Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Jaw-dropping
Confederate Yankee has a post, with links to the relevant stories, on the decision by Bill Clinton and Janet Reno to use CS gas during the Waco siege, with the intent of putting the children in the compound in danger so as to trigger their mothers’ maternal instincts and force an evacuation. Like CY, I had never heard this before.
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6 comments:
Waco and Ruby Ridge are problematic as symbols of government oppression. They were enclaves of slavish, ignorant oppression on their own; we cannot forget that they were groups of people, just like the victims of Jonestown, who willingly let themselves be brainwashed into believing some great, malevolent conspiracy, involving mainstream us, was out to get them. If I'm going to apportion blame, I'd say it was 75% nutball intransigence and 30% bureaucratic bungling.
There was plenty of blame for mistakes on all sides, but I am not in favor of this new tendency to paint the Waco and Ruby Ridge wackos as innocent victims.
I read about this earlier today at Volokh's site.
After reading Stone's report, there are an awful lot of unknowns. He implies that critical information was understated or withheld from Reno (and thus from Clinton).
Not least of which was the effects of CS on children. Which anyone who has ever breathed the stuff knows is dangerous with prolonged contact. During my time in uniform, there was always the rumor of troops who died in exercises from being gassed in enclosed spaces.
Admittedly, this is classic armchair quarterbacking, but.....there were also an awful lot of assumptions on the part of the FBI. Such as the parents being able to protect their children. That sounds more like rationalization than anything else.
In any case, it's clear that Reno and Clinton approved the plan to use CS on the Davidian compound, knowing that children were inside. Indeed, they were counting on the children, as part of "tightening the noose".
So this is indeed jaw dropping. And infuriating. Clearly, the Democrats always do it for the children.
Clearly my math skills are lacking (75% and 30% don't stop at a nice round whole). As for the tactics that were used at Ruby Ridge and Waco, I wouldn't presume to second-guess the people who were there. As for the CS gas story, I seem to remember something like that was reported at the time (but my memory is always suspect). I don't think it was the big secret that people are now trying to say it was. It's just that, back then, nobody would have questioned Clinton/Reno/whoever's decisions as closely as they would the subsequent administration.
I cant access the link (work comp) but it brings to ming something I learnt during my own CS training.
We were cell exreaction type, so this may be waaay wrong.
We were told that there were a couple of types of CS. One type of CS grenade launched the powder via burning, a huge no-no for rooms and buildings.
The other type didnt.
Waco was used as an example of using the wrong type of munitions for the job.
Was anyone ever sacked/charged over that? It was gross incompitence at the least.
TFM, CS isn't really a "gas", it's a particulate material that's really irritating. It can be delivered either by burning (that's how CS grenades work; IIRC, it's "cut" with a flammable material for that), or by direct dispersal. The burning is quick, the dispersal less so. But it's the same material, delivered in different ways.
In either case, it's nasty stuff within enclosed spaces.
Rebecca, I honestly don't remember this being a controversy at all; use of CS, yes, children deliberately threatened, no.
The Stone report is dated in November 1993, and was written after all of the other reports. It's possible that the report wasn't deliberately buried, but became "lost in the noise" with all the scandals ol' Bubba was involved in. Or the DOJ took advantage of the "noise" to file it away quietly, given Stone disagreed with some of their findings.
To me, it isn't the "secrecy" (if there ever was any), it's the sheer chutzpah of Billy Jeff sternly wagging his finger at us, tut tutting away about our anger inciting violence.....and he supported the use of violence against innocent children.
Perhaps there was cause for the Waco tactics, perhaps not. But if ol' Bubba wants to talk about rhetoric escalating into violence, he needs to come clean about his own sins as well.
It's ok RebeccaH - you add up like a Democrat!
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