From: smith@ctron.com (Lawrence C Smith)
Subject: Re: Welcome to Police State USA
Organization: Cabletron Systems, Inc.
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Distribution: world
Reply-To: smith@ctron.com
NNTP-Posting-Host: glinda.ctron.com

In article <C5sI9G.Hx@dscomsa.desy.de>, hallam@dscomsa.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker) writes:

>The above conveniently ignores the murder of four BATF agents by the
>Branch Davidians in an unprovoked ambush.

That has not been demonstrated.  Had he come to trial, there was a very real
possibility that Koresh would have gotten an acquittal on grounds of self-
defense.  All survivors of the debacle have sworn that the BATF shot first.

>Any government that allows tinpot dictators to set up shop and declare
>a private state has drifted into anarchy. There are laws to control
>the ownership of guns and the BATF had good reason to beleive that
>they were being violated. They set out to obtain a legal warrant and 
>attempted to serve it only to be met with gunfire when they rang
>the doorbell.

They "rang the doorbell" using a concussion grenade!  And if the bloody
warrants were "legal" then why were they _sealed_ after the fight started?
And if Koresh had declared himself a "private state" and was just daring the
gov't to go in, then why did he surrender last year to a local sheriff who
served a warrant _for_his_arrest_ (as opposed to the BATF search warrant,
which did not include arrest unless violations were found) by just calling
him up to tell him and then going out to collect him with his squad car?
That doesn't sound like a dictator to me, it sounds like someone who knows
he has a court battle.  Things might have gone very differently if the BATF
_had_ "rung the doorbell".

>The paranoid assertion that the BATF fired first in an unprovoked
>assault assumes that the BATF were on a death wish. Had they
>expected the B-D to be anything other than peacefull citizens who
>would accept a search authorized by a court they would have turned up
>in a tank and broken the door down on day one.

This is stupid.  That is no paranoid assertion, it is testamony from surviving
witnesses, and the BATF _has_ no tanks, nor am I aware of either the BATF _or_
the FBI using any until yesterday.  When they use maximum force they do just
what they did that first day that got four officers killed.

>The stupidity was the attempt to serve a warant on the place by
>ludicrously underarmed and unprotected police. 

"Underarmed"?  You flabberghast me, they were loaded for bear and every
picture shows them wearing bullet-proof vests!  They were using concussion
grenades and full-auto weapons, what was missing low-yield tac-nukes?  This
is a transparent attempt to retcon a justification for the ridiculous amount
of force used, both initially and yesterday.  You should be ashamed.

>If anyone on the net cares to suggest a sure fire method of bringing
>the murderes of four police officers to justice perhaps we could
>hear it.

They _had_ a sure-fire method: keep them bottled up and talk them to death or
surrender without giving him justification for some looney-tune religious
stunt.

Phil, I've been reading your postings for months and I'm convinced that you
will back anything, no matter how damaging it may be to yours or anyone
else's rights if you think it will hurt people you don't like.  It's people
with that attitude that set up the preconditions for the Holocaust, a process
that is in place _now_ in this country, even if the tattered, pitiful remains
of the Constitution is slowing its progress.  This isn't a Libertarian issue,
others may argue that line, but from a strictly Constitutional view of a
democratic gov't, what the FBI and BATF did was wrong, wrong, wrong, even if
their _reasons_ for trying to arrest Koresh were 100% right.  _Anything_ that
leads to the deaths of 17 children, if nothing else touches your stoney
heart, is _wrong_ no matter who pushed the button.  For God's sake, man, get
your morality back.

Larry Smith (smith@ctron.com)  No, I don't speak for Cabletron.  Need you ask?
-
Liberty is not the freedom to do whatever we want,
it is the freedom to do whatever we are able.
