dolito. In an AP photo printed on page A6 of the July 5, 1999 issue of The Boston Globe, there you sit, enjoying some G.I. chow at a "holiday barbecue" at Camp Bondsteel near the southern Kosovo town of Vitina, as highlighted by the AP photo's accompanying caption. Propped against the near end of the wooden table at which you and a half-squad of BDU-clad soldiers sit is one of those Clintonista-feared and Clintonista-hated assault rifles, a real, bona fide M-16A2 black rifle capable of celebrating (functional) diversity either in semi-automatic or full automatic mode. (Well, what do you know? It actually takes a battle rifle in the hands of an honorable American of character to save a village! How about that?) Back to the main point. Missing from the empty well of the M-16A2 rifle shown in the photograph is a Clintonista-feared and Clintonista-hated high capacity magazine loaded with 30 rounds of 5.56mm mil spec ball ammunition! It also appears as if that M-16A2 rifle's muzzle is covered by a protective plastic cap, ostensibly to prevent WASPs, Roman Catholics or other assorted "Christian Right" extremists from deciding to nest, along with a copy of The Ten Commandments, deep inside that rifle's barrel during Senator "Cool Ranch" Dolito's visit? Humor aside, reflect back to the date of the infamous, horrific truck bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, Lebanon. Recall that over 240 brave U.S. Marines and U.S. Navy corpsmen assigned to the U.S. Marine unit stationed there lost their lives as a smiling, suicidal Saracen drove his explosives laden lorry past USMC sentries who, by policy, were not allowed to have their M-16 rifles' magazine wells charged with loaded magazines, which heightened state of readiness might have allowed them to instantaneously chamber live rounds upon detecting danger and to bring significant firepower to bear on an advancing terrorist madman. Would the sentries alone have been able to stop the Beirut truck bomber? We will never know, will we, because some special assistant to an assistant bonehead at either the Department of State or the Department of Defense or at some other stratospheric level within the Pentagon probably intimidated the local USMC commanding officer into conforming with stateside, peacetime policies mandating the carriage of unloaded weapons at a military facility if not on a supervised rifle range.. Hey, we would not have wanted to anger the Hezbollah Hollow Hee Haw Boys' Choir, now would we? What would the Hezbollah terrorists active in Lebanon have thought if camouflage-clad U.S. Marines had actually been allowed to perform sentry duty at their barracks while carrying weapons charged with fully loaded magazines? Again, we will never know, will we? But we sure as heck know now that Senator Bob Dole, a decorated war hero, is apparently content to sit in southern Kosovo, a confirmed unsecured combat zone, with U.S. Army soldiers next to whom one unloaded and oh-so-Clintonally-child-safe M-16A2 rifle rests as a powerful symbol of all that is wrong with a still superbly trained and highly motivated U.S. military that has been used worldwide as a political football by so-called President Clinton and his (liquor) cabinet of (it takes a) village idiots. President Clinton, Secretary of Defense Cohen and Senator Dole, if you should happen to see a copy of this e-mail message, which I sincerely hope will be forwarded to selected members of Congress who serve on U.S. House and U.S. Senate Armed Forces Committees, would you please advise the Chairman of the JCS and commanders in the field that unloaded personal weapons in combat zones may lead (again) to unloaded coffins bearing the bodies of soldiers or Marines (killed in action) who should have been prepared to take up, to chamber a live round in, and then to fire their already loaded magazine-equipped rifles at a second's notice in the event of a sudden attack upon their camp or compound? Our brave soldiers' rifles "magless" and "muzzled" in Kosovo? Shame on President Clinton, shame on Secretary Cohen, shame on General Clark (commander of NATO forces in Kosovo) and his boss at the JCS in the Pentagon, shame on local U.S. Army unit commanders, and some shame, too, on Senator Dole for sitting by and not demanding unequivocally that soldiers in his presence be ordered to bear rifles, pistols and other issued automatic weaponry charged with fully loaded magazines to enable an immediate, aggressive defense against any enemy's assault on their position. Combat zones are inherently unsafe. Mandating that our soldiers (and our Marines) carry unloaded weapons way down in Kosovo is an unforgivable blunder that must be corrected before lives are lost in action with hostile forces. Correct this unfortunate situation, now, Mr. President, Secretary Cohen, General Clark and Senator Dole. Just do it. Let soldiers be soldiers. Let Marines be Marines. Stop "managing" combat zones as if they were Clintonized, politically correct Fortune 500 office environments. One telephone call should make "loaded weapons" happen at Camp Bondsteel and elsewhere, way down in Kosovo. Thank you, gentlemen, for attending, in prompt fashion, to this important matter. Respectfully, Christopher C. Ferris (Street address deleted) Nashua NH ferriscc@mainstream.net - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jul 99 10:08:38 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: great article by the house conservative at Salonmagazine, Clinton's lapdog e-zine (fwd) On Jul 7, Shimm, David wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] What's gun control got to do with it? The 20,000 laws already on the books couldn't stop the Columbine massacre, and one more won't either, but liberals just don't get that. - - - - - - - - - - - - - By David Horowitz July 6, 1999 | The other day I picked up a phone message from a woman concerning a charity event for homeless youngsters that I was helping organize in Hollywood. The woman is a liberal, and she said she had found a friend who was willing to volunteer her home for an event we had planned for the children -- then she paused -- "but not if Charlton Heston comes." Then she paused again. "In fact," she said, "none of my friends' homes will be available if Charlton Heston comes." It was unnecessary for her to say, as she also did under her breath, "They murdered those kids," to alert me to the fact that this was about the Columbine tragedy in Colorado, where two sociopathic teenagers had barged into a high school and ambushed their classmates before turning their weapons on themselves. Nor did she have to connect the dots and say that the passions that Heston provoked as head of the National Rifle Association, which had thwarted the passage of gun control legislation in the aftermath of these events, was the cause of her friends' determination to shun Charlton Heston and make him a social pariah. Accustomed as I am to such intolerant reflexes in people who otherwise think of themselves as "liberal," this one caused me to stop and reflect for a moment on what it had revealed. Consider, dear reader, the people you know and call your friends. How many individuals could you name whom these friends would want to bar from a social gathering whose sole purpose was to raise money for homeless kids? O.J. Simpson? Slobodan Milosevic? David Duke? For myself, I don't have a single conservative friend or acquaintance who would say, "If Barbra Streisand wants to help us raise money for poor kids, I don't want her in my house." (OK, maybe one or two.) Charlton Heston is no conservative troglodyte. He is a New Deal Democrat, the former chairman of the Hollywood committee for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s march on Washington, a lifelong champion of civil rights and artists' rights (he was a staunch defender of the National Endowment for the Arts) and generally a decent, humane and ecumenical soul. Of course, such data is irrelevant in this matter, because the ideological hatred liberals bear toward Heston has no real-world referrent in terms of who the man actually is. Even Heston's role as spokesman for the NRA doesn't make their passion any more intelligible to someone outside their ideological bubble. Do the 3 million mainly lower-middle-class and working-class members of the NRA want to see children die? Would the legislation they defeated have indisputably saved those children or others to come? The fact is that there are 20,000 gun laws already on the books, 17 of which were violated by the Columbine killers. What would one more law accomplish that the other 20,000 could not? Especially one that would merely mandate background checks on buyers at gun shows? Is there any evidence that these shows are the sites of a significant number of criminal purchases or that such legislation would have any effect on armed crimes? The Brady Bill has been violated on 250,000 occasions, according to police records, but not a single violator has been punished. Is there any correlation at all between stringent registration laws and low gun deaths? Apparently not. A social scientist named John Lott has just published a study that claims that communities in which citizens are armed have lower incidences of gun violence than communities where guns are relatively absent. In places where gun violence has actually been reduced, like New York, where the murder rate has been cut by a phenomenal 60 percent, the reason appears to be aggressive police methods, which have come under fire from many of these same liberals who think gun control is the answer. Do the people who hate Chuck Heston adore Rudy Giuliani? Hardly. I do not intend this as an argument for or against the gun legislation that was proposed and that failed in the wake of Columbine. It is merely a case for sobriety in assessing the issues that make up the dispute. The gun legislation in question may have been worthy or not. The point is that any difference it might make is so insignificant that it could not justify the foam-at-the-mouth response of its proponents or the stigma they have attached to people, like Heston, who disagree with them about it. Why are liberals so hypocritically bigoted? It's not a question that can be casually dismissed. After all, the conservatives who would shun a Barbra Streisand make no fetish out of "diversity" the way liberals do, nor do they wave the bloody flag of past witch-hunts whenever they come under attack, as liberals are known to do as well. Moreover, the little auto-da-fi over the possibility that Chuck Heston would materialize at a charity event is no aberrant case. George Stephanopoulos' recent memoir captures a parallel moment at the very center of the political process. Before impeachment irretrievably embittered the atmosphere of the Clinton White House, Stephanopoulos and the president were discussing an open congressional seat and the prospect of an upcoming special election. "It's Nazi time," Clinton remarked to Stephanopoulos, meaning time to get back to campaigning against Republicans. Two years later, at the outset of another campaign, Clinton told Dick Morris, "You have to understand, Bob Dole is evil, what he wants is evil." This of a war hero who had played the role of consensus builder in his years as Senate majority leader. Nor is Clinton alone in his rabid hatred of the Republican opposition. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., publicly referred to House Republicans as "Nazis" merely for proposing to keep the expansion of Medicare within the rate of inflation lest the whole system go bankrupt, as a presidential commission indicated it would. Other Democrats, like Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., referred to Republicans as racist for similar disagreements on budgetary allocations. As in the case of gun control legislation, there is no perceivable connection between the offenses and the demonization of the offenders by liberals. Outside the KKK-Farrakhan hate fringe (which embraces bigots on the left and right), there is no conservative analog to this liberal paranoia. Perhaps there is a Republican officeholder who every now and then enters the electoral cycle with the war cry "It's commie time," but I certainly haven't met him. The current Clinton security leaks are grave enough to have generated a hundred Joe McCarthys, but not one has yet appeared. There is simply no analog to the liberal passion of conservative bashing that has unfairly stained the reputations of figures as disparate as Bork, Thomas, Gingrich, Barr, Connerly and now DeLay. Conservatives have not even laid a glove on such obvious targets as Barney Frank and Maxine Waters. They tend to think of their opponents as irresponsible or simply misguided. But they do not treat them as agents of the devil. But then Republicans are political amateurs. They typically leave a business in the business sector to go fight City Hall over practical matters. They want to restrain the leviathan that is suffocating enterprise. Or, less nobly, they want to harness it to some self-interested goal. Liberals have a grander design. Their interest in politics is missionary. They see government as a means to social redemption, to change the world. They're not there to tinker with gun control laws. They're there, as Hillary Rodham Clinton put it, "to define what it means to be human in the 21st century." In the nightmares of NRA supporters, this means to do whatever it takes and to trample over any rights necessary to remove all 240 million guns from public possession in the quest for a utopia where violence no longer exists. The reason liberals are so bigoted lies in a vision that has ancestral roots in the Puritan origins of the American new world. They see themselves as soldiers in the army of the saints -- a vision incomplete without the counter-army of Satan, the dark adversary corrupting the innocent and blocking their progress. People like Charlton Heston stand in the way of their impossible dream. In the fantasies of these liberal Lenins, all the little dead children killed in drive-bys across America could be walking the safe streets of the 'hood if only the Chuck Hestons of this world would disappear. salon.com | July 6, 1999 [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jul 99 13:23:49 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Re: great article by the house conservative at Salonmagazine,Clinto n's (fwd) On Jul 7, James W. Winchester wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] "Shimm, David" wrote: > What's gun control got to do with it? > > safe streets of the 'hood if only the Chuck Hestons of this world would > disappear. > salon.com | July 6, 1999 This opinion piece is important for two reasons. One, the lesser, is that Salon is a rant magazine of the left. One can only wonder how it was published. Some may recall a tirade a month or two ago by a rabid anti firearms advocate who wants a complete ban on everything to do with guns. The really important message in this article is that it hits on what I have come to believe is the driving force of gun prohibitionism: self appointed moral supremacy and class elitism. The rhetoric of gun prohibition is remarkably similar to the temperance movement early this century, which also had moral/class issues. In my opinion, the firearms community has been very dense in not perceiving this battle for what it is: imposition of repressive laws to advance a control agenda on people the liberals don't like. It isn't the guns, it is people who use guns. Even among shooters, one can see this classism within the shotgun sports. Print this article out and memorize it; post it where you can read it often. If you don't understand the dynamics, you can't understand why the antis shape the argument the way they do, namely, to always seek the high moral ground and put shooters as allies of criminals. It is obvious in every anti article I see; reasonable and commonsense are now always invoked in new abridgments. Why? Who knows what reasonable and commonsense mean? The listener supplies the interpretation. If you oppose it, you are an extremist with no moral/social responsibility. If we are going to have success, we must join the battle on this high ground and quit fighting an emotional issue with facts and logic; facts and logic will only be considered after the moral case is made. Just some thoughts. Jim Winchester VP-CSSA [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jul 99 13:24:48 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: RE: Branch Davidians (fwd) On Jul 7, Bob Mueller wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] Saturday July 3 1:08 AM ET Branch Davidian Suit Will Continue WACO, Texas (AP) - A federal judge has cleared the way for a lawsuit that claims the federal government is responsible for the fiery and deadly end to the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff. U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. pared the number of defendants and plaintiffs, but ruled Thursday that the case can go to trial, said Mike Caddell, lead attorney for the Davidians. ``I think what the judge did is a great victory for the Davidians and for the country,'' Caddell said. ``Our folks can't be happier, and look forward to having their day in court.'' The lawsuit - filed by surviving Davidians and the relatives of the dead - challenges the government's conclusion that the Davidians started the fire and that they also shot first during the federal raid on their compound. David Koresh and about 80 followers died in the fire that ended the 51-day standoff. The defendants include Attorney General Janet Reno and top officials of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI, including then-Director William Sessions. ``We're still reviewing the decision at this point,'' said Myron Marlin, a Justice Department spokesman. The multimillion-dollar lawsuit has been on hold since early May while an appeals court considered whether Smith should be removed from the case. The plaintiffs wanted another judge because Smith has ruled in criminal cases involving Branch Davidians. The Davidians contend that when federal agents punched through the walls and fired tear gas into the cult compound on April 19, 1993, the canisters ignited, burning the building and the people inside. Congressional hearings have pointed to mistakes by the law enforcement officers, but none has been charged with a crime. - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bob Mueller I don't speak for Compuware or USTA Second Amendment Research Network http://www.infinet.com/~bmueller/Index.html [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - -- - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ***** Blessings On Thee, Oh Israel! ***** - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- An _EFFECTIVE_ | Insured | All matter is vibration. | Let he who hath no weapon in every | by COLT; | -- Max Plank | weapon sell his hand = Freedom | DIAL | In the beginning was the | garment and buy a on every side! | 1911-A1. | word. -- The Bible | sword.--Jesus Christ - ----------------+----------+--------------------------+--------------------- - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 17:16:22 -0400 (EDT) From: John Curtis Subject: Re: great article by the house conservative at Salonmagazine,Clinto n's (fwd) > >Print this article out and memorize it; post it where you can read it often. If >you don't understand the dynamics, you can't understand why the antis shape the >argument the way they do, namely, to always seek the high moral ground and put >shooters as allies of criminals. It is obvious in every anti article I see; >reasonable and commonsense are now always invoked in new abridgments. Why? Who >knows what reasonable and commonsense mean? The listener supplies the >interpretation. If you oppose it, you are an extremist with no moral/social >responsibility. If we are going to have success, we must join the battle on >this high ground and quit fighting an emotional issue with facts and logic; >facts and logic will only be considered after the moral case is made. > > I agree with your recommendation and also with your interpretation of why the article is important. In a sense it is important that the article appeared in Salon, in another sense it is not important. David Horowitz is a wonderful writer and a former left-winger converted over a period of years to a social conservative. He is Salon's "token conservative". He has said that writing for Salon is important in that it reaches a very different audience from conserative publications, and it is important to get these thoughts heard among lefties who may be open to reason. So, Salon hasn't experienced some change of publisher's heart, they merely publish a token "right wing" writer. ciao, jcurtis - - ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Jul 1999 17:42:27 -0700 From: Chris Ferris Subject: Boston Globe Online: Hostage Foiled Gunman's Plan for Massacre - Police Say This is a multi-part message in MIME format. - --------------9B2AE512D3145942E751241F Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit With respect to Jim Winchester's recent suggestion about using the same tactics as the opposition to increase support for the RKBA cause, here's a solid, simple example. This Reuters-offered story has been played out on the Net for the past day, but read with great care the line about the brave (if scared) employee armed with a concealed .45 ACP pistol who most certainly saved a number of people from summary execution by an armed madman. "If just one life can be saved ..." goes the HCI chant ... well, this carrier of a concealed pistol (in the People's Republic of California where the AG wants gun owners to turn in their SKS carbines) prevented a massacre, in the words of responding police. Why are we not hearing about this "saving of many lives" on ABC, CBS and NBC? Because David Horowitz is right on the mark in his Salon article ... the agenda of the Clintonistas and their media bedfellows has nothing whatsoever to do with saving individual lives, but everything to do with eventually removing all firearms from the hands of non-elites who do not toe their line. Power (firearms) in the hands of common, everyday, responsible people is a scary thought to the Clintonistas. As we know all too well. /ccf http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/188/nation/Hostage_foiled_gunman_s_plan_for_massacre_police_sayP.shtml - --------------9B2AE512D3145942E751241F Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii; name="Hostage_foiled_gunman_s_plan_for_massacre_police_sayP.shtml" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline; filename="Hostage_foiled_gunman_s_plan_for_massacre_police_sayP.shtml" Content-Base: "http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/188/ nation/Hostage_foiled_gunman_s_plan _for_massacre_police_sayP.shtml" Content-Location: "http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/188/ nation/Hostage_foiled_gunman_s_plan _for_massacre_police_sayP.shtml" Boston Globe Online: Print it!
Boston Globe Online: Print it!

THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING

Hostage foiled gunman's plan for massacre, police say

By Reuters, 07/07/99

ANTA CLARA, Calif. - One of three gun store employees held hostage Monday headed off a potential massacre by turning the tables on a gunman armed with one of the store's rented rifles, police said yesterday.

Sergeant Anton Morec of the Santa Clara Police Department said the alleged gunman, Richard Gable Stevens, 21, was subdued after tense moments Monday evening at a shooting range and gun store.

''He intended to go out in a blaze of glory,'' Morec said, stating that Stevens had accumulated more than 100 rounds of ammunition for his rented 9mm semiautomatic weapon.

''It certainly looks like he intended to take a lot more people out.''

Morec said Stevens arrived at the National Shooting Club Monday and rented the rifle for target practice at the club shooting range.

Stevens later returned to the club's gun store and sprayed the ceiling with gunfire. He then herded three employees into an alley, saying he intended to kill them, Morec said.

One store employee, however, was carrying a .45 caliber handgun concealed beneath his shirt. When Stevens looked away, the employee fired, hitting Stevens several times, Morec said.

The employee held Stevens at bay until police arrived, Morec said. When Stevens refused to comply with police demands that he show his hands, he was shot again with several rounds of rubber bullets.

Morec said Stevens was taken to a hospital where he was listed in critical condition from the initial gun wounds. Criminal charges against him were pending.

Police said the quick action by the gun club employee may have headed off a massacre.

A suicide note found in Stevens's vehicle and addressed to his parents indicated he may have planned to go on a much broader shooting spree, Morec said. ''Now you'll spend the rest of your lives fighting lawsuits from my victims' relatives and die with only dimes perhaps,'' Morec quoted the note as saying.

This story ran on page A13 of the Boston Globe on 07/07/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.

- --------------9B2AE512D3145942E751241F-- - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jul 99 10:14:46 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Waco News -- 7-7-99 (5/5) (fwd) On Jul 8, Paul M Watson wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] The Rules of Engagement, the authors wrote an updated version which received a great deal less circulation. Waco Update: The Delta Force Was There by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair June 1, 1999 http://www.counterpunch.org/waco2.html (Excerpts) Amid Nato military supremo Wesley Clark's onslaught on the civilians of Serbia the question arose: did Clark hone his civilian-killing skills at Waco, where the FBI oversaw the largest single spasm of slaughter of civilians by law enforcement in US history, when nearly a hundred Branch Davidians died amid an assault by tanks, flame-throwers and snipers. The tanks were from Fort Hood, where Wesley Clark was, in early 1993, commander of the Cavalry Division of the US Army's III Corps. In our last issue we cited a congressional report commissioned in the aftermath of Waco which described how Texas governor Anne Richards had consulted with Clark's number two at Fort Hood. Then, on April 14, there was a summit at the Justice Department in Washington, where Attorney General Janet Reno, top Justice Department and FBI officials and two unnamed senior Army officers reviewed the final assault plan scheduled for April 19. The two Army officers at the Justice Department that day were Colonel Gerald Boykin, and his superior, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the head of Special Forces at Fort Bragg. Though Clark (who had served with Schoomaker) was not directly involved in the onslaught on the Branch Davidians, the role of the US Army in that affair throws into harsh relief the way prohibitions against the use of the US military for civilian law enforcement can be swiftly by-passed. Boykin and Schoomacher were present because the Army's Fort Bragg-based Combat Applications Group-popularly known as the Delta Force-had been enlisted as part of the assault team on the Branch Davidian Compound. It appears that President Clinton had signed a waiver of the Posse Comitatus Act, with the precedent being Ronald Reagan's revocation of the Act in 1987, allowing the Delta Force to be involved in suppressing the Atlanta prison riot. The role of the Delta Force, the identity of the two Army officers, the revocation of Posse Comitatus all form part of the disclosures of a forthcoming documentary film, Waco: A New Revelation, put together by the same team that produced an earlier, excellent film, Waco: Rules of Engagement. Following our questions about Wesley Clark's possible involvement at Waco, producer/researcher Mike McNulty called us with some details of his new documentary-directed by Jason van Bleet and due to be released in July. After energetic use of Freedom of Information Act enquiries, plus research in three repositories in Texas holding evidence from the Waco inferno, plus other extensive investigations, McNulty and his team have put together an explosive file: ? 28 video tapes from the repositories show that in the final onslaught on the Waco compound were members of the US military in special assault gear and with name tags obscured. As noted above, Clinton's revocation of the Posse Comitatus Act made this presence legal. McNulty isolates Vince Foster as the White House point man for the Waco operation. McNulty cites Foster's widow as saying that the depression that prompted the White House lawyer's death was fueled by horror at the carnage at Waco for which the White House had given the ultimate green light. Foster was writing a Waco report when he died. McNulty says that some documents about Foster and Waco were among those removed from his office after his death, later to surface in a White house store room sheltering archives of the First Lady. The film, McNulty says, discloses how the federal assault team placed explosives on top of a compound bunker whither the feds believed the Branch Davidian leaders might flee. Material evidence collected by McNulty shows that the FBI/Delta assault force bombarded the compound with pyrophoric - i.e. fire-causing - projectiles. End update [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - - ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Jul 99 10:17:07 PST From: roc@xpresso.seaslug.org (Bill Vance) Subject: Waco News -- 7-7-99 (4/5) (fwd) On Jul 8, Paul M Watson wrote: [-------------------- text of forwarded message follows --------------------] defendant guilty of a crime. In a similar case in early June, 1999, Richardson v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that jurors must find defendants in a drug conspiracy case guilty of specific violations. Otherwise, wrote Justice Breyer, jurors may simply conclude[d] from testimony, say, of bad reputation, that where there is smoke there must be fire. Davidian supporters therefore can have some confidence that the Supreme Court will find at least find against the additional 25 year sentences for four defendants. Attorneys also will argue that the gun convictions should be thrown out of Court because the jury was improperly instructed and Judge Smith himself originally threw out the conviction. Attorneys for Graeme Craddock and Paul Fatta will argue there was insufficient evidence against their clients. For more information on the trial and appeals, click here. JUNE 20, 1999 WHAT S NEW IN WACO WEB PAGES MOUNT CARMEL SURVIVORS WEB PAGE is now at: http://start.at/mt.carmel The page includes: Table of Contents and Ten Commandments; Branch Davidian Trial Transcripts; Mt. Carmel Visitor Center and Events page; Addresses and contact information; Mt. Carmel Chatrooms and Instructions pages. MICHAEL: A TRIBUTE FROM HIS MOTHER by Sandra Connizzo. Is at Mark Swett s The Research Center home page at: http://home.maine.rr.com/waco/mikes.html Michael Schroeder was ambushed and killed by ATF agents February 28, 1993 as he tried to return to his wife and children at Mount Carmel. There is evidence agents first wounded him and then later approached the wounded man and shot him twice in the head at close range. (For evidence see Chapter 5 of my book THE DAVIDIAN MASSACRE.) DAVE HARDY S WACO PAGE Hardy is an attorney working on obtaining evidence through the Freedom of Iformation Act. He is always coming up with new documents, photographs and videos which he puts on his web page. For the latest check out: http://www.indirect.com/www/dhardy/waco.html The full tour begins at the very bottom of the page. JUNE 15, 1999 BLOCKBUSTER VIDEO WILL CARRY WACO: THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT Blockbuster, the nation's largest video rental company, will add Waco: The Rules of Engagement (http://www.waco93.com) to its shelves in either August or September. This success follows HBO cable television airing the film on April 19, 1999, the sixth anniversary of the fire that destroyed Mount Carmel. Nominated for an Academy Award in the Documentary Features category last year, Waco: The Rules of Engagement combines archival news footage, video and audio tapes, testimony from the televised House of Representatives investigation, and interviews with survivors. In addition to an Oscar nomination, Waco: The Rules of Engagement was honored with the prestigious International Documentary Association's Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award in 1997. JUNE 2 FROM WACO TO KOSOVO About the time the US/NATO bombing of Kosovo and Serbia began, George Stephanopoulos's book All Too Human was released. The quote that quickly found its way all over the internet came from page 214. He recounts a meeting between Clinton and Anthony Lake on the killing of 18 US Marines in Mogadishu (the Marines had killed more than 1,000 Somali civilians during the "fire fight"): "We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers," Clinton said, softly at first. "When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers." Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising, and his fist pounding his thigh, he leaned into Tony as if it were his fault: "I believe in killing people who try to hurt you, and I can't believe we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks." Several columnists have compared Clinton s actions in Waco (where Davidians defending Mount Carmel killed four federal agents) and Kosovo. In her April 15, 1999 column The Deadly Price Of Good Intentions, Arianna Huffington wrote: Nor is Kosovo the first time that the administration's policies of good intentions have produced disastrous results. Who can forget Waco? There is no doubt that the president and his attorney general wanted the best for the men, women and children inside the Branch Davidian compound. They intended to save them from David Koresh. Yet, six years ago next Monday, their actions led to the people they wished to protect being burned to death." The parallels between Waco and Kosovo are telling. In Waco, tanks and guns employed to save women and children in fact precipitated disaster. In both cases Clinton demonized one man -- the president called Koresh ``dangerous, irrational and probably insane.'' And, similarly, the administration ignored dire warnings. ``I directly considered the possibility of a mass suicide,'' Janet Reno testified before the House Judiciary Committee. But she dismissed the reports, in the same way that the administration chose to ignore reports that Milosevic would use the NATO bombing to drastically step up his campaign of ethnic cleansing. (Note: there is greater evidence that tank action caused the fire fire that killed 76 Davidians on April 19, 1993 than that it was a mass suicide. ) On June 2, 1999 Benjamin Tyree, in a column entitled Familiar Fruits of Policy Tree, compared Waco and Kosovo, saying: The bookends of this sorry peirod in our history are two fiery events of misbegotten and miscarried moral outrage and official overreaching. Tyree compared the publicity stunt BATF raid and the FBI s gas and tank attack to save the children to Clinton s need for a distraction from building China-related Scandals by saving Kosovar Albanians from the Serbs. In both cases, those to be saved suffered grievously. On June 27, 1999 Jack Kemp wrote in a Washington Times Op-Ed, Artfully Woven Web of Deceit, It was, in short, a debacle, an international Waco, which no amount of "spinning" by NATO and the media can erase. The column which got the most circulation on the Internet is described below. JUNE 1, 1999 GENERAL CLARK, WACO & MCNULTY S NEW FILM Well-know writers Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair s May 21, 1999 article Was Clark at Waco? on their web page http://www.counterpunch.org made quite a stir on the Internet. However, after getting more details from Mike McNulty, chief researcher for and co-producer of the Academy Award-nominated film, Waco: [------------------------- end of forwarded message ------------------------] - - ------------------------------ End of roc-digest V2 #253 *************************